2016

Ok.. so things did get busy, but not in the ways we expected.. lol.. so I haven't had much chance too keep things updated.
Firstly, my computer had some issues.. it was mostly ok, except every time I'd open my browser and go online, everything would freeze up and crash..  which eventually meant switching browsers and a bunch of other craziness.. but I finally more or less have it sorted and behaving again :)
This made things a bit hard at times. We did get our homestudy completed, submitted and approved!!! We are home study approved (up to 2 children, ages 4 and under) as of early January 2016!! We are so happy about that. And we are really hoping we can find a match soon. We are still working independently, though we might later switch to an agency assist.
We have our profile booklets completed and one has been sent off for review. Will see if our consultants think we need to make any changes to it, but we have it done :)
We also had a bunch of craziness happen with our foster situation.  We still have the toddler, now 3, E. She is doing great. She had some serious developmental delays, SPD and probable autism and she was pretty much non verbal. We got her into an early intervention program at the local school and she has made huge improvements. She's now talking! She's still below where she should be, but it's so wonderful! She's about a year behind now verbally, but she's learning and using new words every day. We're now in month 8 with her and still no indication of when she will be going back. We know she will be, just not when.. at this point we are hoping to keep her through the school year so she can maintain her progress. Still need to work on potty training :) But she's doing so much better. We haven't had the screaming tantrums in absolute ages.
One of the things that made a big difference for her was that in mid November we had MK and R (now 8 and 6) return to our care, so now she has a big brother and sister closer to her age to play with her and encourage her. We are not sure what is going to be going on with those two. They had spent 6 months back on trial placement with their bio mom. In September we were contacted about the possibility of having them come back to us, but then they were placed with their great grandparents instead. They stayed with them for about 2 months, but their great grandparents just couldn't keep up with the kids, so we were contacted in November about them again. Of course we said yes and took them back. Sadly, the kids have some behavioral issues that they didn't have a year ago, but we are working on them with them and progress is slowly being made.
So we currently have a full house with 3 youngsters. My step daughter M decided that she wanted to finish out her schooling by doing homeschooling, so she is now doing that. At 17 she's capable of deciding and being responsible enough to make that decision, and it frees her up to help her older sister, B2 with her new baby. That's right, we now have 3 granddaughters as well. G is now 8, I is about 19 months, and ID was born last October, so when we do adopt, there will be lots of niblings for them. B2 also has 2 older step daughters, ages 7 and 11, so we've a large groups of niblings. (Nibling is an older term that T discovered. It refers to cousins, friends, nieces/nephews and other related individuals of a similar age. We like the term and it serves us well.)
So that's where we are. We are hoping to find an adoptive match soon, but until then, we continue to foster. We would love to adopt our fosterlings, but it doesn't seem to be their plan, so we search elsewhere. If you know of anyone looking to place a child, newborn or toddler, please let them know about us :) We're not concerned about ethnicity or gender and are willing to discuss health issues, potential or otherwise. And we're willing to work on finding a level of openness that everyone is comfortable with.
Thanks so much! 

We have a Placement!!

Ok, you might be able to tell, we're excited. After having our license for a month, and waiting, and waiting for a placement, Thursday I had a doctor's appointment in town (which was also, thankfully, in the midst of a break in the rain and storms we've been having.. early Alaskan hurricanes going on the past month..) and as soon as I walked in the door, there was a phone call from OCS calling to see if we would be available to take placement of a 3 year old girl. So, of course, I said yes and I went in Friday at noon to pick her up. We don't have a whole lot of information on her just yet. She is 3.5 years old and she has a younger sister and older brother also in foster care. They have been in foster care since last Monday and while at their emergency intake placement, she had been bullying her younger sister, so it was decided to separate her for the time being. (Of course, all new foster homes are limited to a maximum of 2 children in care at a time for their first year anyway, so there was no way we could have taken all 3 regardless..) She is very bright, already knows her letters and numbers and colors, full of energy.. of course, she's 3 so the word "no" is a favorite and we are having the usual "i'm tired but not going to take a nap/go to bed if i can avoid it" melt downs as we try to establish a schedule and all, but over all, the last 2 days have gone very well and we are excited to have her here. We don't know yet if this will be a short term or a long term placement. They are still trying to get in touch with family members to see if any of them could take her and/or any of her siblings. If so, she could go with them at any time. So we are trying not to get too attached or make any long term plans with her just yet, but it's so very hard.. lol.. and we're kinda doing it anyway :)

Toddler invasion week!

