Around September of that year I received a phone call from the director of DHS. Steve and I had been chosen as foster parents of the year. They would be honoring us with a dinner and an award. What a nice surprise, never really thought about being special (as they put it) and when added up over 13 years of foster parenting we had opened our home to about 65 children. Damn score another one for the psychic, this was way to coincidental. We had a very nice dinner, people said a lot of nice thing about us, we hob knobbed with workers and family court judges then went home to finish the laundry. It was a good day.
Right after the Christmas Eve party with my family our daughter Lyndsay wanted to speak with me..privately. We went into my bathroom and I said,"Your pregnant, right"? How did you know? Well one doesn't usually sleep on the floor in a room with 25 people walking all around you. She was crying, I told we would get through this but she had to tell her Dad. She did and he told the same. After all she was 20 years old, she wasn't a little girl anymore, pretty soon she would be a mother. Hey that would make me a grandmother, ouch, that word kind of stung a little after all I still had babies. I think I need a face lift or maybe just an eyebrow lift, botox would be nice just between the eyes so when I scowled I would look pretty scowling. Something to look into...soon.
The holidays went off without a hitch, it's a New Year and we had something to look forward too, a new baby, I could send this one home at the end of the day. Anthony and Roselyn's adoption was going to be finalized soon. We had chosen the name Jackson Joseph for Anthony and SophiaRose Charlene for Roselyn. It was official I was the mother of an even 14 and had no intentions of making it an uneven 15.
On January 28th, I was told the bio mother of Ian had given birth to twin girls. One was in the NICU the other had died either right before or just after her birth they weren't quite sure. The twins were delivered to the best of their knowledge at 24 1/2 weeks both weighing 2 pounds. They had received no prenatal care and mom was at a bar when her water broke. They were going to file a petition to place the baby in foster care if she survived. If that happened I would like the baby, I already had a sibling and wanted to keep the kids together. Our licensing worker went about getting another variance for the baby and after a lot of paper work it was approved. We got a call around the middle of April, we could start visiting the baby. So Steve and I went to see her she was so beautiful and tiny 4lb 6oz. She had serious medical issues like Jackson, her lungs were under developed she would be coming home on oxygen and an apnea monitor along with a variety of medications to keep her alive. Everything from diuretics to keep her kidneys functioning to medication to keep her breathing. She had to have the lay down car seat too. On April 27th we brought AnnaLisa home, she was definitely a very wanted 15th child. Now we would have to see how everything went as far as the bio mom's her ability to properly care a medically fragile infant.
Needless to say the face lift was off the downtime would be too long and no one was willing to do the laundry.
After what seemed liked an eternity it was determined to be in the best interest of AnnaLisa to terminate the parental right of the mother and unknown father. The psychic was right after all, we did get 2 girls, siblings, just not to each other.
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