Yes I Am Nuts

Well if you've gotten this far I'm assuming most of you  think I am nuts or super woman. Well "nuts" probably describes me best. People often ask me how did we get so many kids. I always tell them the easy way "adoption", no getting fat, no long labor, heck some of them came house broken. Just open the door and there they were. To be truthful adoption through foster care is way harder than any labor or delivery I had. When you give birth they wrap your bundle of joy up in a pink or blue blanket and send you home to be family. If you screw up they call me. If you are a drug abuser you will pee in a cup, take some classes, visit your child, go to dinner and a movie, visit friends, drink alcohol instead of popping pills, get uninterrupted sleep and then sleep 'til noon. I on the other hand will feed, clothe, bath, walk the floor, take the child to the doctor, play and love them. If you manage to get it together for 6 months to a year, they will give your child back. I will be heartbroken, but I am a big girl I will get over it, your child on the other hand will be devastated. Like it or not your child has grown to love me and I them. I am not the enemy, I just happened to be the person they called to foster your child or I already have one or more of you kids and you didn't get it right the first or second time so they get yet another do over.
I have also been accused of "doing it for the money", yes that is right I was actually on the witness stand at a termination trial. I quit my job making $20.00 an hour to take care of foster children for 50 cents an hour. If you get an infant the child get WIC for formula but that is only a supplement, you must purchase the rest when you run out. They do get medicaid, but if medicaid doesn't want to pay the bill then you get it. You don't have to pay it but by the time the state takes care of it your credit score has dropped 100 points. They do get a clothing allowance 220.00 a year. You must purchased all new clothes, shorts, shirt, p.j.'s, undies, shoes, boots, winter coats, hats and mittens and  no garage sale or 2nd hand shops. Oh yeah you get $25.00 to purchase Christmas presents.
When you give birth you know what you did or didn't do when you were pregnant, with foster babies you never know. Of course they never used drugs or alcohol when they were pregnant. The baby tested positive at birth for cocaine because someone put it in their water or they were around someone smoking pot. The baby was in utero growth retarded not because you drank the entire pregnancy but because they just couldn't eat. Heard them all and the only one who suffers is the baby.
Not to candy coat anything for you but it is a very difficult process. And if I had to do it all over again I would, exactly like it happened. These are my kids each and everyone of them. I had to go back and look at pictures in order to write this blog because I forgot which ones were adopted.
I did not write this blog to toot my own horn or to get any pats on the back. I got into foster care for very selfish reasons, like I said before I have never been good at too many things but I am a good mother. Oh believe me I am not the perfect mother, I try but I too am human and I make mistakes. Sometimes big mistakes, well maybe not so big. I am a yeller, I do like to talk "extra loud" if I feel my kids are ignoring me. But no one else had better yell at my kids. I am an enabler, I will go behind them and clean up all their messes most of the time. I do have melt downs and I like to have family meeting to tell them what I expect from them. I don't freak out if they draw with a sharpie on my newly painted walls. It's just a wall I can paint over it. Actually I usually leave it a few days then take a picture before I paint over it. I don't sweat the small stuff, it's not worth the high blood pressure.