So we didn't get the baby girl. Like I said in the last post, I was disappointed.  But, it was Ok, I knew going into this process that it wasn't going to be easy or simple.  And, I knew that we had to trust the caseworkers and judges to make the right decisions for the kids.  So, that is what we did.  After all, we knew so little of the story about this baby girl, maybe her family was going to treasure her just like we would have and she will grow up wonderfully.  So we moved on.

A few weeks later, I started getting this feeling that I really can't describe.  It was a feeling of anxiousness, nervousness, excitement, and anticipation.  I think I even told Nathan that I thought our licensing worker was going to be calling.  It was a weird feeling, for sure.  I found myself watching my phone waiting for her call.  Turns out I didn't have to wait long, she did call with a different situation for us.

She had been in contact with a neighboring county that had two boys needing a foster placement.  When she said the word "foster" I was immediately reluctant.  We didn't want a foster placement, we wanted an adoptive placement.  But, I wrote down everything she told me about these boys and then called Nathan to discuss it.  The situation was a 3 year old boy and his 6 month old half brother.  The baby had been abused, very possibly by the mother, currently had strep throat, and was vomiting and had diarrhea.  The 3 year old was healthy as far as she knew and would likely be placed with his father sometime in the near future.  They baby would likely be in foster care for "quite a while", whatever that meant in caseworker language.  We were also told that the baby's dad was not in the picture at all.  We talked this over and Nathan was really the one who wanted to go for it.  So I called her back and told her we would take the boys.  She let me know she would call the caseworker and give me a call back with the details of when we would need to pick up the boys, but she expected it would be later that day.  It was going to be another long day at work!

Our licensing worker called back letting us know we needed to be at the DCS office at 3 pm to pick up the boys.  Of course I had made all the required phone calls again and everyone was super excited.  It has been so much fun going through this process with our friends and family supporting us and sharing our excitment. 

So anyway, I can't even begin to tell you what my nerves were doing that day.  We were about to go and pick up two little boys who were strangers to us, as we were to them, and bring them home to be in our family for an undetermined amount of time.  That is nerveracking!

We got to the DCS office and were directed to a waiting room.  We weren't really sure how this would all go.  The boys had been placed in foster care about 3 days earlier but the current foster dad had just had surgery, so they needed the boys to be placed in another foster family.  I was expecting we would get to talk to the current foster parents so we could ask some questions about what they had learned about the boys as far as taking care of them.  But, what happened was, the caseworker had the foster parents tell the boys good bye and leave, then she brought us back to meet them.  We met the 3 year old first.  We were taken into a visitation room that was full of toys and instructed to "get to know him" for a few minutes.  Nathan got right into it and talked and played with the little guy.  He wasn't shy at all and talked like crazy to us.  The caseworker had warned us to be prepared when she brought the baby in.  She described his injuries some and let us know he was pretty burised up.  When she walked in holding the baby, he was all cuddled up on her chest and covered by a blanket, so I really couldn't see him, except for a little head with light brown hair---and bruises.  She handed him to me and he snuggled right back down with me.  The caseworker went over a few things like upcoming doctor appointments and medicaid information.  Then we were sent on our way.  It was wierd.  It was like- Here are some kids, Take them home, We will be in touch! 

So, we ran to Walmart to get the basic necessitites for the boys that we didn't already have and we went to pick up the girls, who had been waiting for us at my parents' house.