Glutinous, Green, Huge.

I don’t make it a real habit to meet new people at the gym.  In fact, I find that most of the time I try to avoid it.  I want to get in, get out, and get to everything else I have to do (such as the laundry of 5 small children.  which is a lot of laundry.).

This morning I was sitting on one of the machines taking a short break between reps when I noticed this older gentleman looking my way.  There are a lot of older people who exercise at the same time as me, and I rather like listening to their banter – but this guy, was he? Oh no.  He was making eye contact. The kind of eye contact that says, “I think I’ll start a conversation with that random person over there working on toning her inner thighs.” (But not in a perverted way, because that is definitely how that sounded.)

He walks over, and I smile, because 80 year old men automatically prompt smiles (why is that?).  He points at the stickers on my shirt that the daycare gives you so that they don’t give your children to someone else.  On this particular morning, there were three of them.

“Now I have a little bit of a personal question, ma’am.  Because you’re a pretty little thing, but you don’t look any older than 12.”

“Oh, I know sir, I get that a lot.  (And still don’t appreciate it, when is that supposed to kick in?) I’m actually almost 25.”

“Well, I know that you just had a baby, but I was just noticing that you have several child care stickers on your shirt, and because you are so young, I just didn’t know how it was possible?”

(Do I really have to explain to an 80 year old man how that’s possible?  Because by the time you’re 80, buddy, you should know.)

I explained how we’re foster parents, and how at the moment we have five children, but that we don’t always have that many kids.

“Oh, well, I was just wondering, being from Southern California and all, with all you religious freaks out here with all these kids – I just thought I’d ask.”

Ummmmm.  Seriously?  Seriously.  Who says something like that?  w.o.w.

I kind of wanted to point him toward this post.  But instead I just smiled.  I think there’s also something about being 80 years old that gives you some unmentioned permission to say whatever you want.

So we leave the gym.  I load the kids into the car, we start home.

I’m on the phone when I turn around to see that Carter has this MASSIVE glob of glutinous, green, disgustingness hanging from his nose to his lip.  The kind that makes you think, “Wow, he really must have an oversized sinus cavity.  Or maybe his entire head is one big sinus cavity.”  That big.

So I look around in a frenzy for the tissues and can’t find them.  I explain to him that I can’t find them, but that he should just sit there very still until we get home and I’d wipe it off as soon as I could. 

So we continue home, and I finish up my phone conversation.  We pull into the driveway and I go around to get him out of the car.

oh no.

where did they go?

where are the boogers?  The MASSIVE amount of boogers?

I start looking around the van for them, on his clothes, on his booster, the arm of the chair.  I can’t find them.

Carter, what happened to all of the boogers?

He looked at me as innocently as can be, pointed to his face, and opened his mouth.

 

Guess we can skip lunch.  Because wow, that many boogers must be proportionate to a three course meal.

Respite Support.

Which sometimes feels a bit like life support when your really in need of some good respite.

Tonight ‘Abby’ and ‘Carter’ will be coming to stay with us again.  We did respite for them the weekend that the boys came to us.  They’ll be with us until the end of the week.  Their foster mom is super overwhelmed.  Like really, really overwhelmed. 

Maybe the kids should move to a new home?  I’m not sure.  Disruptions are hard – much harder than just saying goodbye.

We’ve not ever asked a child to leave – but with X-man we were darn close.  I had just had Sylvia, my hormones were somewhere between euphoric bliss and crushing discouragement at any given moment, I was having a very difficult recovery from child birth, and X-man was 17 months old and still not eating food or walking.  Developmentally they were about nine months apart, and there were a lot of things that X-man still needed one on one care for in order to get caught up.  Overwhelmed doesn’t quite describe the first few weeks after she was born.

Long story short, we almost asked to have him moved.  However, our worker is incredible and gave us the support we needed to get through my recovery so that we could maintain placement.  The decision to maybe have him moved was one of the most heart wrenching decisions I’ve ever made (post-partum hormones aside). 

 

Initially I would say it’s mostly pride that makes you not want to throw in the towel.  But really, I don’t think that’s it most of the time.  It’s just that you want to be there for those kids.  You want to tough it out with them.  You want them to know that you love them.  You don’t want to cause more hurt.

With that said, sometimes disruptions are necessary.  There are a handful of times that the best thing for the kids is for them to move.  They need to be somewhere where their needs and emotions can be cradled and nurtured.

I don’t know if Abby and Carter need to move.  Not my call.  We’ll just do our best to support them and their foster mom for the time being.  We’ll see how it goes!  Back up to seven in the Popp home!