I'm OK, and I apologize for the long absence!

I sincerely apologize to those who've been worried and left nice comments.  Actually, to anyone who's been worried.  I really should have put up a post saying I wouldn't blog for a while.

I've been gone from this blog, from Racialicious commenting and from Twitter for more than a month now. I did a volunteer trip to DC, spent a weekend in New York City, and visited BB and Sunny's home state several times.  This weekend, I picked up BB at the airport curbside and flew him back to what should now be his permanent home. 

I've been under a lot of stress, and I had a very, very strong attack of the typical internet paranoia that strikes a lot of foster care bloggers.  There was some drama we almost got sucked into.  I had dipped my toes in Facebook, but now I think Facebook is a bad fit for me and I won't be updating or adding any more friends or relatives to the list. 

I just started a two-month maternity leave. I appreciate the fact that I get leave when so many other mothers don't, but I think this is also going to be a difficult time.  Although I'm happy to finally have BB with us -- and Sunny and BB are fantastic together -- it's very intensive to care for BB.  Luckily his foster mom has been giving me great advice, including tips on how to get him to eat his veggies.  He's taking a nap in the other room right now.

Please let me know if you have any questions and I'll try to get started blogging again by answering them! I'm going to make it my goal to update at least once a week from now on, and slowly get caught up on the blogs in my Reader as well.

Toddlers and Torchwood

I had a fairly productive weekend.  Right now, I'm a bit stressed because I'm neck-deep in a semi-crisis at my agency.  It's a combination of typically high turnover and terrible communication practices by social workers.  Perhaps they practice keeping secrets so much that they forget how to actually tell important things to large groups of people.  I don't talk about my job here, but I will say that I have a bit of experience when it comes to the psychology of communication about change.  You really should not have the junior-most person in the organization sending stakeholders a mass email saying "I'm leaving and everything is changing, but I won't say exactly how, I'll just let you the reader fill in the blanks with the worst-case scenario, but don't worry, nothing will really change."

On the bright side, we finally have a subsidy and reimbursement amount for BB, which means a presentation date can be scheduled soon. I'm happy with the amount. I'm going to regard this as a solid enough milestone to go ahead and buy some general parenting books on toddlers.  I'm especially worried about attachment issues.  I remember reading "Toddler Adoption" a while back, but I need to go dig it up again. 

I've also been watching a lot of Torchwood lately.  It was added to the Netflix Watch Instantly list, and I thought I'd give it a try.  The only thing I knew was that it was a Doctor Who spin-off with more adult subject matter. IT. IS. SO. FREAKING. GOOD.  I'm not typically the kind of person who falls in love with TV shows.  I mean, I like exciting, character-driven, well-written shows like Buffy and Angel and The Wire and Six Feet Under and Big Love and Battlestar Galactica (yes, I cried at the end even though the end was kind of stupid) and so on. But I can't recall a TV show that hooked me in as quickly as Torchwood!  It's like television crack, and I'm totally addicted. Now I'm listening to Torchwood radio plays and buying Torchwood books along with the toddler books.

Here's why.  I'll get the bad stuff on the table right away.  The series starts off a little unevenly.  I thought that some of the first season episodes were too sentimental.  And if you're into serious/hard science fiction (and I am) you need to suspend your disbelief.  Like Doctor Who, it's really more "science fantasy".  Especially factoring in all the time travel, there are often plot holes big enough to drive a truck through.  Much of the basic plot structure clearly comes from a kind of Buffy/Angel/X-Files secret team format.  Plus, you don't really get the full picture unless you're watching Doctor Who, and I was never a huge fan and have only sporadically watched the new Doctor Who series.
 

The good stuff: the acting is fantastic. The show takes a lot more risks than any American equivalent I can think of.  The subject matter is dark and the body count is high, so even the plots may start off as derivative, they soon get complicated.  You know where the shows start but not necessarily where they're going to end.  The characters are actually changed by what they go through and events are taken very seriously... but there's still plenty of cheeky humor.  And then there's the fact that the team is led by a heroic bisexual cosmic space slut. Captain Jack Harkness is an absolutely fantastic character.  To really get the full story on Captain Jack, you have to jump back and forth a bit between Torchwood and Doctor Who, and luckily Netflix Watch Instantly has them all available.  If you want to start from the very beginning, watch Doctor Who Series One Episodes 9-12 then start on Torchwood Series One.

I only have one episode left to watch: Children of Earth Day Five. Day Four was grueling... and heartbreaking. I knew what was going to happen, but I still cried just a little bit.

At least I know there's going to be a Season Four.  There's also a development to Americanize the show to some degree and put a version on FOX.  I'm rather leery about that.  It's not Torchwood without awesomely gratuitous gay sex, and I don't see that happening on FOX!

Right now I'm trying to get my mother to watch Torchwood too.  She's not really a sci-fi head like me, but she's much more of an Anglophile, so it shouldn't be too hard.  She thinks anything from the BBC is brilliant.  I've argued with her before that there are just as many crappy shows in the UK, it's just that they only export the best of them.  And even those are frequently fishy.  For every "Father Ted" there's an "Are You Being Served". I think my husband is probably a lost cause, though.  His favorite BBC show is "Lovejoy".

How are you doing in your life?

BB's foster mom has been very irritated with the assessment delay.  At the end of last week, she called up BB's worker, and told her to "sh*t or get off the pot" (in exactly so many words) then threatened to call her supervisor.

As a result of all this pressure across multiple fronts, we're finally starting to see movement.  BB's foster mom confirmed that the assessment agency called her back and said they'd received the referral.  On our end, we submitted a subsidy letter so that we can get a presentation date, but we've supposedly reserved the right to change the amount in case the developmental assessment turns up anything particularly shocking. 

Today, BB's worker asked us what his adoptive name would be.  Like Sunny's name change, it's going to be the same as his old name, but with our last names added at the end.

It's finally starting to seem real.

We shopped a little this weekend.  We need to get a play area ready and set up gates and cabinet locks.  We also need a bigger bed, and one that's lower to the ground.

Sunny got to talk with FFB this weekend.  His first question was "So FFB, how are you doing in your life?"   Since FFB is only four years old, he didn't really know how to answer.  That question struck my mother as drop-dead hilarious.  She's been laughing about it for days.  She says she now lives in fear that someone will ask her, "how are you doing in your life?" and she'll have to struggle to come up with her own epitaph.  Sunny did eventually rephrase the question as "How are doing this week?", and FFB was able to answer that one.

Sunny's behavior has been pretty decent.  He hasn't had a violent fit in more than a week now.

Sunny and I have been watching The Mysterious Cities of Gold together, about an episode every other night.  I watched a few of those when I was a little kid, a long time ago, and I always wished I could have seen the whole story.  Thanks to Youtube, Amazon and the long tail effect, I recently bought the complete deluxe DVD edition of Mysterious Cities of Gold!



This was such a cool show.  It was a combined French and Japanese production; there's a rumor that Miyazaki was involved.  I do notice the characters sometimes doing subtle things that are intensely Japanese (cheerful head-bobbing).  As far as I can remember, it has a not-necessarily-imperialist perspective in that both the indigenous characters and Spaniards are presented as having complicated motives.  The Spaniards are not the automatic good guys... in fact, I think Gonzalo Pizarro is the major villain.

