growing boy!

On turning 30. . .

God Says Yes To Me

Kaylin Haught

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

Friends and Family.

If you do this- it's possible that you won't have the support of people you thought you had, and you'll find support where you never expected it.

The Beginning.

It's hard to say exactly when I knew that my children would come to me through adoption. Sometimes I joke it's because the first Cabbage Patch Kid I was given as a child was black, but most of the time I tell people that there are a handful of things I've known to be true in my life, and that my children would not be biological is one of these things. *

Long before getting married Eric and I discussed having children- being my best friend, he already knew my feelings about adoption, and he was surprisingly (to me) agreeable and felt no need to have biological children.

Approaching thirty we decided that it was time. I knew virtually nothing about how to actually go about adopting, only that I wanted to do it. I picked up a couple of books and started searching the internet for Houston adoption agencies. The more I read, the more I didn't find what we were looking for. I'm a high school teacher at an inner city school and I know a lot about cycles of abuse and poverty from my students. That's when I checked out the DePelchin site. DePelchin serves students at my school in the teen parent program and our health clinic.

So, long story shorter. . .We ended up at an orientation meeting at DePelchin. When DeNita said, "If you're here for us to find you a child, you're in the wrong place. We're not about finding children for families. We're about finding families for children," we knew we were in the right place.

And that's where this journey began.

*I've also known that I'd be a special education teacher and that I'd marry my best friend.

gratitude.

1. My husband- my friend, my love.

2. Our parents- their faith in us and all that is good.

3. Stephanie and Jarret- though far away, close at heart.

4. My girlfriends- their strength, their hope, their laughter.

5. Our friends- walk with us, talk with us, drink with us.

6. Our students- our education, our growth.

7. Our jobs- provision for today, hope for tomorrow.

8. Our home- sweet. home.

9. Our faith- in others, in ourselves, in Life.

10. Our baby.

Today this whole foster parenting thing sucks.

Parenting is a lot of work. a lot. I mean, babies don't care if you've slept or eaten or had a great day or a terrible day. They need what they need without regard for your strength. Foster parenting, especially as it is our hope to adopt, is that much harder.

Today we had a birthparent visit. When I walked in I was surprised to see that not only was Aaron's birthmom present, but his birthfather as well. I was just overcome with the reality that we've chosen to love this baby as our own, but it's not likely he'll be ours forever.

and today, that sucks.

Firsts.

We went on our fist vacation as a family of 3. Headed to Kemah for the night to participate in the MS Walk on Saturday-- the thought of getting there by 8 from our house was just too much! We had a blast and it was an honor to walk for our friend, Nicole. So, it was Aaron's first vacation and first 5 K.

The weekend was followed by my first day back at work. I'm not really sure what to tell you there. It was both terribly hard to leave the little guy (with my parents for the first week) and also great to see my kids at school. They were excited to see me and have asked a lot of questions about the baby since. I've been pretty guarded about how much to share with them, but am so deeply appreciative of their love and support.

My parents seemed to have a wonderful time staying at home with baby. Foster care allows for very little in the way of babysitters. Hours of training, tb tests, interviews, and reference letters are required on top of the requisite criminal background checks. Needless to say, my parents are our only eligible babysitters.

We also had our first CPS home visit-- honestly, I'm not sure of the purpose (other than checking up on our home) of the home visits by either CPS or DePelchin. Both agencies come out monthly. So far, visits are short and generally uneventful. I did get a tiny bit more insight into the process of reunification and foster care, but mostly discovered that one aspect of the brokenness of CPS is that no one seems to work there long. Our caseworker gave me a little better picture of the timeline of hearings and decisions, but has worked for CPS for only months, so had very little in the way of details.

Finally, we started this week with baby's first days of daycare. I don't know if I've mentioned before, but I'm blessed to be able to work only 3 days/week. This is a lovely arrangement for our family-- the district continues to provide full benefits, I'm able to continue at a job I love, and I'm able to be a mom. He didn't nap much on Monday, but did much better today and his teacher even reported that he spent a lot of time "talking" to the other babies. I'm so happy he's having the opportunity to socialize and be loved on by so many people.

And most importantly, baby boy has really really started to smile and interact with objects- it's so awesome to see him grow-- there are new "firsts" all the time!