Nothing much has happened yet....

We still haven't had the initial court date for termination of parental rights (TPR) for W. Everything that was scheduled for court the day our hearing was supposed to be was rescheduled for next month.  So, now our initial hearing is on March 18th for the mom.  The dad's is March 12th.  We still don't go to any of his hearings for safety reasons, so we will just have to wait and hear how that goes. 

One thing I did find out about involving the dad, at his last court hearing, the caseworker said she would grant visitation if the dad completed services 80% of the time for 30 days.  Services would include counseling, parenting classes, etc, that he has been court ordered to complete.  I know why the caseworker did this, she wants to be able to show in court that she has given the dad multiple chances to move forward in the case, but he hasn't followed through.  She will use this in his TPR case.  But, I was also a bit nervous about this.  I know she did it because she was confident he wouldn't follow through, but what if he did?  I am not OK with him having visits. Not even supervised ones.  But, as it turns out, the dad didn't make any appointments with his services; he's at 0%, no where near the required 80. So we can take a breath and not worry about him visiting.

W's mom hasn't said anything to me about TPR.  I didn't expect her to, but it is like the elephant in the room every time I see her now.  The first visit we had after all the paperwork came, she wouldn't look at me or speak to me.  I didn't take it personally, but it was still awkward.  To make matters worse, W is starting to talk and he now calls us mom and dad.  The other day when I went to pick him up from a visit, he ran up to me yelling "Mommy!" and grabbed my legs.  I picked him up and said, "yes, tell mommy goodbye!". It was not fun.  She didn't say anything, but I know it must be hurtful to see your baby run to another woman and call her mommy. 

But, on the other hand, I have been mommy to him since he was tiny.  He has been with me far more than with his birth mom.  Plus, this situation is not my fault, it is hers.

I think that is something I am finally seeing clearly. For a long time, I really felt sorry for this mom.  I wanted her to succeed.  I tried to help her out and encourage her as much as I could.  Sometimes I felt guilty that I was taking W home with me after a visit.  And, I do still like this mom.  And, I don't want her to fail.  But, she has been given so much support over the past 19 months that her failures can't be blamed on anyone but her now.  Caseworkers, therapists, the CASA, everyone has held her hand and guided her in the right direction.  But, she has repeatedly let go and ran back to where she started.  Its that fact that has brought me to the realization that its time for this to move on and for her to take a different role in W's life. His birth mom can't be his mom anymore.  She can still love him and keep a relationship with him, but not as a mother.  W needs more than what she is willing to offer.

That's the other part, its what she is willing to offer that is the problem.  If she wasn't able to give him what he needed, that could be fixed. But the fact is, she is perfectly capable of being a parent but chooses not to.  That makes this a whole other situation. 

So, things are at a standstill until we get into court, but everyone is pretty confident of what the outcome will be.

We knew the caseworker was planning to file termination on W's parents, but we hadn't heard the status of that for a few days.  The caseworker had hoped to have things ready so she could do the initial termination hearing when we were at court on the 14th, but she wasn't able to get that done.

Well, when I got the mail today, there was a copy of termination paperwork.  They filed on both parents and the initial hearings are in about 2 weeks.  That means things should be final, as far as the termination of parental rights in 6 weeks or so, unless it takes a while longer to get another court date.

What happens in this process is, the caseworker files termination of parental rights with the court.  An initial hearing is scheduled then.  At the initial hearing for Alexander, which is my only experience with this, the judge read the case number, said who was present, and asked the parents if they accepted or denied the charges.  I'm guessing that is how it will go in this case also.  If the the parents accept, I think the judge can grant termination then.  But if they deny, a Fact Finding hearing is scheduled.  It is supposed to be in 30 days.  The Fact Finding hearing is where DCS presents all the evidence they have as to why termination needs to be granted.

If the parents voluntarily give up parental rights (meaning it wouldn't have to get to the fact finding hearing), the judge will grant the termination and we can start the adoption process in 30 days.  If the parents won't consent and termination is granted involuntarily, we aren't able to start the adoption process for 6 months.  That time frame is there to allow the parents to file an appeal since they didn't consent to the termination.  During that 6 months, W would still technically be in foster care, but nothing would change.  Visitation would be stopped and we would just be waiting for the 6 months to end so we could make things official.