Sunny really loves the story, and it's something that we can both enjoy watching together.  The other show he's watching right now is "The Replacements".  It's one of those horrible screechy cartoons that doesn't seem to have much of a point.

The music to Mysterious Cities of Gold is especially awesome.  I love the theme, and the rest of the music sounds like it was composed by an avant-garde electronic group from 1970s Berlin.

Subsidy Negotiation Desperation

I'm probably breaking the advice I gave myself on some earlier posts.  I'm facing a very tough decision I didn't even know I had to make until just this week, and I'm starting to get really desperate and emotional and angry about it.

I've been informed that the next step on BB is to request a subsidy amount.  When we did this for Sunny, it wasn't that hard.  The worker told me exactly what to do.  I sat down in a meeting with our worker, and she gave me a list of things and amounts to request.  I added the amounts together and put that in an email I sent Sunny's ex-worker (who is now BB's worker).  They gave us an amount that was somewhat less than the amount requested.  The end.  That is, except for that weird extortion attempt at the end of last year, which we ignored.

BB has more early documented records: for example, his tox screen after birth.  Currently, he's delayed on several indicators.  He has a lot of stomach problems, and has been on antibiotics more than half the time he's been alive.  He may need physical therapy.  But his issues aren't really severe, either.  His foster mom has been trying to get him a developmental assessment for almost a year now.  Anything she tells me that isn't backed up by a medical evaluation is worthless, apparently, for the purposes of subsidy negotiation. 

I thought we were supposed to get the developmental assessment, then we use that to negotiate the subsidy.  Then we move on to visitation and a placement date.  But BB's worker has been dragging her feet on the assessment. She needs to do some special kind of referral.  I think she's been slacking off on that.  BB's foster mom said that she said that the assessment people were supposed to call her two weeks ago but they never did, for example.

A whole tangled ticket of she-said-she-said-she-said has been growing around the process and choking forward movement.  Instead of a clear 1->2->3 process, now I feel like both workers are trying to dump decisions on my shoulders, but refusing to give me any of the information I need to make these decisions. Today, I've been calling up both workers and getting desperate on the phone with them.  Talking with my worker is often frustrating, because when I press her on anything, she starts talking really, really fast, repeating herself and making annoying tautological statements like "Remember, the subsidy is what it is."

At several points I had to stop with "I'm sorry, that's only making me more confused."  Also, at several points, I said, in a very frustrated voice, "BUT ALL I CARE ABOUT IS THE MONEY!"  That sounds awful, but what I mean is that the assessment has no bearing on whether or not we want to adopt BB.  We are committed to adopting him no matter what it brings up.  All I'm concerned about is getting the maximum subsidy amount in the shortest amount of time!  The subsidy is crucial for anything that Medicaid doesn't cover.  We would never have been able to do neurofeedback therapy for Sunny if it wasn't for his subsidy.

However, maybe it's the case that the state is so strapped that they're going to give him the same subsidy even if the assessment turns up a host of ticking time bombs.  In that case, the assessment would be pointless, and we might as well skip it.

Calling up both workers and getting desperate seems to have kick-started something.  I had the lightbulb idea of suggesting/promising/threatening to pay for my own assessment.  I know how expensive these can be, but it's only a one-time expense.  What I proposed would be to ask BB's foster mom to take him to some independent private clinic, then pay for it myself or immediately reimburse her, and then she would have the documentation to submit to them.  The thought of me doing this seemed to strike the fear of God into both workers.  I guess that's because a) it's a departure from the way things are supposed to work, so they might have to file new paperwork or consult superiors or do something else incredibly time-consuming b) it's logical, so they can't dismiss it out of hand, although they both expressed deep reservations.

I'm prepared to request a subsidy amount without an assessment if things are stalled any longer, though.

Hopefully, they will now argue with each other a bit, then iron it out so that we can move forward.  Or maybe they'll team up against me.  Gah... I don't care as long as we can get this process moving again.

Sick, Cold Weekend

Ugh.  I stayed in bed from 5pm Friday until 5pm Saturday.  My sinuses hurt, I felt achey all over and my neck had stabbing pains.  I feel a bit better today.  My health has not been good, in general, for this last week.  I think it's the cold weather.  I really want to get back to my exercise schedule.

Sunny's behavior deteriorated a bit.  Friday, all the schools were closed because we got a quarter inch of snow.  I'm sure everyone up north thinks that's hilarious.  He had two fits that day.

Yesterday, since I was sick in bed and my husband had to work, Guy dropped him off at Nana's.  My mom often jokes with me -- "I don't see what your problem is, he's always fine with me!"  We both share a dark sense of humor, so I know she really doesn't mean it. She's great with him, since she has a very strong personality and the ability to maintain calm.  But sometimes, yes, it does irritate me a bit that Sunny reserves the worst of his behavior for me...

He was helping his Nana take off the Christmas tree ornaments and accidentally-on-purpose broke one because he didn't feel like helping right then.  Whenever he breaks something or hurts someone on accident, he gets very perturbed, and he has to be assured that his apology is accepted and everything is OK.  Otherwise, he flips out.  I've had lots of talks about this with him.  When he does something wrong, either on accident or purpose, he is supposed to think about other people's feelings first.  They key in these situations is to speak to him very calmly, but tell him to think about what the other person feels and what he can do about it.

Anyway, after breaking the ornament he started crying and screaming.  My mother told him to go to the other room to calm down (first mistake).  I've grown to realize that telling Sunny to go away and be by himself is like telling him "I hate you and I hope you die".  When he screamed even louder, she actually lost her temper for a minute and said "For Heaven's sake, shut up!"  I arrived shortly afterwards and Sunny was screaming about how Nana hurt his feelings and told him to shut up and "spoke to me in a harsh voice".

I took him to the bedroom and had to hold him down for a while when he got more disturbed and began lashing out.  Then we had a long talk and I made sure he didn't leave the bedroom with me until he took responsibility and started seeing things in a more realistic light.  What we discussed:

- if an adult in your family asks you to do something reasonable, you have to do it.  No matter if you think their voice is harsh.
- saying "my feelings are hurt" is not a magic phrase that allows you to avoid responsibility for your actions.
- you have to think about the feelings of other people as well as your own.  For example, Nana's feelings were hurt when her Christmas ornament was broken.  That didn't mean she's mad at you, it just means her feelings are hurt.
- three-stage apologies!  I remind him of this almost every day.  Saying "sorry" is worthless unless you then take responsibility and third, see what you can do to make up for it.

I have to hope that eventually he'll start to internalize some of these messages.  He was remorseful afterwards and apologized to his Nana, and she gave him a big hug.

I'm not happy about his behavior deteriorating, but on the positive side, he's really no worse than he was on medication.

I'm still working on getting a neurologist appointment.  I think I have a line on a neurologist in a town not too far outside the Atlanta perimeter.  It's always a chore finding decent providers.  I think doctors that take Medicaid are 1) more altruistic than normal and/or 2) really crappy and substandard.  Our pediatrician falls in the "altruistic" category.  The office is a bit disorganized, but based on the hours they keep and their stated mission, they're doing it for all the right reasons, and I love the service we've gotten from them in the last year and a half.

Generally, though, based on reviews of doctors I find on the internet, the badly reviewed ones take Medicaid, and the well reviewed ones don't.  To find a good one that takes Medicaid I have to cast a pretty wide net.  Luckily, we live in a populated region.  If we lived out in the country, we'd be screwed.

