This update is over a month late, but it's still relevant. Hopefully.

So, this blog was written about a month ago. We had a hearing the first week of August, and we wrote this right after that. But we forgot to, you know, post it or whatever. I guess I could go through and update the language in this post so that it reflects the time that has passed, but...I'm not going to. So, just close your eyes and imagine you're in a time long, long ago. Say, six weeks? Yeah, that should do.

You know, one of these days, we'll get back to updating this blog regularly. It just so happens that because of the long gap in between actual hearings (Little Man's motion hearing notwithstanding) there hasn't been a ton of changes in the case. However, we did have a standard hearing this past week. Typically, these review hearings are done every 90 days. For some reason, this one took place almost five months after the last one. Had it not been for the motion hearing in June that ended Little Man's weekend visits with his biological father, we would have been losing our minds at such a long gap between hearings. While there were other items that would have been nice to address at 90 days instead of 150 days, those weekend visits were the biggest one.

I guess I need to back up a bit and give an update on the motion hearing. As you know, back in March, Little Man began going to his bio father's house every weekend for overnight, unsupervised visits. After having Little Man come home starving, exhausted and covered in bug bites almost every week, we had all finally had enough (“we” being us, the agency, the county and the boy's attorney). So in mid-June, a special motion was filed downtown to removed the unsupervised weekend visits and restore the supervised weekday visitation. On top of those issues, there were also multiple people living at the father's house who were not cleared to be living there. There was a dog there, as well. In both cases, he was told repeatedly to remove all unauthorized people and animals fro----mnmnmm the house. He never did. The boys' mother actually contacted Danielle and said that the father was leaving Little Man with her and other people (both explicitly prohibited) so he could go to the bar or work or do whatever he wanted. All of this was enough for the main judge to remove the weekend visits (and go back to twice weekly supervised visits). Neither of us attended the hearing, but Danielle was called over the phone to testify. She ended up staying on the line during most of the hearing, so she was able to hear what was being said. At one point, when the matter of the dog was brought up, the judge spoke directly to the father and said, “I want you to understand that you are choosing an animal over your son. An animal!” We were pretty thrilled with the result of this motion hearing. Not only did it begin to cast doubt on the father's ability to be a permanent solution, but it was amazing to know that our son would be safe on the weekends again.

Now, back to the present. Prior to our first review hearing in March, we had been told countless times to not worry, that nothing major should change at these hearings. Of course, it was at a review hearing that the hearing officer awarded the weekend visits to Little Man's bio father. As such, we went into this with no expectations. Based on how the families have conducted themselves over the last five months, we felt confident that not much, if anything, should go their way. We went into the hearing asking for three things: a reduction in their bio mother's visits per weeks, that Little Man's visitation status (supervised, twice a week) stays the sames and a petition for medical guardianship for Pirate.

It was clear from the start of the hearing that things would not be going favorably for the bio mother. When she was called to testify, it took several promptings from family members and her attorney before she finally would pay attention. Then, after a few minutes of question, the judge stopped the proceedings and asked the mother if she wanted to get her kids back. When she affirmed that she did, the judge ask, “Well, then why did you show up to court wearing jeans and an old sweatshirt?” After muttering excuses about those being her only clothing and not being able to afford anything else, you could tell the judge was already writing her off. Now, there's a big part of me that thinks this is wildly unfair, to judge someone on the clothing they wear. Of course, we have always made sure that we dress better than we would for a funeral. But, ultimately, I think the purpose of the question was if she doesn't have the money to afford one nice outfit, how could the court expect her to raise two children? Things did not get much better for the mother. Eventually, her visits were reduced from three visits per week (each for two hours) to just one! This was done largely on the premise that she has missed over 42% of her visits in the five months since the last hearing. Some of those visits, the boys had already arrived at the visit location, just for her to no show. We were kind of shocked at this drastic reduction; we would have been satisfied with going down to two per week. However, we are thrilled, to say the least. Pirate's behavior has begun to worsen as she has made most of her visits in the last few weeks. We've always believed that more distance between him and the bio family would be very beneficial for him. I guess now we get to see if that's the case! It's easy to get the sense that the mother is imminently close to having her parental rights terminated. We've always assumed this would happen, sooner or later, so this isn't a big shock to us. Still, it's comforting to know that the court is seeing the same issues with her that we have been seeing for months.

