Foster parenting

Bedtime

/ jenfletcher / 2 Comments

It started very innocently….a few comments here and there.  Eleven-year-old daughter wasn’t really a fan of her loft bed.

The immediate backpedaling always went: “But I love the desk space!”  She really did love the huge expanse of tabletop underneath.  It’s the bump-your-head-on-the-ceiling bed she didn’t care for.

We’d changed from her regular bed to the loft bed when she was sharing a room with her foster sister.  (There was a while, back in 2014, when I truly felt like there was no problem IKEA couldn’t solve.)  Her double bed–part of the furniture set that I inherited from my grandmother when I was a little girl–was much too large to fit in a room with yet another twin bed besides.  She has an exceptionally large bedroom, but not that large.  Eventually our fosters moved out and moved on, but the loft bed stayed.  Great storage. Great desk.  And, yeah, there was a bed up there, too.

A few weeks ago my daughter was sick.  She was up in the middle of the night vomiting, and once she hobbled back to her room I asked if she’d like me to just make her up a bed on the floor….because who wants to climb a ladder when you want to puke?  She’s always been the Queen of the Blankets, so we had enough to make her up a comfy “mattress,” with some left over to tuck her up.  She slept there the entire next day (poor kid) and then the next few nights.

And then the next few weeks.

And then today the fateful words:  “Mama, could we move my mattress to the floor?”

Deep breath.  “Would you consider selling your loft bed?”

“YES!”

I’m conflicted.  There’s a piece of me wanting to beat myself up for wasting money on the thing; because it feels like wasted money.  Why did we buy it if we’re just going to turn around and sell it, 2 1/2 years later?  But that bed was used–I would almost say necessary–for the time we had it.  When we had two girls in that room, it even gave them each their own desk….and a heck of a lot more floor space.  We couldn’t predict the future; we didn’t know that she wouldn’t be sharing a room indefinitely.  And now, it is no longer serving its purpose here:  it’s more of a problem than a solution.  It’s time to let go.

Wow, does she have her work cut out for her.  We won’t sell it until she’s figured out what to do with all her Stuff:  Books, stuffed animals, and Legos all made their home in that thing.  She’s upstairs right now, though, with a big box (which she requested, “for all the stuff I’m going to get rid of….”) and with her mattress moved to the floor (“Look!  Now I kind of have a window seat!”).  I wish her luck.  Now I have to go shop for mattresses.

(Quick update:  “You know, when I really go through my stuffed animals, I only have ten left!”  Now THAT’S progress.)

 

2016….

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how glad I’ll be to say goodbye to this year.  It’s funny how you start each year optimistic and full of enthusiasm over what it might bring….this year started innocently enough with my youngest being sick.  We’ve said repeatedly that she’s the easiest child we’ve ever had, but she is, by FAR, the absolute worst when it comes to being sick.  So we endured a few weeks of two-year-old induced misery, followed by me going to the doctor for “this weird spot on my back….also, I think I might have pulled a muscle.”  It turned out both those things were related and I actually had shingles.

That didn’t even get us through February.

This year was marked–strongly–by one of my children dealing with severe depression. The weight of that anchor pulled the entire house down most days.

There were petty nuisances:  the “two-week” bathroom redo that took a full month.  There were truly awful shocks:  the horrific accidental death of a friend’s child.  And we are sending the year out with three cases of bronchitis and one sinus infection….and my poor husband with something that has yet to be officially diagnosed.

Good riddance.

But that can’t be what I focus on this year.  It overwhelms me when I look at it that way.  There have been beautiful things about this year, too.

  • The twenty-year wedding anniversary trip to Colorado.  (Brief, but kid-free.)
  • The adoption of our former foster kiddos into a wonderful home.
  • My older daughter discovering musical theater (and a strong talent for it).
  • The arrival (finally!) of antidepressants for my child, who is returning from the edge.
  • My sister being in town from overseas twice!–one visit for Christmas.
  • Month-long chaos or not, we have a lovely “new” bathroom.  (I’m sure I’ll be posting quite a bit about that particular adventure.)
  • We’ve celebrated scary birthdays this year (we have a teenager!) and are now parenting a 13, 11, and 3-year-old.  Typing that looks weird, but I’ve pretty much gotten used to our goofy arrangement of kids.
  • Homeschooling keeps getting better and better.
  • I cleaned out the unfinished part of the basement so well that my son asked if he and his sister could turn it into a Lego room.  (!!!)
  • Laughter is returning to our home….though it never really left completely.

And how can you despise a year where a game called “Rancor Pillow Beat” was created by my 3-year-old?  (It involves lots of running, screaming, and pounding Daddy with pillows.  Oh, and laughing.  Also lots of laughing.)

Taking a deep breath in preparation for 2017….

Back to “Enough”

/ jenfletcher / 1 Comment

A year and a month ago life got so crazy, so chaotic, that the idea of keeping up with blogging never even entered the picture.  Six months ago we went through another extreme shift and suddenly, writing seemed possible again.  So I’m jumping in today, babystepping pathetically back, figuring out how to use the “brand new WordPress site” (which most likely isn’t actually brand new at all), resetting my long-forgotten password, stealing a few minutes to reacquaint myself with this.

We’ve gone from two kids, to our beautiful surprise baby girl, to two foster children for nine months.  (Hmmm…nine months.  How appropriate for a rebirth.)  Now we’ve shifted back to our original three and have had a few months to get used to the idea of “just us” again.  “Enough” has been a moving target over the past three years.  Each time I get used to the idea of where we’re at, it changes.  Again.  Frequently.

I haven’t stopped thinking about it, though:  what is enough?  Getting ready for a new baby…moving in two kids and all their things…moving baby out of her room to use it for our foster son….moving older daughter’s things to make space in her room for our foster daughter…completely emptying a room downstairs to use as a bedroom for the baby…

What is enough?  I definitely wish we’d had less “stuff” to move around last year, and I’d been purging for ages.  (My husband did point out,  Aren’t you glad you did all that simplifying before this started?)  Now, after the kiddos have moved out and we’ve gotten a little back to normal, I’m starting to feel breathing room again, both physically and mentally.  We’ll see where things go from here.