I had a long talk with Sunny and BB's foster mom the other day.  At 18 months, she estimates he's about 4-5 months behind, but making steady progress.  She thinks he'll catch up.  I trust her opinion since she's taken care of a ton of babies with all kinds of special needs.  BB is starting to say words!  He says "Nigh-nigh" when he goes to bed.  He can also understand simple commands like "pick up your bottle". She thinks his brain is developing faster than his motor system, so he could speak more if he had better control of his mouth.

I'm starting to think about childcare when BB comes to us.  Our choices are basically daycare versus a live-in nanny.  We can't afford a regular professional nanny, live-in or live-out, but we could get someone from the refugee community to come and live with us in the basement studio... that sounds kind of exploitative, but the weird thing is, we have certain connections that if we DON'T do this, my mother and some other people who work with the refugee community would be kind of peeved.  The idea would be, "if you can afford to give someone a job, so that they don't have to work in the chicken processing factory, you're obligated to give them that job."

Going that route would be complicated, ethically.  If we could get someone who was a night student, or had a small child they could live with here, so I wouldn't be causing another mother to have to get her own childcare, I would feel OK about it.  On another level, I'd want to make sure it was someone whose approach to childcare I agreed with... a professional nanny (we couldn't afford one anyway) has all sorts of references and certifications and things, and we'd be kind of flying blind without that.

Then there's daycare. That would cost anywhere from 400-1000 a month.  It has a lot of disadvantages but BB would be around a lot of kids, and he's already showing that he's very social, much like Sunny.  It's important for him to bond with us when gets here but he's also going to need a LOT of stimulation from other kids, and maybe daycare would be the best way to get that.

I Have a Sneaking Suspicion About Our Adoption Subsidy

I hesitated to blog about this for a long time, because it might be possible to ascertain Sunny's home state from this information. However, I think it's worth the risk.

Last month, we got a letter from Sunny's home state. It started talking about the state's budget woes, which we are well aware of.  If it wasn't for their budget crisis, BB would probably be with us now.

The letter asked us to accept a cut in our monthly adoption subsidy. Since interstate general adoptions involve a supposedly ironclad contract when it comes to this subsidy -- as long as we are taking care of Sunny, we are guaranteed to be paid that amount until he turns 18 -- the letter said that we should VOLUNTARILY give up the money.  Why?  Because if enough people didn't give up the money, they would be forced to make vaguely defined "across the board" cuts.  The language was rather slippery and menacing.  The deadline is next month.

I've been trying to figure out what to do about the letter.  Some possibilities:
- We don't sign, and they don't make the cuts (no money lost)
- We sign, and they don't make the cuts (a known amount of money lost)
- We don't sign, and they make the cuts anyway (an unknown amount of money lost)
- We sign, and they make the cuts anyway (a known amount of money lost + an unknown amount of money lost money lost)

Based on that decision matrix, the option of signing looks really, really bad.

I finally managed to get hold of our local caseworker. She told us absolutely not to sign.  She didn't think it was even possible for them to make the involuntary cuts!  Her theory is that they're just trying to help the budget by picking some low-hanging fruit -- that is, scaring a few adoptive parents into signing the letters.

It's so sleazy.


They already cut BB's foster mom's adoption subsidies.  Since her adoptions are not interstate like ours, there was apparently less legal protection. Her income went down a combined total of $1000 a month. Two of her older children have FASD and need a lot of services.

We could get by with a lower subsidy.  But the subsidy helps a lot.  If it wasn't for the subsidy, we probably wouldn't have been able to take a risk on that extremely expensive course of neurofeedback Sunny did earlier this year.  In the long run, special needs subsidies help the state, as long as the parents are ethical and the subsidy is actually helping the child, because the money you invest in children now means less money you have to spend later on.  But the state is obviously desperate and not thinking about the long term.

BB's caseworker wasn't able to give us any advice on Sunny's subsidy letter issue. But I'm a little bit suspicious of the way she's been asking us to give her a subsidy request letter on BB even though we're missing some health paperwork on him.  His foster mom tells me that she's waiting on the results of a blood test to determine whether he has a sickle cell issue. Earlier test results were apparently ambiguous.

I'll write about my thoughts of our Halloween visit later on, maybe tomorrow.

BB Timeline Update

I've been talking to BB's caseworker for a while. I have a very tentative timeline. First comes the official matching, which will happen very soon. Perhaps next week. I need to submit a letter requesting a subsidy. The subsidy is going to be a LOT lower than Sunny's, due to budget constraints. I'm just hoping for anything better than zero dollars a month. I don't care about the subsidy as much as I care about making 100% sure we get Medicaid for BB.

The actual cross-state investigation/paperwork process is going to take many months. How many? It took five months for Sunny. Add in a month for the holiday season, and another couple months for the budget crisis, and we should still be able to get full placement before BB turns two years old. I have to look at the bright side, otherwise it's just too depressing.

They won't pay or reimburse for pre-placement visits anymore, since the state ran out of money. The caseworker did say they would pay to fly BB down at least once. This is totally meaningless, since he would have to have someone fly with him, and children under 2 fly for free for anyway.

This translates into a really open visitation schedule... whatever we can afford, basically. We could bring him down to Georgia for periods of up to a week, but that would mean someone flying there, flying back with BB, then flying BB back, then flying back home.

If I figured out some way to work from there, I could go up for a week at a time, and just feed him and sleep next to him for that week... I don't know. It's going to take a lot of planning.

One really worrisome thing is that according to the Georgia adoption rules, an infant older than one year cannot sleep in the same bedroom as an adult. I'm not a believer in full-on attachment parenting, but I've read a lot of convincing stuff that says children like BB who are in danger of attachment disorder need co-sleeping.

BB and Sunny Update

I haven't posted in a while. I just haven't felt up to long-form writing.

I finally spoke to BB's adoption caseworker... this is the same woman who was also Sunny's caseworker. I got a bit emotional on the phone with her and told her that this process was very hard on everyone, especially Sunny, who often asks us when he's going to be a big brother. I told her I was totally aware of the budget crisis, and that I was also aware that BB's case plan had moved to adoption many months ago, though we had no communication from the state about it. I asked her if things would be easier if BB went to his grandmother (NN) and then we adopted him from her in a private adoption (NN had raised this idea herself a while back). I even asked her if it would make things easier if we hired a lawyer... I added that I didn't mean this in any antagonistic sense, but was posing it as a sincere question.

She didn't have a lot of answers for me, and she didn't have good news either. Things have changed since they did the contract to place Sunny with us; because of the budget crisis, it's even harder for their state to work with private agencies like ours. If they don't have budget approval to do the contract with the agency, our agency would have to transfer our homestudy to Dekalb County and have them do placement and post-placement supervision. That would present another roadblock and potential area for delays.

We'll find out in the next few days whether this county transfer has to happen or not. BB has been in limbo for 14 months already.

At this point, if the ball ever gets rolling, they'll also determine subsidy information if he's special needs. I'm sure that by now he really is "special needs" according to the state definition. For those who aren't familiar with foster adoption terminology, special needs doesn't necessarily involve any defined mental or physical handicap. Special needs really just means "it's harder to find adoptive parents for this child than it would be for a healthy white infant". There are almost no general adoptions that aren't "special needs" according to some definition.

