Parent Practice

Today was superbusy! I spent the afternoon doing respite care for a new adoptive mother. She needed a little bit of babysitting to attend a special event. My husband had to work the whole day and couldn't be around.

During the morning I ran some errands, cleaned the house and drafted my mother. The boy is 18 months old and I needed backup. I actually have some experience with toddlers -- in fact, I spent a summer when I was young as an au pair for a toddler -- but at 18 months, they're more like a very heavy baby than a toddler, and the task seemed intimidating.

My mother and I had an amusing conversation while installing electrical outlet protectors.

- "When I was taking care of you we never bothered with anything like this! You never stuck anything in an outlet."
- "Actually mom, I stuck a fork in an outlet once. To see what would happen. It was a long time ago but I remember it quite vividly because it was so painful."
- "What?!?! You never told me! Was this in America?"
- "Yep."
- "Then you must have been six or seven. By that age there's no device guaranteed to protect children from the consequences of their own stupidity!"
- "True."

The baby was cute as a button. He napped, woke up, ate his meal and had a diaper change, and was very sad. He had such a worried expression on his little face and kept making hiccupy sobs. I tried everything I could. We played with his toys, read his books and rocked him and so on. Then I noticed he was watching cars out the window. I took him outside, sat him on my lap on the front doorstep and gave him a flower to play with while he watched cars and buses go by. This really cheered him up! Then I watered some plants with him and sat on the doorstep some more. When his mother drove up, he jumped into her arms and turned into the happiest baby in the world, laughing and talking up a storm.

There's something going down right now, an external thing that is affecting our matching process. Even though I keep this blog anonymous I don't feel free to talk about it. It's negative. However it's not causing me huge anxiety because I'm developing multiple avenues of information on the situation. Yesterday I was very confused and angry but today I feel more confident. I hate to get all cloak and dagger like this, but maybe I can explain some more of it in a few weeks. I've semi-evangelized foster care adoption in this blog and on some forums... but I love to be honest, and I have to say it can be exhausting, frustrating and just plain bizarre.