Moving forward.

On Tuesday, we got the official word that Little Man's weekend visits with his father will start this today (Friday). He won't come back home to us until Sunday afternoon. When we got word that the court order had only authorized unsupervised day visits, we were hopeful that it would be at least a month until these weekend visits began. However, the father and his lawyer filed a motion saying that the hearing officer had, in fact, approved the weekend stays at the hearing. Given that that was what we all left thinking had been approved, the step back to just the unsupervised day visits was surprising, yet welcome. While we're not sure what exactly let to this latest flip flop, it appears that perhaps the hearing officer did goof when writing the court order and had meant to allow for the weekend stays all along. Regardless, they begin now. We have concerns for Little Man's well being at these visits, and have registered those concerns with the county and the child advocate. Neither of them are in favor of jumping straight to the weekend visits; however, there's nothing more that any of us can do but follow the court order. The father still has a few weeks left of his court mandated parenting classes, so we assumed these visits would not being until he had at least completed the classes. What a foolish thought on our part!

As heartbreaking as this is for Danielle and I, we are concerned with how Pirate will take this latest development. Typically, when the boys go to their Friday visits with their biological mother, one driver will bring Pirate home to us while a different one will take Little Man from the visit straight to the father's house. We can't imagine how Pirate will take being separated from his brother, especially in that environment. However, I just got word that today's visit with their mother is canceled. Starting this week, she is required to confirm her attendance 24 hours in advance (this was put in place because of the staggering number of visits she has canceled or no showed to in the last couple months). She called for today's visit, but long after the 24 hour deadline had passed, so it was canceled regardless. By the time her next scheduled visit comes around (on Monday) it will be a full two weeks since she will have seen her children. So, for this week at least, a driver will pick up Little Man from our home, instead of directly after the visit. Hopefully this wrinkle (having Danielle there to comfort Pirate) will help ease the transition for Pirate. However, going forward, Pirate somehow has to rationalize why his mom keeps canceling, yet his little brother gets to spend all weekend with his dad. We'll be going to Ohio this weekend for Danielle's dad's birthday, so we're hopeful that it will be enough of a distraction for Pirate to not realize that his baby brother isn't with us.

Danielle tried to explain to Pirate earlier this week what was going to happen on the weekends from now on. He sat on her lap and said he was going to keep his baby brother with us forever. As Danielle tried to explain that it wasn't up to us, that it was the judge's decision, tears started to come down her face. Pirate sat there and wiped her tears, telling her over and over that it was going to be OK. We would do anything in the world to keep our family of four together. But, in the darkest days ahead of us, knowing that Pirate is staying with us is going to be the light at the end of every tunnel.