But BB might have real special needs. His foster mom says she's a bit worried that he can't use the fingers on the right side of his body to grasp things. He still grasps using only his entire right fist. Since she's raised double digits of bio and foster kids over several decades I trust her opinion on his development. And she believes he's behind, though not so behind that needs physical therapy... yet.

The longer he stays with her the more difficult his transition is going to be. It's tough at any stage, but some stages are probably worse. A toddler is more aware of different people than an infant, but they're not able to express the emotions they're feeling, like Sunny was when he came to us at the age of 6.

We're going there for Halloween -- just Sunny and I -- so I'll get a chance to see BB. This quick weekend visit is a big treat for Sunny, because he loves talking about how much fun the great big foster family has doing Halloween stuff together. However, the visit also represents a major break in structure, and that's had some negative effects. He had more fits, got mad on several occasions because I wasn't letting him do things that his foster mom let him do (and he almost never uses that complaint), has been especially needy, and regressed in terms of what he wants to watch and read. He's been watching Dora cartoons that are way below his level, but they're obviously comforting him, so we don't discourage that.

I'm a big believer in openness, and I don't think the visit itself is having these negative effects. Instead, it's the break in structure. If we had already established a clear schedule of exactly when we would visit his family, this wouldn't be as much of an issue. I think in the future we'll have to establish a single date and stick to it on a yearly basis. I can't afford much more than that... each visit means at least two plane tickets, a hotel room and a rental car.

Sunny has had some rough episodes recently, but this weekend, we also had some wonderful times with him. On Sunday, we went walking on the trails at the Chattahoochee Nature Center, and Guy taught Sunny how to skip stones into the beaver pond. Later that day, when they were driving together, Sunny wrote Guy a note:

"You are the best dad I love you and I will love you forever"

Another Visit?

We were initially planning on visiting Sunny's home state once a year.  This year, we already went in March.  However, I'm thinking of going again for Halloween.  Sunny always talks about how awesome Halloween is with his foster family and all the fun stuff they would do, so it would be a wonderful treat for him. 

A major negative would be the expense of the visit, especially since we just had some minor flood damage and I still don't know how much that's going to cost to renovate.  Then, another positive AND negative to the potential visit would be the fact of seeing BB.  The situation with BB has become increasingly painful for me.  I'm at the point where I dread seeing pictures of him.  My stepfather was recently able to visit the foster family as a side trip from his business trip, and he's about to send a bunch of pictures he took... he told me BB has curly blond hair starting growing on his head now.  Honestly, I felt the news like a slap in the face from nowhere.  I just want to crawl into a hole and wait for news that 1) BB is coming to live with us 2) he's going to stay there, maybe adopted by Sunny's foster mom.  I would make it through either way, but I can't stand this waiting around.

He's getting older and older and more at risk for attachment issues when/if the move does happen.  The only reason I know of that they haven't placed him with us is that the state has a budget crisis (like all states nowadays) and his case doesn't have high priority.  He has a great placement, nobody is arguing about where he needs to go, so what's the rush?  That's how they must think.

I would like to see BB, but I also don't want to see him. I don't want to see him grown up so much and think that for the last 13 months he should have been living with us and taking his first steps with us and saying his first words with us.

I need to put on my big girl panties and just look at the pictures and try to be happy.  

Sunny's Bio Grandma Made It

NN arrived in Atlanta yesterday.  She traveled here with a friend of hers.  She'll be staying for a week in a nearby hotel.

Today, they hung out at our house for a while with Guy and Sunny.  Sunny played lots of games with them and showed off his skateboarding.  Then, when I got home from work, we all went out to dinner together.  As a present, I'd made her a small photo album/scrapbook (I scrap, in a very rudimentary picture+caption+sticker way) covering Sunny's time with us and his major milestones.  We went through that book, and also the larger book I made of all his bio family pictures.

This is a really emotional time for Sunny.  He read through a couple of old cards that his Mommy __ sent, and then he had the same reaction he had the day we told him she died.  He... wilted.  Sunny cries frequently, loudly, and often in a very calculated and melodramatic fashion, but when he's really saddest, he doesn't cry at all... instead, you can see all of his energy leave him, and he gets very quiet all of a sudden. It affects me greatly to see him like that.

NN was so supportive.  She hugged him, reassured him that his mommy would always be with him, said she was happy he has the mom and dad he has now, and that his mommy was happy about that too.  But it was OK he was sad... she was sad too.

At the restaurant he was a little bit manic -- definitely more fidgety and argumentative than normal.  Guy took him outside at one point for a walk to try and cool him down a little bit.  He must have been emotionally overstimulated.  I think he'll be calmer through the rest of the visit.

In the car back, he mentioned at one point that he didn't want to hear about women being pregnant, it made him too sad, because his Mommy ___ was pregnant with him, and she also died.  We reassured him again.  NN told him, "She died because of a heart condition."  Later that night, when I put Sunny to bed, I tried to reassure him, in a roundabout way, that he was not responsible in any way for her death.  I have a feeling that that sort of association might be on the edge of his mind.  I told him that Mommy __ was very happy that she was pregnant with him and gave birth to him, and that it was a wonderful thing that happened in her life.

Then Sunny said that one reason he was sad Mommy ___ died was that it meant she wouldn't ever be pregnant again, and that meant he couldn't have more brothers and sisters.  That sounds kind of weird now that I type it up.... but it makes sense according to little kid logic (which is not selfish per se, but definitely self-centered).  Then we talked about brothers and sisters, and Sunny said he hopes that I can get pregnant with a baby, and we can also adopt BB, and then we could adopt his foster cousins.  I reminded him his foster cousins already have parents!  "But what if something happened to their mom and dad?"  I talked him out of that somewhat disturbing train of thought. 

He needed a lot of hugging and kissing goodnight.  There'll definitely be a lot to process over the coming days.

I'm proud of NN for making it here. 

Losing parents through being fostered or adopted is often compared to parental loss via death, with the analysis that loss through death is somehow cleaner, less complicated and less ambiguous.  But after tonight, I'm not sure where I stand on that distinction.

I'm a Legal Mom, and Other Updates

Our adoption finally went through last month. Yes, I'm way behind on the news. Sunny is our legal son!

I'd like to report that some pre-adoption behavior cleared up, but things are pretty much the same. I don't think the adoption ceremony meant that much to him. In the future, it's going to end up figuring a lot more in his thoughts, but he'd already accepted us as his permanent parents a while back.

We happened to draw the oldest, palest, gloomiest judge in Atlanta. He said some nice words, but also gave an odd speech about how hard it was to make a success of yourself in this cold cruel world even if you came from a family with two biological parents and no troubles. My mother cried. I videotaped everything. Sunny loved getting to dress up and shake hands with the judge. It's a striking picture... Sunny in his sharp black dress pants and black dress shirt, the judge in his long black robes.

We have to wait a while for the amended birth certificate, and then get a new social security number. The amended birth certificate is a terrible practice and the source of needless injustice for adoptees. It won't harm Sunny, in practical terms (I have several copies of his Original Birth Certificate, which doesn't list his father's name, and he knows quite well who his biological mother was) but I wish it wasn't the common practice.

