elation with a side of sadness

My brother juan came in late saturday night. I am soooo happy to see him! The last time i saw him was 2 1/2 years ago when my grandma died, the last time i saw his wife jenn and their two kids, was 4 1/2 years ago when they came out for christmas. It has been way too long. I have missed them all and i am so thankful that my mom was able to give us all this incredible gift. All of us together and enjoying each other's company.
I love juan, he was one of my best friends growing up. We had great times but we also fought like CRAZY! especially the tween and teen years! It was ridiculous. He makes me laugh. He makes me cry. We share the same memories and to quote from The Big C: i am closest to him (and my brother david) genetically than any other person in the whole world. I love that he can show up and we just pick up like he never left. I love spending this time with my brother and all of my family. We spent the weekend with each other and we all had a great time. We can only take each other in small doses and this weekend was perfect!
Wellllll.....almost perfect. I miss our lovebug! Oh, i am sad my brother and his family will not get to meet our lil' lovebug. I just have this underlying layer of sadness attached to my happiness and elation of this visit with my brother. He would love her. She is amazing and a crack-up! I was looking forward to introducing him to my family and my family is not complete without her.
Maybe next time......

understanding and forgiveness

I am going through a hard time right now, it is hard to be around people. I can't believe that we are going through all this......still. I am just so tired of it. Every time i think we have found our way to the other side of the pain, every time i think we are ready to live our happiness, we hit a brick wall. It is hard to hear the words of sympathy, it is hard to answer the questions. I find myself pulling away, keeping to ourselves. Me, brian and the boys. Just us. Dealing with our loss together but alone.

I don't want to go around family, because they ask the questions i don't want to answer. Over and over and over. I have invited them into our lives, they are my family, they have supported me over the years and they want to help, love and comfort. I am just not in a place to receive it right now. The pain is too raw. There is so much unknown and i have not dealt with the sadness and pain of her not being here yet. I am not ready to answer questions, i really don't have any answers right now.

It has been 8 years since my first miscarriage. Everyone knows my story. Everyone knows about my losses. I have put myself out there, especially with this blog but it is the form of communication that i am most comfortable with. I find that when i write i can say and feel it all. I can get across how i am feeling in a way i can never do when trying to verbally communicate. I am needing some time to figure this out, to know what this all means for my family. How we are going to get through this.

So forgive me if i don't show up to the get together. Forgive me if i am there but not 'present'. Forgive me if i don't answer the questions. Forgive me, i don't have the answers right now. Forgive me, i need some space. I feel the love. I see the sympathy in your eyes. I hear the sadness in your voice. I am sorry you have to go through this too. I wish it didn't have to be this way. I wish i could just have a baby. I wish it was that easy for me. I wish you didn't have to search for the words to comfort me. I wish you didn't have to watch me go through the pain. I just wish....so many wishes.....so few answers.....a lot of understanding needed.

tamale making

I went to my aunt's house yesterday to learn how to make tamales. It was wonderful. A lot of work but a lot of fun. I don't have a great memory but there are bits and pieces of things i remember from my childhood, and one of the things i remember is my grandma's kitchen on tamale making days. Piles and piles of tamales, hojas, bowls of masa and a house full of family. I remember the smell. The delicious smell of corn masa and chile. I remember the laughter and stories. I remember eating the tamales, warm and fresh from the steaming pile, piled high by the working hands of my aunts and grandma.
I am so thankful for the invitation to learn how to make these most treasured and traditional tamales. Learning the way my Grandma made tamales. It is something that, as a daughter of a son, i don't have the opportunity to learn from my parent. It is something that could have been lost to me and my family. It is a wonderful gift that my aunt betty gave to me. I am thankful.
We had so much fun. The laughter and stories continued, this time in a different kitchen but with the same spirit and love. My grandma was not there physically but she was most definitely there. She was present in our hearts and her legacy lives on in her daughter and granddaughters. What a wonderful day.
I am ready to teach my brothers and sister. I will share my grandma's tamales with them and we will all continue to pass on her traditions.

It's all i can do

I get into these situations and i don't know how to handle them. I don't know who to scream at. I don't know who to tell. So i write. Lovebug's mom picked her up about 3:30 and is planning on heading to grand junction for the summer. She promises to bring her back in august for school. I don't believe her. I am still angry with social services. I recentley received a survey from the colorado department of human services asking why we have decided not to be foster parents.(we are no longer foster parents, we have been switched to kinship care since we got the boys). I have filled out the form and i am attaching a letter. It's all i can do. As a foster parent we have no say, we have no rights and we deal with the after effects of a system that is broken and not working....anyway back to the letter. Here it is:


