Christmas

Wow! What a week it's been. I have to back up and start with the Friday before Christmas. I took Taylor to the doctor Friday morning for his shots, but I asked the doc to see if there wasn't something they could give Taylor because he had really been coughing for like 3 days. I am not kidding, once she listened to him breath, she had another doctor and 2 nurses in the room. They took him to xray to see if he had pneumonia, which he did not, then tested him for RSV, which he did have. It's a respiratoty virus. His oxygen level was at 80%. It should be 95 or above. They sent him immediately to the hospital, where he was taken straight up to a room and put on oxygen. He got breathing treatments every 4 hours, and had several fevers over the 4 days he was there. Scared us to death. But our prayers were answered in 2 ways: 1. He got better! 2. He got to come home Christmas Eve. I was so upset that our first christmas with the boys was going to be messed up, but it all worked out. Ken and his parents stayed with Taylor at the hospital Christmas Eve day until he came home in the early evening. Meanwhile, James, Nathanael and I baked cookies for santa, and had your basic hyper-active day of toddler play. They needed lots of mommy lovin' since they had stayed with their grandparents the 3 days before while Ken and I stayed with Taylor. Here's a picture of our little man.Christmas was GREAT! The boys got power wheels. Here are a few pictures of the big day:

Unfortunately, we did not get to go to Charleston for Christmas because Taylor can't travel yet. But mom and Jim came down, and my aunts and uncles were so great to send great presents. The picture above is James "surprising" us from inside his new play tent/tunnel/basketball hoop = bigger than the living room adventure center from Aunt Kathy.

TPR and Granny's downfall

We got some good news on Wednesday. The boys' social worker called and said that they had court that day. Social Services asked the judge to relieve them of their duty of trying to reunify the boys with their biological parents due to non-compliance of the parents, and the judge said yes! So on January 9th, they go to court to change the boys' "plan" from reunification, to adoption. This starts the TPR (termination of parental rights) process. The TPR process takes many months though. She said we are probably looking at the end of May. The parents have to be served with papers to notify them of the TPR, and since the parents don't have an address, it will be hard to serve them with papers. If that is the case, social services is required to post it in the legal section of the newspaper and they have a time period (I think 90 days) to respond. Once TPR happens, the Social Worker said the adoption can happen within a month, so that is good. She said the only thing that could possibly reverse the TPR is if the parents do a total turnaround, get into a grug rehab program, get a job and a place to live. Doubtful that would happen by May.

So Granny, with whom we have had a great relationship, has ticked us off. We were making arrangements for a Christmas visit. The social worker said Granny would like it if we dropped the boys off at Aunt Beth's house for 4 hours. We were fine with that, as Granny has been realy easy to work with and get along with. So I called Granny to confirm. She told me that during those 4 hours, she was going to take the boys' to their aunt Robin's to see her and exchange gifts with the other great-grandma. Oh...H--L NO! She had already told the Social Worker that the parents had been hanging around Robin's house. I told Granny I was not comfortable with that at all. She said "I promise I won't anyone take them." I told her that I did not want the boys to even see the parents - one, because it will totally mess them up, and two, the court order says NO visitation, especially not unsupervised! I called the Social Worker is a tizzy. She was so mad at granny for lying to her. She said there was no way, and that if she tries to pull anything like that, she will take away granny's unsupervised visitation. She said she was going to call granny and tell her she can NOT do that. When we get to aunt Beth's house, I am going in and looking in all the rooms, bathrooms, and closets to make sure the parents are not hiding anywhere, and then Ken and I will park our car across the end of the driveway so they cannot leave. Granny will soon learn that we are not parents that she should tick off if she still wants a relationship with the boys. The social worker has already warned her about losing her visits, and I won't be unhappy if she does. I wanted to boys to be able to keep a relationship with her, but not if it's constant drama.

5 months

I can hardly believe Taylor turned 5 months today. It hardly seems possible! He's a whopping 14 1/2 pounds. He still wears mostly 0-3 month clothes, except for his sleepers...he's too long for them. His head and neck are definately strong, and he enjoys tummy time, but he hasn't rolled over. He was evaluated by the Children's Developmental Serivces, last week, and his test scores came out that he is at 4 months, so he's on track! He giggles all the time, I mean, he just starts laughing and doesn't stop. It's hilarious!

Last night we got a phone call from the boys' aunt (the one who hooked us up with them in the first place) and told us that the social worker had called the great-grandmother (so this is 3rd hand information) and told her that Social Services was going to request that the judge dismiss Social Services from having to continue to attempt reunification, and to start the process of terminating parental rights. If all that's true, and if the judge says yes, that's great for us. It would still be AT LEAST 6 months down the road (3 months for the TPR and 3 months before we could legally adopt), but it would be nice to have some sense of security about the boys.

TGIF

Farrell Cats

The boys social worker came to the house along with 2 other workers to evaluate Nathanael and Taylor for early intervention services. Neither of them are eligible because neither of them have any developmental delay - which of course is great.

But Nathanael's behavioral problems are really an issue. The three women told me that he really needed mental health play therapy, NOT developmental play therapy like James had. James thrived from it, and doesn't even qualify for it anymore. Problem is...they don't know of any psychologists who work with kids under 3. The social worker says his anger and rebellion is probably mainly related to the structure we are setting.

She described James and Nathanael as "farrell cats that we are now trying to domesticate". That is the best way to describe it I think. I really don't know how they survived. But I'm so glad they did. Just over the past few weeks, I've really seen James mature and 'settle' in with us a little better. And even though Nathanael is still our "troubled child", he is clearly better than when he came. Taylor - well, he's just a perfect, happy little boy. We really are lucky.

The most exciting things in their lives right now are: "Santa Clause is coming to town" and their "big boy" beds.

Pictures

James and Nathanael making cookies
James' first haricut! (with us)
Ken cracks Taylor up
Nathanael - post cooking, trying to clean
Papap feeding the boys peanuts