In practical terms, now that he's officially adopted we can:

• Allow our friends the neighbors to drive him to the pool or to the movies
• Have a babysitter without making them get a drug test, a physical and fingerprinting
• Sublet our basement suite or use it for charitable purposes like hosting
• Go on trips without getting permission first
• Get him a passport so he can visit Japan or Mexico with us
• If anything horrible happens to us, he won't be taken right back into the foster care system

Another thing we are now allowed to do, which we weren't before, is spank him. And this was something we did try, on the advice of our therapist. It's embarrassing to blog it. But I thought it was worth a try. Her argument was that it shouldn't reactivate trauma for him because we know he wasn't ever physically abused. And it would help him internalize that hitting people is wrong. We tried it several times -- three swats on the butt -- when he went into a violent rage and lashed out. At first, it worked. It completely stopped a rage that would normally last 15-20 minutes and made him enter the remorseful crying stage right away, instead of at the very end when he was exhausted from being held down.

Then spanking stopped working. It just didn't affect him at all anymore. The rages -- two or three times a week, 15-30 minutes in duration -- were unaltered. The last time we spanked, he yelled that he wished he was bigger, because then he would spank dad back... "WITH A PADDLE!". We might have gotten another favorable "short-circuit the rage" effect if we'd stepped up the physical punishment beyond three mild swats, but that's something we had agreed way beforehand we wouldn't do. One try, and then we'd move on. But I can see that's how parental abuse gets started. A little works, but then it stops working. So try a little more... and I don't want to go there.

I don't have much experience with physical punishment. My father used to whack me on the top of the head when I was a kid (and tried to do it into my teens, actually) but it never had the effect he wanted.

Scratch that technique off the list. No more spanking, ever.

We're starting to see a new therapist. I don't want to discount our old one, and we'll continue seeing her irregularly. She's given us some great advice in the past. She's a mature African-American woman with a ton of experience who is incredibly insightful when it comes to a lot of stuff, but we're going to try someone totally opposite: a young white guy who lists foster care experience and has a PsyD instead of an LCSW. We'll see how that works. I'm also setting up an appointment with a psychiatrist (a new one, not the icky stupid one) in August to discuss medication.

One technique we're going to start soon, suggested by a friend of my mother's, is audio/video feedback. This means recording the bad language and hitting he uses during a rage and showing him later, when he's calm.

I'm a bit skeptical about the neurofeedback treatment. It doesn't seem to have altered his rage frequency in any way. But the one thing I do believe it has helped with is his sleeping. Since he started neurofeedback, he hasn't woken us up at 4AM anymore, liked he used to do about once a week. And that's really huge once you start thinking about it. It improves our quality of life and mental state tremendously.

He used to have frequent nightmares about a man chasing him with a chainsaw trying to cut his foot off, but he rarely reports those anymore, and I ask him every morning. I'm sure he still has nightmares, they're just not as strong or frequent, and he's learned to put himself back to sleep after waking up to one.

His foster mom said he used to wake up the whole house at 5AM on Saturday morning, just running out in the hall and screaming and screaming until he made sure all 10+ family members were awake.

I'm not sure if we're going to continue with the full course of neurofeedback, and my high hopes for it have adjusted somewhat. Still, I think the sleep improvement was worth it.

We're arranging a visit with his bio grandma in a few months. She'll be driving over and staying with us for several days. I think this will be a good chance for them to bond a bit more and talk about his maternal family.

She sends us pictures of BB every Wednesday, which is when she has visitation. And BB is doing well, but it's gotten so depressing for me to even look at the pictures. Is this my son, or not? He's going to be walking soon. He's going to be a year old soon and I wasn't there for hardly any of it. It's not important to him that I love him now. It will be in the future, whatever happens, but not now.

In happier news, although it hit a stifling 96 degrees this weekend, Sunny was having the time of his life at the water park. He loves the water so much. He spent almost all this weekend having aquatic fun. The last four days have all been fit-free, and if he makes it to seven he knows he's getting a nice bonus from his sticker chart.

Edited to Add: I reread this post and realized how negative it all is. I should have just done a separate "We did the adoption ceremony and it's great we're officially legally a family." If I put up a picture of the event, you'd see we're all smiling, even the gloomy judge.

Missing Mothers

I had a very nice day today.

Guy took Sunny out to the country to see his mother (Grandma) and her husband (Pawpaw). By the way, I'm not allowed to use the word "stepfather" because Pawpaw is actually a few years younger than Guy. This is a rule Guy always insists on, although I've never seen an age exclusion clause in any dictionary under the word "stepfather". Pawpaw has a shed in back of Grandma's house with a Harley-Davidson and a four-wheeler/ATV, which he let Sunny ride with him... yikes. Pawpaw isn't very mature and I think he only just barely counts as adult supervision. Sunny definitely had a lot of fun, though.

Meanwhile, I had a quiet day with my own mother. We went to a Korean restaurant on Buford Highway for brunch. I bought her a sewing machine for Mother's Day and we did some sewing together at her house, then I took a long nap, which I really needed. We talked a little bit about her mother, my own Nana, who died of emphysema 15 years ago.

Later on, we came back home, and Sunny spent most of the rest of the day playing outside with his friends. His behavior recently has been great. He hasn't had any violent fits or name-calling for almost two weeks now. He's given me several little presents for Mother's Day... what a sweetheart.

We talked to Sunny's foster mom in the morning. She has two new placements, a newborn baby girl and a 10-year-old girl. BB is doing very well and has been working on his crawling technique. Right now he can only crawl to the right, not the left, so if he crawls around the edge of the playpen and hits an obstacle, he yells until someone comes along and moves him back to the right spot so he can start again.

I did feel a little sad that he's growing up so fast. Even if he's placed with us soon, I won't get to carry him around for very long. Just a little sad though... it's a weird kind of limbo, but I'm used to it and I don't dwell on it much.

I steeled myself for the most difficult part of the day, which is talking to Sunny's bio grandma. It's just that she often says things that I don't feel confident about responding to. For example, every time we talk, she tells me how Sunny's mother's last wish is that we would adopt BB. Since we talk to her every one to two weeks I've heard this a lot, and every time I say a few sympathetic words, but really, it's hard to know what to say.

She told me that her day had been very rough... until she talked to Sunny, and then she felt much better.

Her own mother, Sunny's great-grandmother, has dementia and emphysema, and it looks like she's stopped eating and is going to die soon. I know what that's going to be like because that's how my own grandmother went. It's a hard way. Her brother lives close by, but it's going to be her job to handle the end. That sounds awfully familiar. It's so often that the men in a family don't have the strength when it really counts. I hate to be bitter, I've just seen and heard it happen way too many times.

She told me she made a wreath this morning and went to her daughter's grave and sat and talked to her for a long time.

She hasn't been sleeping well because of the stress. She says she won't take any medication, but when she feels really down, she talks to the parish priest.

We did have some lighter moments during the call. She told me all about the kinds of vegetables Sunny's mom would and wouldn't eat, and we compared them to Sunny's own vegetable ranking. She told me how her children always hated to crawl and how they liked to spend only a few weeks crawling before they started walking and running.

Like I posted yesterday, I feel very privileged today. I also feel aware of all the missing mothers and all those missing their mothers.

Very short update on BB

This is going to be very short because there's not much of anything happening.