I haven't seen W's mom since this happened, his next visit is on Monday.  I don't know how she is going to react to this.  She knew it was coming.  I hope she will just go ahead and sign her rights over, but that is probably wishful thinking.  I am confident termination will be granted at Fact Finding, but it would be good if it didn't have to come to that.  The one that will probably hold things up is the dad.  He has maintained that this is a conspiracy against him and he was holding his son in a loving way when he was arrested, even though an entire SWAT team disagrees.  So, I don't see him consenting to anything.

I guess we never expected this to be a smooth process.  As long as it ends with W being in the best place for him, that's the important thing.

Love these guys!!

The other morning, I was laying in bed trying to avoid getting out of it while Nathan worked away in the basement.  All four kids had gotten up and made their way to my bed and joined together to try and ruin my plan of staying in bed. -- Basically, a typical Saturday morning at our house.

I asked the kids what they thought about W's name and what we should do if we adopted him.  We have always planned to change his name if we were able to adopt him.  I honestly can't stand his name, and the fact that he is named after his dad makes it even worse.  I feel like naming a child after someone is a way to honor that person and set an example for who you want that child to become.  W's dad is the last person I want any child to aspire to be.  He is violent and truely a bad guy.  So, a new name will be in order once/if W becomes a Coe.

Anyway, when I asked what we should change W's name to once we adopted him, Alexander said immediately, "But you adopted me!". I think he thought he was the only one who could be adopted around here.   I couldn't help but laugh.  I told him I knew we adopted him, but maybe we would be able to adopt W too.  He seemed ok with that answer.

Hannah suggested we give him the same middle name as Alexander, Ian, but I told her two brothers couldn't have the same name.  Then she brought up the good point that her and I have the same middle name.  So I didn't have much of an argument for that.

So, we don't have a definite name yet.  We are pretty set on the first name though.  I will share that with you once things are a little closer to being set.  We do have court tomorrow, which will be one small step, most likely.  Again, we don't want to get that cart before the horse.

What?!

Oh my goodness, this day! I have said so many times that foster care is a roller coaster ride, and it is!

I got a call from our caseworker today that W's mom has failed a drug screen.  That means termination will be filed now.  That means W isn't going home next month and probably not ever.

I honestly don't know how to feel.  I feel relieved, but at the same time I'm hesitant to feel relieved in case this roller coaster starts up again.

So many people say to us "how can you be ok with the kids leaving? Aren't you attached? They are better off with you."  But people who say those things don't really know how foster care is.  Not that I'm blaming them, I had no idea either before we jumped into it.  But yes we do get attached, yes we love the kids.  But, we keep in mind though all this that we aren't these kids' parents.  We are the ones who have, for some crazy reason, agreed to keep them safe and love them until their families can take over again.

I was uneasy about W leaving us.  But not because I just wanted him to stay with us.  I was worried because I don't think his mom can take over.  I don't think she wants to take over, I think she likes being with W and spending time with him, but I don't think she has it in her to be a full time mother.  She has proved that with her daughter.  She sees her daughter pretty regularly and gets to spend time with her, but ultimately she isn't her daughter's full time mother.  And, the mom is happy with that situation.   

W deserves a full time mother.  That's why I am scared for him to go home.

But, after today, I don't think I will have to be worried about that any more.

These emotions are crazy!  I am so happy that we will have another son.  But again, I can't put the cart before the horse, that wouldn't be the "foster parently" thing to do.  (My patent is pending on that new word I just created).  So maybe I should stick with taking the risk of being relieved for now.  I will move on to happy, or more like ecstatic, when we get through this next stage.

Change is coming...

Change can be good.  I like change really---it's exciting.

We had a meeting today with everyone involved in W's case to make a plan for the case.  Everyone agrees that 18 months is too long for this case to have gone on.  So, it was decided that W will go home next month.

Every time the case has gotten to this point, the mom has done something to slow things down or move them backwards.  She says she wants W home, but I'm not convinced she really does.  I don't feel like she has taken any steps to move forward from where she was 18 months ago.  But the problem is she hasn't done enough for her rights to be terminated and this case closed.  Since rights can't be terminated, they are sending W home.