However, in regards to Little Man's bio father, those issues don't seem to be as apparent to the court (or, at least to this hearing officer). Ultimately, nothing changed in his visitation schedule. It is still at two visits per week, for two hours each and supervised. However, for quite some time during the hearing, it almost seemed as if the judge would just go back to the unsupervised weekend visits. There are so many reasons these should not start back up, issues that we as parents view as serious. Little Man was coming home absolutely starving every weekend, there was numerous people living at the home without their clearances, accusations of leaving our son with unauthorized people so the bio father could go to the bar. The list goes on. For those that deal with this case on a weekly basis, there was no question that the father should not get those weekend visits back. However, to a judge who reads up on this case once every few months, those issues apparently did not seem as severe. (As a quick aside, it's important to note that this judge/hearing officer is not the main judge on the case. He's just the one who does these review hearings. For what it's worth, the main judge is the one who removed the weekend visits from the father. While we're not sure why they seem to be taking different stances on this issue, we don't believe the main judge would have even considered giving those weekend visits back.) At the end of it all, the judge kept the visits status quo, and gave the bio father 60 days to become compliant. While we're happy with the result for now, we worry that this judges standard of “compliant” is far below what all of us would find acceptable.

Our third issue was trying to have Pirate's medical guardianship transferred to us (we would have taken the rights for Little Man as well, but Pirates are more pressing). Recently, Pirate was seen by an ADHD specialist who very quickly diagnosed him with ADHD. However, despite the doctor's recommendation, we have to get the bio mother's consent before placing Pirate on the medication. She is refusing to give this consent. In her words, she doesn't think Pirate needs it, and even if he did she would not want a five year old on medication (keep in mind that when the mother and Danielle talked about this a couple months ago, she was in full agreement with us that Pirate would really benefit from medication). When I was called to testify on this in court, I laid out our reasoning for placing Pirate on this medication. I told them that we also did not want to put a five year old on medication without cause. If we had, we would have done it in November and December when this kid was at his absolutely worst. But we didn't. Instead, we tried using firm structure, clear rewards and consequences and hoped that those steps would help. And they did, a lot. The Pirate that lives with us now is almost unrecognizable to the one who came to us last November. Even so, it's not quite enough. We are very nervous about how he will react in school. Based on his performances in Sunday school or daycare classes, we worry that Pirate will quickly be labeled as a problem child at school. But he's not. He can be a handful and stretch us to the edge many days, but he's also more intelligent and has a bigger desire to learn that almost any of his peers. We fear that, without the aid of medication, all of his desires to learn and succeed will quickly be lost as he will come to dread school as a place where he is always in trouble. There is a chance that Pirate will do okay in school with treatment for his ADHD. But as parents, we don't want him to do “okay”, we want him to succeed to the best of his abilities. All this being said, we were not given the guardianship. The judge said such a decision is above his pay grade and that we would have to take a motion downtown. Which is essentially what we expected to happen. On the way out of court, our caseworker said that the mother's attorney would talk to her about consenting. So we'll see what happens. Obviously, there's not a lot of time left before school is to start, so we would like any resolution to happen before that begins.

It's amazing what both of these boys absorb or hear. Little Man is like a mirror, as we can see many of our facial responses or laughter mimicked by him. Pirate, on the other hand, hears a lot more than we ever think he does. For instance, at the hearing, he was playing around and keeping himself busy. This was the case when his bio mother said she couldn't afford new clothing. However, a good 30 minutes after she said that, Pirate went up to her and said, “Don't worry, I have lots of money in my dinosaur bank. I'll give you some to buy clothes.” He's five. It's heartbreaking to see him feel like he is the one who has to be responsible. At a recent visit, while the mother spent the entire time cry and saying she missed him and wanted him to come home, Pirate just kept patting her on the back and saying that he would come home to take care of her. We hate this. It's not ok. The sooner she is out of their lives entirely, the better. We still don't know what will happen to Little Man. We could see the father continuing to fall apart; but we could just as easily see him getting his act together after the latest kick in the pants. It's so hard to tell. All we can do is continue to love and parent these boys as best we can. Hopefully, the courts will see this and recognize that we are the best permanent option for these two incredible children.