We're chugging through the paperwork that will keep us up-to-date as a licensed pre-adoptive home, just in case things with BB start moving faster. The part I hate the most is the drug test. The lab closest to me is a dimly lit hole-in-the-wall with a filthy bathroom, and the whole place smells very suspicious.

The foster mom told me that BB has just started learning how to crawl this week. It's nice to hear that, but it also makes me sad that I'm missing all these milestones.

I may try calling BB's dad again and checking in with him. The last time I talked to him was about three weeks ago. Since then, like I'd told him, I mailed him some pictures of BB from the March visit.

The last time we talked, I told him that he should call the worker and set up visits with BB, but the foster mom said she hasn't heard anything at all from him (he has her number, also).

This weekend I had a great talk with our neighbor about Sunny and his issue. They're a really interesting family. The mom works with teenagers in foster care in a group home. Their son is middle-school aged and autistic (Asperger's syndrome). He's not very physically active and doesn't have a lot of friends his own age, but he gets along fine with younger kids and older kids and adults. The neighbors love it when Sunny keeps knocking on their door and bugging their son to come out and play with him.

I had a frank talk with her about the raging, because I know her son is easily upset by strong displays of emotion. She was really sympathetic and offered to help as much as she could. She's not worried about Sunny, since he's always had great behavior around their house and with her son. Her son has never been aggressive, but she has a lot of experience with aggressive acting out at her job, and with raising an adult stepson who has autism plus bipolar.

Back from the visit

I'm still exhausted.

The visit was a lot of fun for Sunny, and mostly fun for my mother and me. Sunny's foster mom organized his birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese, and his grandma and all his foster brothers and sisters and his foster cousins and some of his friends from his old school came over. He received a ridiculous number of presents. Most of them are being shipped back to Atlanta.

BB is doing great. His personality is a lot like Sunny, even at seven months. He likes to cry, he likes to laugh and he likes to jump up and down. I learned how he likes to be held and all about his habits. I know nothing about babies, so this is all important stuff.

The most stressful part was (not) meeting BB's dad. He wanted to meet at the restaurant where he worked at 1pm. I was there at 1pm, he wasn't. I called and he told me he worked a double the night before and had the day off, but couldn't tell me in time.

It seems part of a pattern of general avoidance and shirking. Like not visiting his newborn son for seven months. He could have left a message for me. He could have gone to the meeting even if he wasn't scheduled to work at that time. He could have met later... I floated the idea of meeting him somewhere else shortly before we left, but he couldn't do that either.

Then when we talked on the phone later, he said he wanted to start the procedure to give up custody at his next court date. He wants BB to be placed with us and wants to have an open adoption. His goal is to get a job as a truck driver and move to Atlanta, where he already has a lot of relatives living.

I thanked him and said I just wanted to see BB in a committed home. If he could commit 100% to parenting, that would be great as well, but if not, we would commit to BB and to raising BB and Sunny together. Also, I warned him that open adoption was not a guarantee of anything. It would be a relationship mostly between us at the early stages, but then it would become a relationship between him and BB, and I have no way of predicting what's going to happen 5 or 10 or 15 years in the future. Finally, I told him that the process was going to drag on for a while, so if he wanted BB to be placed with us he would have to be firm about it and definitely show up at all his court dates.

It sounds like I badgered him... it really wasn't that bad. I gave him positive encouragement and said I knew this was a really hard time for him. It's just that he was really very vague, and I was forced to take the lead. I do wish we could have met. I have no idea what he even looks like. It's hard to believe he came to this decision without even meeting us! I did leave him an envelope at his work with some articles on open adoption and some pictures of us.

I felt like I got two body blows over the weekend. The first was when BB's worker told me that even if BB's dad is in full accord and moves quickly, we might get placement at the end of this year. It depends on interstate paperwork more than anything. The second blow was when I realized BB's dad wasn't going to show up to meet me after I'd been psyching myself up for the visit the whole weekend. It's all very stressful, but I just have to keep an even keel. Having my mother there was very helpful.

At least I know BB is in a great place right now.

Sunny and BB's foster mom always fights for what's best for her kids, even when they're not "her" kids. That weekend, she had two children staying with her who weren't even foster kids. She had fostered the 3-year-old from when he was a little baby, but the courts had ruled for reunification. This boy also happens to be Sunny's old buddy and Sunny always talks about him. Sunny was so happy to play with him on this visit... he doesn't know quite how he feels about BB yet, but he's full of love and affection for the 3-year-old. Anyway, after reunification, this boy went to live with his mom in another county, but she still has a lot of problems and has been dropping both of her two younger children off with ex-foster-mom for weeks at a time. For a year. BB's foster mom could easily report her, but she doesn't want to, because then the children might end up at a different foster home and might not receive the best care. The 3-year-old's little sister was staying there too, plus another 3-year-old she's officially fostering. That's a total of four under-fours including BB. And she seems to handle it all effortlessly in a bright, cheerful, spotless house.

The talk with BB's worker (who was Sunny's original worker) was also helpful, despite the body blow. She knew their mother very well. In fact, the workers seemed to be the only people in her life that gave her consistent positive feedback and structure. I'm never going to know exactly why their family was so messed up that they allowed both Sunny and BB to go into foster care. Both BB's worker and foster mom warned me that the grandmother's stories changed with the wind. Race was definitely an issue, but not the only one. Sunny's mom's cousin has children whose fathers are black, and Sunny's grandmother is very close to all of them.

According to the worker, the underlying issue was that Sunny's mother's family was very much like the one ruled by my egomaniac uncle. Family members were played off against each other, constantly measured and found wanting, expelled and embraced in alternating patterns according to the latest power play.

At least Sunny's women maternal relatives tried. Sunny's grandma wasn't very effective at keeping the family together, but she cares deeply. The men are a more disappointing bunch. Educated, able-bodied middle-class white men with more resources than 99% of the people on this planet, but they just can't be bothered to drive ten minutes to visit... or even look at a photo. Sunny's grandmother said she tried to send some pictures of BB to Sunny's grandfather (they divorced a while back) but when he replied, he just accused her of "being morbid". He pays for a lavish funeral for his daughter but won't stretch a finger for his daughter's children.

We spent a lot of time with Sunny's grandma over the weekend. It was a bittersweet for her, especially at Sunny's birthday party. She often cried quietly to the side.

The visit helped me put a lot of the pieces together. I didn't go out investigating or ask probing questions, I just listened to what a lot of different people told me.

BB's father is older and has several other children including a teenager. He's not parenting any of them, but he pays child support on some. No one knows him well, for good or for bad. He doesn't have the kind of criminal record that would bar him from parenting BB, but his position in life isn't very good right now either. When I talked to him, he pinned a lot of his hopes on moving away and becoming a truck driver. I hope things are going to work out for him.

Sunny's mother's cousin, who raised Sunny for at least a year, knew Sunny's father. He has a very bad mark on his record and was also totally incapable of parenting, but other than that, she says he wasn't all that bad, or currently dangerous. If we ever want to contact him, it would probably be easy because you can look him up in a web database... I think that says everything you need to know about the Very Bad Mark. I'm filing this away for future reference. Far future, perhaps when Sunny is 16.

