Piglet, ice cream treats, and not much else

It took me some time to adjust to it, but Piglet was exactly what I wanted in so many ways… He was happy, snuggly, he made eye contact, he was thriving and sweet…

And he was so nothing that I asked for – partially deaf, possible vision problems, brain shunt and other medical issues, constantly aspirating… and yes… he had a penis, too.

I have been trained for years and years in infant first aid, but I have never had to actually flip a baby over to help them breathe. It was a normal occurrence with Piglet. Sometimes we even had to do the thrusts on his back to get him breathing again. He was a very good experience, and I feel much more capable of actually handling an emergency with an infant if one ever happened.

And just when I got to the point that I told my wife, “You know, I really do love him. It will be hard to say bye to him when the time comes – I think I could keep him.” And she agreed… So exactly that happened. They called us on Wednesday and said they would be taking him home on Thursday. He was thriving and doing well. We made extra sure that the CPS lady went over infant first aid and aspiration with the mother when she left him with her – While he’s not ours to keep, the last thing we wanted was to see his obituary in a few days because Mom didn’t know how to make him breathe. All we can do now is hope that Mom understood and is attentive (no propping bottle for that little one)… and hope that Piglet continues to thrive and improve.

We do still have the 15 year old. We’ve had a lot of problems with him, but maybe we’re starting to make improvement. Between refusal to do any school work and his attitudes and lack of motivation, he’s been more than a handful. But tonight, for the first time, he sat down and did tons of homework. 😮 Was I dreaming? I helped him with his Algebra, and then I gave him ice cream. :p Cheesy, I know, but I had a VERY happy teenager. 😀 He even encouraged my 11 year old to do some homework which is unheard of for her to do voluntarily on a Friday night.

He passed his driving test last weekend, but he doesn’t get his license until at least May 29th… and only then if he’s putting forth effort and passes 9th grade.

As for adoption updates – we are no where closer. We don’t have any prospects and haven’t talked to any potential parents.

For TTC updates… that’s another post. But don’t get too excited, I’m not pregnant or anything fun like that.

How do you know?

Just a funny to lighten up my blog a little.

Some background info – I’m red/green colorblind. I don’t drive a lot at night, but I’m known for stopping at green lights because I want to be safe rather than sorry. It’s also not uncommon to hear, “It’s green,” when I’m driving. I learned to maneuver traffic lights by position rather than color, though I still associate it with color because others use color. For example, “It’s green” means it’s the bottom one lit up, and I can go. “It’s red” means the top is lit, and I need to stop. It doesn’t mean color to me but just a direction as to what I need to do.

So tonight, I was driving. In the dark. As I approached the light on a frontage road, my wife told me, “Oh, that just turned green, you probably can’t make it.” So I sped up, and I made it no problem. If she hadn’t said that, I’d have slowed down to see it and ended up stopping at a red light. But I didn’t have to stop, I got to turn 🙂

When I turned, I saw several lights ahead. My wife, impressed that I’d made that light, said, “Go, they’re all green!”

I looked, and in my confusion, I asked her, “How the hell can you tell they’re all green from way back here?!”

I realized when she answered just how stupid of a question that was. “Uh, because they’re green?”

Court, The arrival of “Piglet”, and other updates

I took the morning of Feb. 6th off because my wife and I had planned to meet our attorney and go prove up the SAPCR for my daughter. That SAPCR was iffy. There might have been a notice issue, and we might not have been able to finalize it. But my attorney is the best. She’s my mentor, and she considers herself my “attorney mom”. She taught me all I know about how to be an attorney, and when I was still practicing, it wasn’t uncommon for me to call her up and say, “Hey, I have this case…” When they called our case, my attorney started the hearing, then she stopped as I saw a lightbulb go off over her head. And she said, “Judge, I’d like you to take judicial notice that we served the other party, but he never filed an answer or made any response to this filing.” Judge looked in his computer, then nonchalantly said, “Taken,” as my heart skipped a beat. That was the little thing that might have stood in our way, and it was gone. We did the prove-up. She asked why I had sole custody, what I wanted the judge to do, etc.

