and counting. Aug 12th marked 6 months of having our two foster daughters with us. When I look back it seems not that long ago we received the call to pick up G from another foster home and her brand new baby sister C from the hospital.
It has certainly been quite a journey...here's a very brief {or not so brief} recap.
Two babies with no manuals. So we had a three week crasher course with our previous foster daughters, two toddlers. But we truly didn't expect that just four days later we'd have a 17 month old and a brand new baby. Most people get 9 months to prepare for one and we had 24 hours to prepare for two!
What an amazing group of friends and family we have. People blessed us with so many of our immediate needs from clothes, to cribs, to meals provided for two full weeks!!! Oh, how I understand the need for meals now - thank you Long Beach Grace Brethren, John and Alicia for facilitating that for us. We don't attend that church, we just have some wonderful friends that attend there and yet perfect strangers put out all that time and effort to bless us with meals.
Soon after the arrival of our bundles of joy, we started in on what my sister started coining "the plagues". It seemed that one thing after the next kept occurring. Mind you I was still working full time, traveling for Mrs. Int'l and trying to be a domestic goddess {note the word trying}. Praise God for Greg's flexible job and for the fact I have the most wonderful hubby in the world. Without going into too much detail he became mister mom for the first three months and had to go to battle with much of the following that occurred.
Overcoming Lice. Yep that's right folks. Not only did we become parents overnight but we also were immediately introduced to what I believe is one of the nastiest little {no pun intended} childhood bug. Little did we know the oldest was a card carrying member until two weeks after we had her and noticed the proverbial "itch". Praise God for NIX and RID and all the other products out there to defeat the little buggers. And now we know what the term "nit picking" is all about ;-)
Scabies. Oh yes, you've read correctly. Just as the Lice retreated the scabies crept in...we noticed these fabulous little buggies when putting on her shoes. Since I was already a freak about every thing being sanitized after the Lice incident we fortunately didn't have to worry about the spread of scabies and were able to treat that overnight.
Bronchitis, Upper Respiratory tract infections,RSV, Asthma & ear infections. Talk about just getting every childhood disease out of the way. At this point Greg and I felt we'd experienced more stuff than our counter parts with grown children. G got Bronchitis and an Upper Respiratory tract infection which of course spread it's way to every member of our family including the baby...which hers led to a case of RSV. Just when we were pulling a solid six hours of sleep a night with her we had to start waking her up for two different inhalers every four hours.
But even with all these unpleasantness's, I can honestly say, we have enjoyed every moment {ok maybe not when we found out about the lice} with these two precious ones. From G learing so many new words and pulling her hysterical facial expressions when she's excited about things to little C's every first. First smile, first coo, first time rolling over, first time sitting up, first solid food feeding, first haircut.
How humbling to think God gave us the responsibility to take care of his two little daughters even if it might only be for a short while...and to see all the things I've been able to experience with them that their family has missed out on sharing.
Which leads me to the end of reminiscing on our journey and looking forward to the future. I don't know what the future holds in regards to these two babies. I sometimes wish I could just get a glimpse from God to know if they'll be mine forever or if someday in the near future I'll be handing them back to their bio mom. I'm forever asked "won't that be tough?, how are you going to do that?" and I guess my only answer is "Yeah it will break my heart and I don't know how I'll do it". But that's just it...I won't be able to do it on my own but I do know that God is going to help us through whatever ends up playing out. I've entrusted my heart to him and I have to believe he loves me enough to protect my heart no matter what the outcome.
This Oct. will be a court preceding determining the next step in the future of our girls. Please be keeping our family in your prayers. How to pray? That God purely would protect them, no matter where they end up for life. Would we want them to be ours - yes. Do we want their family to get better and be whole again? - yes. I have to trust that God's will and his eternal perspective on things will be better than any will I could try and force on the issue... so for now {and hopefully always, although it's daily practice for me} I'm trusting Him!