Hopefully BB's dad will follow through. Apparently it's very common for people in these situations, especially men, to simply refuse the responsibility of deciding. Instead of saying "I can't/won't parent", they do nothing at all, and that way let the courts make the decision for them. But I think BB's dad is ready to take at least some responsibility.

I'll probably have another post on open adoption soon... time to try and wind down a bit more from the visit.

Sunny's behavior since the visit has been pretty good considering all the emotions that must have been brought up. Who knows what the fallout is going to be. Right now, he's concentrating mostly on all the loot he picked up from his visit. I think one of the most positive parts was seeing his little 3-year-old buddy. He's been away for almost a year, but everyone is still there... that must mean a lot to him.

ETA: I forgot to include medical stuff amidst the parental info dump. My ankle burn has not healed. It got better, then it got worse, and now it itches horribly. I went to a walk-in clinic today and got a tentative diagnosis of a fungal infection. I'm waiting for lab results, but at least it's probably not MRSA. I got some antibiotic pills and antifungal cream. My medical expenses for this burn are now approaching the triple digits and I'm seriously thinking about calling Sunbeam and threatening to sue unless they give me money for burning me with their stupid heating pad. On the reproductive front, my RE tried to put me on 225cc of Follistim a day for my next IUI, but I just flat-out refused. I'll take my lower chances with a vastly cheaper and less stressful non-medicated cycle.

How the Talk Went

It went sort of as I expected.

He says he's feeling very confused.

I'm going to meet him this weekend at the restaurant where he works to talk some more. He said he wanted to find out more about open adoption, so I printed out some articles I found on the internet.

There's very little that applies specifically to his situation. Most of the stuff that's not for adoptive parents is geared toward young pregnant single mothers. I searched for articles written from a male or African-American perspective and couldn't really find anything.

I don't think he plans on parenting... it's more a case of choosing between relatives. The fact that some of his relatives live in Dekalb might be a major factor.

When I meet him, I'm just going to talk a little bit about ourselves and Sunny and give him some pictures. I'll say again that I can't tell him what the right thing to do is. The only advice I would give him is that whatever he decides for his son should be a situation that's as committed as absolutely possible. If BB starts getting bounced around between different relatives and foster homes and caseworkers, he'll end up with the same psychological scars as Sunny, or even worse.

He did say that he agrees with me that BB and Sunny should have a relationship whether they live together or not.

I'm off to the airport in an hour with Nana and Sunny... I'll update in a few days.

About to Talk to BB's Dad - Any advice?

THE RECAP:

I met Sunny's first worker at Sunny's mother's funeral in August. She became BB (Baby Brother's) worker soon after that. Since the funeral, I have had no contact with her. We've just been waiting, waiting, waiting to hear of any word on BB's case.

BB's grandmother has been very supportive of us adopting BB. She tells me again and again that Mommy ___ wanted BB to go live with his brother and us if anything happened to her. In fact, every time I talk to her on the phone, she tells me the same story about her daughter's dying wish, and starts choking up and crying a bit.

I don't handle conversations like this well... at least I don't think I do. I get very uncomfortable and don't know what to say. This is a big reason I'm bringing my mother with me on this visit. My mother always knows what to say. Her emotional IQ is at supergenius level.

I have been hoping to talk to BB's worker for a while. Everything I hear of the case comes secondhand, from BB's grandmother or foster mom. For example, BB's grandmother told me that BB's dad said that maybe his mother could take care of BB. Then she said she investigated and had a background check run on BB's other grandmother. According to the investigation, she would not be a good candidate, and was neither able nor probably willing, especially since BB's dad already had other kids that he wasn't taking care of, and neither was she.

When Sunny's mom died, BB was in limbo. His dad had the right to raise him, but he equivocated. He didn't come to the funeral and never went to visit his child. His relatives had a say in what would happen to him, so Sunny's grandmother asked that he be placed with Sunny's old foster mom, which is what happened. Sunny's foster mom already had a baby placement, but she was willing to take BB as well because of the special circumstances.

Seven months later, the state is about to file for permanent custody. BB's dad needs to make his decision. Today, he met his child for the first time.

That's what BB's caseworker just told me.

We have no legal standing at this point, of course. But if BB's dad decides not take care of BB, and if his close blood relatives don't make a vigorous case, we're the default.

My position throughout this is to say that yes, of course we want BB. I really had no expectations of adopting a baby going into all this, but we're willing to do it because it would be important to keep Sunny and BB together, and because their mother wanted that.

NOW:

BB's caseworker told me that BB's dad would like to talk to us. He's still making up his mind. She's not happy that it's taken him seven months to get to this point, but also says that he's exhibiting more care and concern than many other parents she's worked with in the system.

I know basically what I'm going to say to him. I'm not going to tell him "this is right" or "this is wrong". He has to make his own decision; we can tell him how we'll act according to that decision. If he signs away his rights and lets us adopt BB, we'd be willing to have the same openness we have now with Sunny's grandmother. Calls/emails/pictures, plus a visit once a year. And if he decides to raise BB, we would hope that he does a similar thing and encourages the brothers to keep in touch and have a relationship even though they live apart.

Sunny's grandmother says he's a marijuana dealer. I know his first name, and his race (black). That's all I know. I'm not going to make any hasty judgments. It's not impossible for people to pull their lives together quickly. But it is kind of improbable.

The worst case is if he decides to raise BB, starts the process... then backs out and stops visiting or won't take care of BB. BB would get shuttled around, leading to the same kind of baseline anxiety that has plagued Sunny's life.

I'll be calling him tonight or tomorrow night. First I'll call BB's foster mom and ask her input, and I'll also talk to Sunny's grandmother again.

My mother, Sunny and I are leaving for his birth state visit in a few days. We might be visiting with BB's dad as well, now.

Got any advice for me? This is kind of nerve-wracking.

Long Weekend Update

Labor Day weekend was jam-packed full of activities. It was very tiring. I know this may disturb Guy to read this, but part of the stress was having his father visiting from out of state.

My own father has mellowed out quite a bit with old age. The last time he tried to physically discipline his adult child (me, shoving) was more than a decade ago. I have a good relationship with him, and he's also great with Sunny.

Guy's father may have gotten worse. I don't know. Guy remembers him as a really great dad. I know for sure that he successfully imparted the value of hard work and staying out of jail. That seems like kind of a low standard, but way too many parents don't make enough effort in that area.

But my father-in-law is always putting people down. He puts down his ex-wife, his daughter and his son. He builds me up, but I'm sure he's putting me down behind my back. In fact, he sort of does it to my face, with back-handed compliments. He told me, "I have to hand it to you, I didn't think you had a lot of maternal instinct but it turns out you're a great mom." If I had even half an ounce of his regard for his judgment, I'd be insulted, but I had no problem ignoring it.

He's always talking about what a loser his son is, and what a great move Guy made marrying me, because I rescued him from being a loser. After you tell a "joke" like this about fifty times, it stops being funny and turns into an unhealthy obsession. I married my husband because I love and respect him, not because I'm some kind of freaking missionary. Then he'll switch to compliment mode and tell Guy how great and successful he is, not like his sister, who's such a loser, and he's so proud of the way Guy turned out and depressed about the way his sister turned out. You see the pattern? Every compliment is an excuse to tear someone else down. He'll talk about how puzzled he is about why his daughter has such low self-esteem -- oh, was it something he did? -- and I have to bite my lips each time. If he was this way when they were growing up, it's a miracle either of them had any self-esteem at all.

