Loving the feedback from the
poll. Some of the comments are hilarious. I only wish I knew who each person was!
I feel that I should clarify some things though.
There won't be any truly new foster care stories. Or at least I don't expect any.
TheDaughter has moved into what was the Teenager Room, so I no longer have room for teens. BabyBoy is in what was TheDaughter's room and he needs to be in a room by himself. So that leaves an open baby bed in BabyGirl's room, but I don't foresee it ever being utilized (the newest sibling is in foster care in another county, birth parents were following case plan but kept failing drug test, now not following case plan, baby probably being adopted by foster family in that county).
Jenny went home August 2nd of 2010 and I haven't had a placement since then. I've only been called a few times (maybe 3) for placements. One of those calls was to take Shadow back. I think I blogged about it. Another call was to take a teen who cuts (among other behaviors, but the cutting is a deal breaker for me at this time). I can't specifically recall if there was a third call or not. They call me for the kids that nobody else will take, yet they say the reason they don't call me for the easier foster placements is because I have my hands full with my three kids. But they call with the hard kids and say how wonderful I am with kids like that and beg me to take the placement. Well, if I have my hands too full to take a easy/normal placement then how in the hell do they think I can take a challenging placement!?!
I have to admit that not having CPS in my life on a daily basis sure has eliminated a ton of stress.
In the future if I am able to move into or build a larger house, then I would LOVE to take teen kids again. I prefer fostering teenagers.
Meanwhile, without any new foster care stories, this is just a typical mommy blog. Well, if your typical mommy blogger had adopted kids. So if I go about writing and posting pictures of my kids, and someone were to read one of the old foster care stories from back when I was being more anonymous, then it wouldn't take much effort to figure out who we are, who the foster kids were, etc. I was very specific with case details because I didn't post location or names or pictures. So the two things don't coexist very well.
If I leave the old stuff here and move the new stuff to a new blog, then everyone will just link to the new one and both blogs will be linked anyway.
If I delete all the old foster care stuff, then it makes the information inaccessible to newbies who really need to read it. If I could have read stories like this before we started fostering, maybe I wouldn't have been so naive. And good golly was I naive. I suppose putting the info behind a password protected blog does the same thing ... make it inaccessible to people who need the information.
This blog name though attracts the haters like stink on shit, which I knew to expect, but is not pleasant to say the least.
Anyway, this clarification may change some of your feedback since many of you prefer only foster care stories.
