Snakes and Snails and Puppy Dog's Tails

Bella was having supervised, hour long visits with her paternal grandma. These started only after court a couple of weeks ago. She has never lived with this grandma but she has stayed overnight with her. She did not have any unsupervised visits or overnight stays in paternal grandma's home before being moved into her home permanently.

I was allowed to take Bella to her paternal grandma's residence. It was substandard, but that is related to poverty and ignorance, not neglect or abuse. This woman obviously loves Bella and has lived in the same location, providing stability and tons and TONS of non healthy food if not a proper education or clothes to her other two grandchildren, so at least there is that.

As soon as we arrived (the worker was there as well) the paternal grandma let me know that she had "turned me in" for forcing Bella to have a snake crawl up her arm. I wanted to say slither, not crawl, but thought it best not to aggravate the situation. Especially because I knew that Bella had told her about digging for earth worms and playing with them. Despite my repeated attempts to correct her, she kept calling the earthworms snakes. She was in no way, shape, form or fashion forced to play with worms or snakes. She actually came inside with a worm in her palm saying "Look Mama!" and I made the kids go outside and release the poor defenseless earthworms. Later I found one baked onto the side of the momvan. RIP Herman the Worman.

I've encountered birth relatives that were anti-CPS but this was my first IRL experience with a birth relative that was anti-foster parent. The paternal grandma said she was just beside herself with worry about what horrible situation Bella was going through in a foster home. "Foster Home" was said with disgust. Picture her spitting as she said it. Only that would require too much effort so she sat on her fat ass on her lone couch trying to catch her breath from walking the two steps from the front door to the only furniture in the living room. Yes, that was snarky as hell and completely immature and uncalled for. Maybe I'll grow up some day.

She was livid that I had Bella's ratty ass hair trimmed. I got permission from the SW. I kept the email as proof. When I brought up the fact that Bella said nobody had ever combed her hair before, Paternal Grandma replied that Bella was still a baby and didn't need her hair brushed, besides she said, Bella didn't like it. I understand being upset that you missed out on your kids first hair cut, but she is about to turn 4, they had plenty of time to save up the money for a brush & comb. The bio mom was the one most pissed off, the paternal grandma said, yet her rights were terminated years ago. YEARS AGO. She ain't got no say in the matter. 'Sides, she gone 'way in the pen down south fo' 'bout a decade or mo'. How she expects to be able to take her kid that she don't even have rights to anymore for her first hair cut is beyond me. She thank she takin the chile to get her ears pierced to. She crazy. Bio Mama ain't the only one in da family dat ain't playin' wif a full deck, if ya know what I mean an all.

I'll stop being mean and patronizing in a minute. Maybe. Okay, probably not.

So I offered Paternal Grandma a car seat for Bella. She said Bella was too big for a car seat, she can ride in "Bubba's lap". I had her in a 5 point harness car seat ands he fit just fine. Hell, my 5 about to be 6 year old is still in a 5pt safety seat. But I also bought a booster seat (out of pocket of course because the only board payment I received was a partial payment less than $200) because I thought Paternal Grandma might use that more often and I want Bella to be safe.

Pat G'ma also stated that it was my responsibility to see to it that Bella got all her dental needs taken care of before she came there. She actually said "I ain't takin' her to no dentist." I had her less than 2 months and if she didn't have so many cavities, we would have been able to get them all taken care of, but the dentist would only do one filling at a time and that coupled with the cleaning and her other medical appointments took up the 7 1/2 weeks she was here.

She also won't continue taking her to gymnastics (or preschool) even though I have prepaid. I let her know about the FREE events Bella was enrolled in at the library, but she wasn't interested in going to that either. I gave her a list of the local pool, rec center playground, foodbanks, headstart, and other income based services, and she threw it all in the trash right in front of me. Kind of like giving me the finger only it hurt worse because all of Bella's pictures from being with us were in the stack of papers too. Paternal Grandma was irritated that I had taken Bella camping, riding on a boat, on a four wheeler, swimming, etc without her consent. Instead of being excited for Bella at having had such fun experiences, she was mad at me for being a lowly evil foster parent who provided the opportunities for Bella to learn and grow and have fun.

And then Bella took out her hairbow and said "Hang on, I'm going to give this to Mama." For the record, I have never asked her to call me mama, she just did it from the beginning. Maybe because the other kids were calling me mama, but I told her my first name all the time. All hell broke loose though when she called me Mama in front of the Paternal Grandma. All. Hell.

So we left and I cried. On the way there Bella asked "You're my Mama now, right?" and it made me feel like she was being abandond yet again by another mother figure. I told her from the beginning that she would be going back home to her grandma, I just thought it would be the Maternal Grandma. Once I found out she would be going to the Paternal Grandma, we started talking about and preparing for that. But still, it broke my heart to hear her be so confused and to possibly think that her new Mama was no longer going to be in her life. And I'm not. And that makes me sad.

The Daughter is sad too. I expected that though. She wants to know if I can handle all the kids in the world because she wants them to come live here so she'll have someone to play with. She will even share her toys. I think we're gonna need a bigger house.

We called The Cousin and he came over to play for a while, maybe an hour, before his Nana called him home. That made The Daughter cry all over again. She didn't want to sleep in her room tonight. The whole house feels empty. It is certainly quieter without Bella. Nobody is tattling. Nobody is fighting. Nobody is tearing things apart. Nobody is laughing.