The judge granted everything without a problem, which I expected once he said “taken,” and especially after he heard the reasons why (past kidnapping, abuse, etc). In the end, I am no longer sole managing conservator but my wife and I are joint conservators. She now has the right to do things like get medical care, deal with school, etc. She has rights, and that’s fantastic. Even better, my ex does NOT have rights… except to pay money. He was removed as possessory and has absolutely no visitation or access whatsoever. This is not a bad thing, not if you take into account that he hasn’t seen her or utilized his visitation in 10 years, and she doesn’t know him. It’s also not a bad thing if you take into account that we have all lived in fear that he might sometime show up, request a visitation like he did 10 years ago, and kidnap her like he did 10 years ago. That can’t happen anymore, and that means a lot. It’s 10 years of anxiety settled. Even better, with my wife as joint conservator, if something happened to me, our daughter would stay with her. She won’t be ripped away from the only other parent she knows and given to an abusive stranger. This is also 10 years of anxiety settled. For the first time that I can remember, I feel like my daughter’s actually safe. I knew she was safe with me before, but what if I wasn’t there? What if he got a wild hair up his butt and requested to visit? What if…? I know she’ll be okay.

And just for grins, I got a massive judgment against him for past-due child and medical support. I didn’t raise his child support, but we named an amount of medical going forward that he’s required to pay, and he also has to pay on the judgment, effectively raising his monthly payment by about double. And I re-hired the AG. If they can collect, get his tax return, anything… I would love the extra money.

So I went home happy that things worked out well. I dropped my wife off, changed clothes, and sat on the toilet real quick before I took off to the chiropractor and to work. Inevitably, I’m going to get some important call while paying respects to my porcelain goddess. I usually don’t even take my phone with me, but I was about to run out the door so I had it in my hand. Without thinking, “hey idiot, you’re on the toilet,” I saw it was the CPS agency and answered it. Well, at least it will be a quick call, they just have a question about V or something. Why else would they be calling me?

“We are trying to place a 2 month old caucasian boy. He was born premature at 30 weeks….. Can you take him?” Uhh, no. Initially, I said no. We don’t have a place for him. We turned our baby room into a teen room for V, and I just don’t know if we can work that out right now… And then my wife from the other room inquired so I told the agency I’d call them back, I needed to talk to my wife. I told her what they told me, and she said, “Yeah, I think we can work that out!” My brain wanted to argue and say no way… but I called them back and said yes. He was getting released from the hospital on the 7th, and we would have to go pick him up. Yikes. We didn’t even have a baby room anymore.

So we did a big switcheroo. Our roommate moved in with our daughter, our teen boy moved to the back room, and we will be setting the baby room back up. But of course, with the limited time we had, we didn’t have time to finish all that yet. So the baby didn’t have a crib or anything. I opened the “newborn and premie” box and the “blankets, diapers, and other baby essentials” box. I pulled out basic necessaries – diaper wipes, burp cloth, butt cloth, the handful of premie diapers we had, changing pad, etc. And we left to spend the rest of the day yesterday in the hospital. I dug out the cradle sheet when I got home, and he slept there. I’ve got a lot of work to do in order to get his room turned back into a baby room.

For being a premie, he’s done a lot of growing already. And he’s a piglet. He’s got chubby cheeks, a double chin… And he says “FEED ME NOWWWW! WAAAH” He weighed 7 lbs, 12 ozs yesterday. That’s how much my daughter weighed when she was born. He’s very, very white (whiter than me even), and has red hair. His Mom’s got red hair, too. She’s cute, and I bet he’s going to be cute, too.

He’s got the name I’ve always wanted to give to my son. I almost feel like it’s his now and I can’t use it anymore, but then again, it’s not like I’m making any progress on that anyway.

We don’t know how long he’ll be with us. Mom’s trying to get him back, and she made it very clear when she met us that she intends to get him back “real soon.” If she’s able to follow through, it may not be long at all.

Here’s Piglet.

And for people following our other plights:

Adoption – The adoption agency called and told us about a lady, and they were sending her our information. I’m fairly certain she’s received it and browsed our website, but she has not made contact so I guess that lead died. We’re not talking to anyone else.

TTC – I’m a complete and utter failure. I hate myself, and I hate my body. I hate my girl parts most of all. After 6 months of TTC and then another 3 months of failed fertility treatments, I give up. I can’t get myself pregnant anymore, and I’m done spending time and money trying and then just getting my hopes slashed time and time again. I can’t handle this roller coaster anymore, either. I don’t get my turn. Probably not this lifetime. I’m considering maybe talking to my doctor about birth control or something to reduce my bleeding since it doesn’t seem that I’m going to get pregnant and get to have it taken out any time soon. I may consider other fertility treatments in the future that have a better chance at actually getting me there, but it’s going to take me a hell of a long time to save up for something like that. However, at the rate I’m saving, it’s going to take me 8-10 years to save enough, and my chances of conceiving in 8-10 years even with treatment drop considerably. So I don’t know if it’ll even be worth trying then. I wish I hadn’t spent the time and money having that surgery to hold in a baby that I can’t ever carry. So here’s the universe again mocking me and saying, “hahaha, enjoy your urns because you don’t deserve anything better… and by the way, I’m taking that name you hold precious away from you, too.” Yeah, well, fuck the universe. I really don’t want to foster anymore. I don’t want anyone anymore. I want to go live in seclusion from the rest of the world on my mountain.