Again, I don't know that. I do know his personality changed a lot around the time he was divorced. I'm hoping it changes again soon, because as he is now, he's pretty hard to put up with. And I don't trust him with Sunny. At one point after an outing, he said, "You've got a lot of patience -- I felt like hitting him with a blunt object". Typical back-handed compliment. It didn't come off as funny a la Bernie Mac (by the way, I really liked his show and was sad to hear about his death). It just came off as mean-spirited. Yes, Sunny's attention-seeking and boundary-testing behavior can get annoying, but there are so many more positive things about him. For the first time he meets his grandson, can't he set aside the negative? It's not like Sunny is having screaming fits or setting fires, he's just abnormally persistent when he wants you to play Uno with him.

Luckily, my mom was around most of the weekend as well, which took some of the weight off my shoulders.

Again, I just have to hope that he starts forming a more stable image of other people (and himself) and stops this wearisome good guy/bad guy game he's always playing.

In non-father-in-law news, Sunny is doing well, but he's been wetting himself more during the day. It's never a lot, so it's probably going undetected at school. He says he does it on the way to the bathroom because he needs to go so bad he can't make it all the way to the bathroom. I've reminded him again and again, don't wait until you really have to go, go before... but I think some of it is due to anxiety and is beyond conscious control.

After school, he's getting reminders every 30-60 minutes to "drain his tank". Even if he says he doesn't need to go, I ask him to just go in the bathroom, assume the position and count to ten. Sometimes I hear a flush, so it works. I'm also buying him a vibrating watch from a bedwetting specialty store. I'm going to set it to off every hour as a silent reminder to excuse himself at school. From Googling around it seems daytime wetting is often associated with ADHD... kids get such a tight focus sometimes they forget about their bladders until it's too late.

His behavior has been mixed at school. I talk to his teacher a lot. He does the same thing to her he does to us: follow us around like a shadow and constantly asks for attention. The short attention span and attention seeking are getting him some bad behavior marks, but I'm confident the teacher is holding him to realistic standards. We're working on a 504 plan. As long as he pays attention, his academics are great. He gets concepts more quickly than most of the other kids, and she has to compensate for the fact that he often finishes his work before everyone else.

She says he's popular with the other kids, which I expected. They get exasperated with him sometimes, but really like him because he's outgoing and always has fun ideas to share.

He got a very good behavior mark yesterday AND had dry underpants! Yay! If he gets at least one other good mark, he gets his usual weekend 30-minute video game allowance.

I'm kicking his swimming lessons up to twice a week. This is more for my benefit: I'm going to do some water aerobics and laps while he's taking his lessons. He can take or leave his lesson: what he really loves is playing in the kiddie pool afterwards.

We had another interesting talk about race in the car. It's a subject that hasn't come up for a couple weeks. He was asking about Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln, so they must have been talking about them in school. I told him that Martin Luther King was an important African-American leader, that African-American was kind of like another word for black, and that Sunny was also African-American. He said "No I'm not", but it sounded tentative. I know it's a statement he didn't really believe, he just wanted to hear my reaction. I just said, "Yes you are" and moved on with my explanation.

He wanted to know where they each were killed and why they were killed. I told him that bad people, racists who didn't like black people, killed Martin Luther King. He said, "then I guess they wouldn't like me!" I told him that he didn't have to worry, because we didn't live near any racists, and I'd always keep an eye out for them. If there were racists around us, we'd have to move to get away from them. He asked if we could move back to his home state next to his foster family, because there weren't any racists there either.

I didn't react much to that statement. I know he has a utopian vision of us and his foster family all living together in the same house. Once, they joked about moving to Georgia, and he got very excited and hopeful. He doesn't want to leave us and go back to live with them... he's more ambitious than that! He wants to live with both families at the same time.

And I know saying "there are no racists here" is simplistic, but practically speaking, around where we live, any white people who dislike black people are rather lackadaisical about it. The more energetic ones moved away decades ago.

As I've said before, I don't want to have any long serious talks about race and racism and being multiracial until a) he's familiar with a wide range of African-Americans in real life and has positive images to counteract the negatives b) he feels OK about being black. Not great (that's asking for too much right now) just OK. I think we're progressing fairly well towards both goals.

When we were visiting his foster family after the viewing, one of the older daughters did say one depressing thing, although she told it as kind of a joke. She said that when she was out with Sunny in grocery stores, white people would give her dirty looks and black people would give her the thumbs up.

It's odd for me to put myself in that kind of frame. I'm hyperaware when it comes to race, but I'm also semi-consciously blind to it. If I worried about how people fit me into the racial hierarchy all the time, constantly scanned their faces to see what they thought of me, then I'd go completely nuts. So I really have hardly any conception of how other people view me. I've shut down that part of my social perception. In a crowd, I can't tell when people are staring at me or giving me dirty looks or treating me like the background or viewing me positively, unless they come right up to me and tell me. So I really couldn't tell you what your average Dekalb County-an thinks of me with Sunny. Other than people think he's really cute, of course.

Finally, I'm trying to cut down our grocery bills and cook more often. I already cook a lot, but I buy lunches too much. I signed up for Mealmixer.com and so far it's looking pretty good. With Guy doing shopping and cleaning, I'm spending about 30-40 minutes each morning cooking breakfast for all of us and preparing lunch for Sunny and myself, and then about 30-60 minutes for dinner. It also keeps me on the South Beach diet. This summer I've been eating too many meals at my mother's. She's a ridiculously good cook and makes the most amazing desserts (English style banana custard, French tarte tatins, Indian gulab jaman). I have to cut down on the sugar more and save the desserts for once every few weeks.

Sunny's diet is low-sugar but not low-carb. I cook a regular low-carb meal and give him only a small amount of rice/bread/potatoes. Then when he finishes his meat and veggies, he can eat as much extra rice/bread/potatoes as he wants (which is usually a humongous amount). His special favorite is white rice with soy sauce. And then he gets a dessert of either fruit or plain yogurt with sugarless jam. He eats a bowl of cereal with soy milk for breakfast, plus whatever we eat, plus extra cereal if he's still hungry.

I don't know if this low-sugar diet is really helping with ADHD, but it can't hurt, and I'm sure it's going to help with the dentist bills.

Oh yeah, and politics. I have such a deep lack of interest in hearing about Palin's family. Policy-wise, she's a horrible person. Obama's speech was good, and I need to get back to doing more volunteering and voter registration. That's about it.

Finally, thanks again to all the people who commented and/or offered advice about Sunny's situation and his baby brother. I wish I was better at responding individually to each comment, but I really do appreciate them.

New Info About the Baby

The baby has just been placed with Sunny's foster mom, and is quite healthy and doing great. Sunny's grandmother was the motivation behind this. She trusts the foster mom.

Sunny's foster mom thinks that if everything goes really smoothly, we might be looking at six months to a year before getting placed with Sunny's baby brother. Out-of-state fostering means a lot of paperwork.

And then I also just got secondhand info that the baby's father is not the same as Sunny's! This was contrary to everything I'd been told, and makes the situation a LOT more complicated. The father and his family will have to be tracked down to make sure they can't or won't take custody.

We'll just have to be philosophical and wait it out and work with whatever happens. I'm not going to run out and buy a crib or anything.