I am writing this as a former foster parent and a current kinship parent. We were foster parents for the county of Boulder. We have dealt with (caseworkers name), she was our foster daughter’s caseworker and her supervisor (supervisor's name). We had a little girl in our care for a year and 4 months when she went home to her bio mother in February of 2010. We were not comfortable with her going home but obviously we had no control. We met with the little girl and bio mother 2 months after she went home, at that time the bio mom thought she might decide to let the girl come back to live with us. She was given a month to decide and decided to keep her. The case was kept open. I am not exactly sure the reason they kept the case open. I do know that mom was expecting a baby in November. During this time, we had random visits with the little girl, about once a month. The visits started to increase in about September and October. We started getting the little girl every other weekend, then every weekend and then the visits would extend past the weekend and we would have her for a week. The visits were being set up through social services at first but they did not continue to stay involved in the arrangement of visits, but the case was still open. The visits were not consistent. The bio mother continued to extend the visits past the set amount of time. We continued to communicate with the caseworker and voiced our concerns with the visits, mom not willing to communicate with us and my ‘gut feeling’ that something was wrong. After the first of the year(2011), bio mom started to leave her with us for a week and then 2 weeks at a time. She then left her with us on March 4 and left her with us for over 3 months. She has called and communicated with us about every 2 weeks. She kept extending the amount of time she needed us to watch the little girl until it turned into a situation where she wanted to leave her with us.
Social services has been involved this whole time up until 2 weeks ago when they said they were going to close the case. This case has been open for 2 years and 10 months. Social services has decided to close this case now. RIGHT NOW! Not anytime during this last year when all seemed fine with mom and the kids but now when it all seems to be falling apart. Now, when bio mom needs the most help. She was diagnosed with post-partum depression and depression in March. Her boyfriend of several years, and father of her other two children, broke up with her. The boyfriend refuses to let her see her other two children and has told her he has moved to another state. She had to move out of her home she had with him for the last 2 years and is living with her mom’s old boyfriend. A home that she has been told she now has 4 days to move out of, forcing her to move to Grand Junction with the only family member she speaks to. This family member is her sister who’s 1 year old little girl just died in February and the girl’s father is facing criminal charges for her death. She has NO support! The only support she had is gone: her boyfriend, his family, social services, her kids. Oh wait, she does have support. Her 3 year old daughter. And she is taking off with her to Grand Junction to live with her sister.
This bio mom had decided to leave this little girl with us and was willing to sign some sort of papers to give us custody, guardianship…something. Shortly after deciding this social services decided they were done with this case. They decided it was time to close the case and leave us to figure out how to get papers signed. We were told we had to do this on our own and bio mom needed to figure it out with legal services.
I am very angry and upset with the way this case has been handled. I am so incredibly sad for this little girl who will not have anyone looking out for her safety. We were all she had and now she is moving 5 hours away, too far for mom to call and ask us to come pick up this little girl because she is overwhelmed. Something she is used to doing. I cannot believe that social services has decided to close this case when there is not stability. I cannot believe this case was even allowed to be closed with so many unanswered questions. Bio mom is mentally unstable, living with friends, has no car to get around and has no room, clothes, car seat or necessities for this little girl; yet social services decided to close this case and leave this little girl in limbo.
My husband and I wanted to do foster care once our adoption of our nephews was finalized. We have a lot more to give to children. We wanted to continue to make a difference in children’s lives. I don’t see us being able to continue with foster care at this point. We are disheartened. We are frustrated and cannot stand to see another child and their family so easily written off by a system that is supposed to be there to help these people in need. This bio mom and child both need support and social services made the decision to close the case. It is an uncaring, thoughtless and absolutely horrendous decision. I am appalled. I do not know the reasoning. We are only foster parents and we do not get that sort of information. We are not allowed answers and we are not given the respect of explanations.
These are the reasons we will not be returning to the foster care system as foster parents.

A LOT of caps....it's THAT kind of post!

Is it a coincidence that social services closed lovebug's case last friday and NOW mom has decided to take off to grand junction with lovebug for the summer? I think NOT! She has no reason to stay here now, she has no one watching her and she has no one to answer to, she has NO support.
You would never guess from this post but I am surprisingly calm right now. Biomom claims to want lovebug for the summer and then would like to bring her back to us for the school year. That's a BIG 'we'll see'. She has not followed through with anything else she has said so i seriously don't believe this one! I am so sad but I understand. I DON'T KNOW HOW. I empathize. I DON'T KNOW HOW. I am not angry with her. I DON'T KNOW HOW. I just know that it takes a VERY strong, well-supported and clear-minded person to be able to give their child up, to hand over custody.(or a parent who has no connection to their child) Biomom is NONE of these things. She is alone. She has no support. She loves lovebug. She really does. I honestly don't believe lovebug will be in any physical danger. I honestly believe that biomom will keep lovebug safe. It won't be MY safe, but i do believe she will be safe. They are going to be staying with biomom's sister. They will have some support. Biomom just doesn't have it in her to leave lovebug.
I will tell you who i AM angry with: social services
I can't believe they closed the case. RIGHT when biomom was close to making a decision. RIGHT when biomom needed the most support. RIGHT when lovebug was so close to getting some stability. They keep this f$&*ing case open for close to 3 years and NOW they decide they HAVE to close? REALLY?!?! Mom is at her most vulnerable. She lost her boyfriend. She lost her home. She lost her kids(he refuses to let her see them). She doesn't speak to most of her family, including her mom. She is diagnosed depressed. The case has been open 2 years 10 months but NOW is the time to close the case. Not 1 year ago when mom had lovebug 3 months and everything was fine. Not 9 months ago when mom had lovebug 6 months and all was fine. Not 6 months ago when mom had her baby and everything was fine. NOOOO! They waited till ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING had fallen apart in biomom's life and THEN they decided, this is the moment we NEED to close the case. SERIOUSLY?!?!? I am so incredibly angry with them for the way this case has been handled. I am disgusted that somehow OUR little girl is the one left to deal with the consequences. They will move on to the next case, another kid, another family. THEY will not be losing sleep at night wondering how lovebug is doing. THEIR job is done.
I know social services CLAIMS to be there to protect the rights of children. THEY ARE NOT! I cannot tell you how many caseworkers/social services professionals who have told me what a strange and messed up case we have had with lovebug. They just can't believe the amount of time it has taken. They cannot believe the back and forth we have had to deal with. I am tired. I am DONE with social services. I don't want to do this again. I'm DONE jumping through hoops for an agency who treats us like shit and then leaves us to pick up the pieces of their case. Not again. I cannot wait till the boy's adoption goes through and we can JUST BE DONE.