The “too gay” foster child we accepted

For those interested in our 15-year-old foster son…

I don’t really have a nickname for him yet, so I’ll just call him V for the purposes of this blog, at least until I find a suitable nickname. When they called and asked to place with us, they told us they couldn’t find him a home because he’s, “too gay.” Probably only 60 days due to a pending adoption, they said, and he didn’t have other issues.

Well let’s see… I think every single bit of that was untrue.

He is 15, but he’ll be 16 within a month. He’s really into cars, and he can’t wait to get his license (though he has to, and he may be waiting a while). He’s also into electronics, particularly cell phones, and we don’t allow anyone under 18 to have cell phones so we had to confiscate those for now. His other interest is what got him labeled “too gay” and disrupted his past adoptions (four of them). And it has absolutely nothing to do with being gay at all. Don’t get me wrong, he IS gay. He’s going to be a really flamboyant gay man one day. One that you just have to laugh at because they’re so darn cute. He’s already there, he’s just a baby one.

The big secret is this… he’s a crossdresser. He’s not trans, he’s a male, and he intends to stay a male. But he likes heals and dresses. He likes makeup, painted nails, wigs. He likes panty hose and girl’s panties. He likes to stuff his dresses to look like boobs.

We said here’s the deal. Our rules are basically that you are respectful, do what you’re told, and clean up after yourself. Other than that, you must obey all other rules and laws. If school says you must wear black pants (not a skirt because you’re male), then you wear black pants at school. If school says no fingernail polish allowed on guys at school, then no nail polish at school. If school says no purple hair, then no purple hair at school. On the other hand, if you want to come home and change into a dress and stilettos after school, more power to you. If you want to paint your nails over the weekend, just remove it by bedtime Sunday night.

He thought he’d died and gone to heaven. He’s ALLOWED to dress like a girl? We will LET him? Yep. He detailed both of our cars, earned some money, and walked to a nearby store where he purchased a dress and high heeled shoes because his last family threw all his “fun stuff” away. He also found a salon where he purchased nail polish. He came up with pantyhose from somewhere, too. I’ve given him a couple things, and he’s very happy.

Apparently it all started when he was around 8. His uncle whom he lived with after being removed from his mother at age 4, put him in the corner in a dress and told him if he wanted to be a sissy, he could dress like one. Weellll, that was probably NOT the most thought-out punishment, nor was it the most appropriate. Over time, he decided it was fun to be in a dress and be a “sissy boy”… and V the crossdresser was born. In CPS care, they’ve tried to tell him that it’s wrong and he can’t do it, but it’s way too ingrained in him now. Even his gay adoptive parents didn’t want him because he likes to crossdress. Actually, they called him, “too gay.” We can tell him he can’t, but it won’t change his interest or his desire.

The universe can tell me I can’t have a baby. It can even mock me and make me absolutely despise that I even WANT to get pregnant and have a baby. It can make me hate my body and make me have terrible, terrible thoughts… but it can’t take that deep-seeded desire out of me. I still want to be pregnant. I still need to have a successful pregnancy. I still want it to be my turn someday. So they aren’t doing anything helpful by denying him his deep-seeded desire for wearing dresses and such.

He’s got Asperger’s. It’s mild perhaps, but they really should tell you that before you accept placement. He doesn’t do his schoolwork, and we’ve had a handful of other issues like not cleaning up after himself, etc.

He’d like to be a hair dresser when he “grows up.”

Oh, and that adoptive placement that they were working on? We don’t know if it ever existed. They were never introduced to him. He was never asked, and he has to approve it also. Supposedly, they were still “getting ready” and doing paperwork, homestudy, training, etc. But now they’ve asked him to attend an adoption event where he will have the opportunity to meet other parents who are looking to adopt. I don’t think that adoption worked out, if it ever existed. I don’t think he’ll be going to a permanent home in a month.

He wants to stay with us, but I’m not sure that’s a good idea for him. He thrives on people, going out, shopping, etc. He will not be happy stuck on a mountain secluded from society. But we’re still trying to help him understand that he needs to keep looking for his forever family without breaking his heart and saying “no.” At the same time, we’re still discussing whether it might be possible to work something out. I just don’t know, but I don’t think it’s in his best interest to come with us when we move. I sincerely hope everything works out the best way possible for him.