This week we have the grand daughter here all week. Her dad is up at work on the slope (so is my hubby...) and her mom has gone back down to Washington to get some more of their stuff and their car. So G has been left with us (myself and the 2 younger steps daughters, B2 and M) for about a week. Mommy left yesterday, but so far, things are going pretty well. This is the longest she's been away from mommy ever so far, and we're only just past 24 hours.
She went to Church with us this morning and surprised us all by behaving even better then her older aunts did. :) She had lots of fun in Nursery Class, singing songs and playing with other kids her age. She really liked the sit and spin, too, so we might have to see about getting her one :)
We are looking forward to this, though a bit anxious as well. We're hoping there won't be too many melt downs this week, but so far things seem to be going well. We should have lots of fun and I see it as practice. With any luck we will have a little one in the next year or two and will get to go through all of this with him or her, so this is good practice for me as the steps were all older when I came into the picture (M was already 4), and lived too far away to be involved with my nieces at this stage.
Shall see how well we all survive the week! :)
(Just have to keep the "aunties" from cross parenting... heh... they kept trying to get her riled up at Church, the stinkers...)
Now if only the rain would let up so we could do some outdoor play.

Our Dogs

I mentioned that I'd likely be posting about our dogs, and this seems a good day for it as I've spent a good portion of the weekend caring for one of them. (will get to that later..)
People are always saying that small dogs and small children don't mix. I think that depends a lot on the dogs and the children. We currently have 3 small dogs. They love small children. Our grand daughter (baby G) is currently living with us (her parents too..) and she just loves the dogs. She's two and a half right now, but she spent time up here a few times over the last 2 years so we have had the chance to see them react to her at different ages.
They adore her. We never had any qualms about leaving her alone with the pommies.

The youngest one, Gobo, is 3 and will occasionally want to play "rough" which pretty much means she'll wind up getting licked to death. He was born with several birth defects, the most noticeable one being that he doesn't have the traditional pommie tail. Oddly, this seems to allow him better balance on 2 legs and he will often stand up and walk around to beg for attention. He also has some problems with is "boy bits" which we have to keep an eye on. They tried repairing some of it in surgery, but it didn't work because there were even more things wrong then we'd realized. But he is doing well now. Just have to keep an eye on things. This weekend he's apparently been bitten by something and managed to chew a large raw spot on his back, so he's been a bit needy this weekend while I'm trying to keep him from making things worse. That all seems to be settling down now though, and as long as I can keep him away from the sore, he should be ok and start healing soon.


Gir is a little older and a little more stand off-ish.. she's also the smallest of the dogs and has never really liked the hubbub. But she will sit and be petted and if the others start to get too excited, she just leaves. We got her from the same breeder we got Gobo from, though she is not from the same lines. She'd been brought up here to add to the breeding stock then, once she got here, it was discovered that she had bad knees (which you want to breed out, not in..) and was underweight, so she couldn't be used for breeding. So we got called to see if we would take her or knew of anyone who would and she joined our little gang. Turned out she also had 4 extra teeth in her mouth and a bunch of other dental problems. She wound up having to have 16 teeth pulled.. Sadly, her teeth are still bad and we might have to have more pulled. She is a total joy, though. She gets so excited to see us, she spins and dances around the floor.




Willow was the only one we were ever really concerned with. She's a 9 year old Jack Russell. Very dominant personality, very protective. She was a little snappy when we first got her a few years ago. (All of our dogs have basically been rescues of one sort or another.) And she still has her moments. (For instance, she really hates the oven. We have no idea why, but she will attack the couch or a toy or something or run around barking at it when we open the oven. We really don't understand this, but are trying to work with her on this.) We got her from a friend of a friend. They were headed off to college and her parents had told her to find a new home for the dog or they were going to shoot her, because they wanted a rottweiler. I really hope they didn't get such a big, powerful dog.. We've been told that Willow is actually pretty mellow for her breed, but there is no number of pommies that can prepare you for a JRT, even a "mellow" one..
So we were a little worried at first about how she would react to baby G.
Willow has been wonderful with her. We were rather surprised at how quickly she took to her. Willow has always been very protective of "her" girls (B2 and M) and it seems baby G is now in that fold. If Gobo gets "rowdy", Willow will come stand between and push Gobo away. If she thinks anyone is going to hurt G, she does the same thing. There's only been one incident where G was tugging on Willow's ear while she was trying to eat. Willow didn't like that and let G know. No skin was broken, Willow knows she gets in BIG trouble over that, but she will bare her teeth and can be very scary looking. They never get left alone, either way, but it is also good for G to learn there are limits and that you should be nice to animals.

I'm really sad that I can't include one other dog on this list. The first dog we got as a family, Pepe, passed away very suddenly in March, so she is no longer with us to be a part of this. However, she was such a big part of our family, and my healing process in coming to terms with infertility, that I might just have to make another post about her later.