That doesn't really seem logical, but I think the caseworker feels like she doesn't have a choice.  I also think she feels like it will take W being home for the mom to show her true colors and prove whether she will sink or swim.

So, in about 6 weeks, we will be down to a family of 5.  We haven't had just 5 of us for a while, 18 months to be exact!  What will we do with ourselves?

I will keep reminding myself that change is good. 

Alexander's Adoption Day

Yesterday was quite a day!  We have been telling Alexander about it for a while but I don't think he really understood what was going to happen.  The girls were excited about it though.  When Nathan picked them up from school to get ready for court, Hannah's teacher said she had been all smiles all day because she was excited about adopting her brother.  We thought that was pretty cool.

Like I said, we shared our court date with Nathan's sister, Sarah, and her family as they were adopting too.  So, we all met at the court building a little while before we were scheduled for court.  We had quite a croud there!  There were 5 of us (W was at a visit with his mom), Sarah and Chris have 7, Nathan's other sister Christy and her family had 4, both of our parents made 4 more, then there were 5 DCS related people we had invited.  So I guess that adds up to about 25 of us!  It was great to have everyone there. 

Sarah's family used the same lawyer as we did, so that was how we got to share the court date.  She came out and went over a couple of things and made sure we didn't have any questions.  Then we all filed into the court room.  As we were walking in, I was hit with emotion.  I was thinking great, I knew I was going to cry, but I don't want to start already!  I kept myself together though and we sat down to wait on the judge.  She had gotten on a call and was running a few minutes late. 

Finally the judge made it and things began.  Sarah's family went first with their adoption of Torry.  Torry is almost the same age as Alexander.  He is a super sweet little boy.  He doesn't talk right now, but he was voicing his approval pretty much the whole time.  It was pretty sweet.  Chris and Sarah agreed that they wanted Torry to be a part of their family forever and the judge granted their adoption. 

Then it was our turn.

We all stood up in the center of the room, which I was really glad the girls were able to come up too.  The judge had us raise our right hand and be sworn in.  I didn't see it at the time, but after I looked at the pictures, Addison was raising her right hand too.  I guess she wanted to make it official too!

Our lawyer is the lady in the leather jacket there with us.  She was the one doing most of the talking.  I can't really remember most of what she said, because I was just trying to keep myself together. Which I didn't do a very good job of, I cried through the whole thing!  But the gist of it was confirming we are Nathan and Shannon, agreeing we do want to make Alexander a part of our family forever, and that was about it I think. 

It was an overwhelming thing.  This has been a long year with Alexander.  He has had some pretty rough days, especially in the beginning.  But now, things are so much better.  He is happy, he is growing, he plays so well with the other kids, he doesn't use 4 letter words, and so many other things that are just so great to see.  As long of a year as it has been for him, I think it has been a bit longer for Nathan and I (especially me I think).  I have taken him to visits that I didn't want to take him to. I have watched visits between Alexander and his mom that made me want to scream.  I have been to meetings, case conferences, and court dates for this little boy.  I'm pretty sure this process gave me my first gray hair (its in my eye brow!).  But all that is over now.  I don't ever have to say that he is my foster child ever again, he's my son.  That's pretty cool, overwhelming, but cool.

So after the judge said her stuff (again, I have no idea what she said), we took lots of pictures.  The judge was so nice.  She stayed around to take pictures with us.  She even let all the kids have a turn banging her gavel up on her podium. 



When we were done, we all went to get some supper.  Lots of our family and friends met us there.  It was so nice to be with everyone.  Alexander was having a great time.  A couple of people brought him gifts and he thought that was awesome. 

So, it was a good day.  It was emotional, but good.  

 

Today was the big day!!

We finalized Alexander's adoption today. It was a really great day. I can't even express how relieved I feel now. It's like closure to the stressful journey that we have been on for the past year.

We have been telling Alexander about what would happen today, and what it all means. But really, all he got from our explanation was-- it's a special day and there will be a party. But, that's ok, he got the gist of it!

This day was extra special because our nephew became an official member of our family today too, this was also his adoption day!

I want to write about all that happened today, but I am so tired. I have been reading through old blog posts and reliving the trauma and drama of the past year and it has gotten late. (I may get a bit dramatic myself when I'm this tired).

So, I just wanted to do a quick post to share a picture or two for now.

More to come later!