Pirate: We finally received a date for his contested termination hearing! It will be in late August. We’re not entirely sure what will happen. At the initial termination hearing a few months ago, the bio mother said she would voluntarily terminate her rights. As is the case in all voluntary terminations, she was given a 30 day window to revoke her consent. Unsurprisingly, she did, in fact, revoke that consent. However, in conversations with our agency, she talks as though she’s accepted that she will lose her rights at the next hearing and even seems to say that she’s excited for us to adopt them. So, we’re left wondering how hard she will fight at the contested hearing, if at all. Assuming termination happens, she will have the right to appeal. We still wonder if some random biological family member will come out of the woodwork at the last second. It shouldn’t matter, but still, until the papers are signed on adoption day we will always feel slightly uneasy.
Pirate also graduated from kindergarten earlier this month! He had a great year, overall, and is very excited for his first grade adventure to begin!
Little Man: Unfortunately, Little Man has been going on overnight visits with his bio father again, starting back in mid May. We were expecting them to start again at some point, but at the hearing in May, Little Man actually left the hearing with them instead of coming back home with us. So it was a very chaotic, emotional experience. Those visits have been going about as you would expect. Unlike the overnights last year that were an unmitigated disaster, these are going better, but not without concerns. However, with Little Man being a year older, his care is a lot easier, especially when it comes to proper feeding (even still, he often comes home without being fed breakfast on the day we pick him up). Technically, these one night overnights were supposed to go for 6 weeks, then move to 2 consecutive nights. However...we passed the 6 week mark a couple weeks ago and have not been informed of any change to the visitation status. We recently switched fostering agencies, so perhaps it got lost in the shuffle. But it’s also surprising that the bio father hasn’t asked for the upgrade in visits, which he has every right to do. But, we’re not going to say anything, so we hope we can keep them limited to one night for the time being.
Sadly, the start up of overnights just kind of reinforced our feeling that Little Man will be taken away from us in the near-ish future. It feels as though our lousy CYF caseworker and the hearing officer judge have already decided that reunification will happen, and now are only going through the motions as though to act like they’ve properly vetted the bio father’s situation. A couple weeks ago, I had to take Little Man to the visit at the last minute. When I pulled up to the apartment complex where the bio father lives, my heart sunk. A third of the row building is burned out and condemned; most of the remaining portion has a tarp covering the roof. Granted, his apartment appears to be in the area that isn’t tarped off. But still, if that is a living situation that the horrible CYF caseworker deemed acceptable for any visits to take place at (let alone overnights or potential permanent reunification) than what hope do we have? I just had to laugh, in a defeated way, at the building. It was at that moment that it really felt like our days together are numbered. Still, we are committed to enjoying every last possible second together as a family of five.
Wait. Five?!?
Baby Sis: That’s right, a family of five! Last week, we received a call while both of us were at work. Would we be interested in taking in a 3 ½ week old baby girl? Um...yes!! About two hours after the first phone call, our newest addition was waiting for us at home! It was quite an adjustment, to say the least, to add an infant to our routine. A week into the process, we still know very little about her case. We do know that her bio mother violated her parole and went back to prison. We don’t know the nature of the charges or how long she might be incarcerated. We do know that we’ve all already fallen totally in love with Baby Sis. Pirate instantly transformed into an even better big brother, always trying to help feed her. Little Man doesn’t say hi to us when we wake him in the morning; instead, his first question is for “Baby ‘Dis’?” Clearly, “sis” is a hard word for him to say just yet. It’s already easy to imagine a forever family comprised of the five of us. Alternately, it’s impossible and painful to imagine a future where even one of us is missing.
So, there you have it. Sure, we haven’t updated in months. But when we do update, it’s a pretty big one.
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