While most are today putting together hopeful resolutions on this day, I am sorting through a slew of disappointing feelings. Feelings I had not anticipated feeling in the cause of doing good.
We are foster parents, which mostly boils down to me being the foster mother, which mostly boils me down to being something a bit more than the wicked witch of the west and a little more than an evil stepmother.
When it comes to fostering we all look to the children. We all sympathize with their situatioin, pity their underserved situation, and love them for being survivors. And I do love our little V and have all the very feelings that motivated us to begin this journey. But, even the 60 hours of training could not have prepared me for the internal battle.
In order to get licensed we went through the whole process and learned a great deal about the children in the system and the problems they present, the damage that has been done, and a few tools as to what we might do to help. There may have been a mention in there somewhere about how it will be emotionally taxing and discouraging, but I was filled with parental confidence and faith that this was the will of the Lord for our family. I chuckled a bit at some of the behaviors they described and muttered under my breath to Josh that our own children do that, it was really what normal children do maybe only a little enhanced. To my credit, at least in V's case, it is true. Sure, some heightened fits or defiance, but mostly nothing I haven't dealt with before.
The elephant in the room is rather what has become of me. Parenting my own to darling children has been a joy full of daily triumphs and a few frustrations, but all in all, they are well trained and enjoyable little people. I really can and do take most of the credit for that for they have been in my deliberate care since birth and I have done my best to educate myself and temper all actions with love, a genuine bonding love that came with the package deal of motherhood.
Fostering someone else's protege is mothering in a different vein. The biological parent knows they are being somewhat supplanted, the child knows this is not 'my mother' and the foster parent acutely feels that they are a poor middleman on a used car lot. I really am trying to do my best but the people on either side are festering and fuming about something most all the time. Despite my best efforts, and are they evermore concious, it is constantly compared to something else. The greatest frustration being that the comparison is to something awful percieved as good. The only good they they have ever known. Trying to convince a loyal child, strangely but very really attatched to that parent that created a situation bad enough that they child was taken from them, that my structured, calm, peaceful home is better than what they had is no small task, despite the obvious contrast. Furthermore, I am not allowed to compare it, jsut try and emphasize that we are happy to provide whatever makes them most happy. My counterpart might tear me down in her presence each week and destory any confidence I have built in that little bond I am making with the little person, but I can only smile and kindly dance around the subject of 'mother.'
Ignoring it all is less helpful that I had hoped. Distraction only works until you slow down, and confronting it is complicated. What can I change about my current situation? Get rid of the kid. Oh no, I wouldn't do that, for I have attached to her, or at least to the idea of providing some well-being for her at the moment. Could I erase the counter part and just make her my own I can't even tell if it would help. So I am struggling through. The complication of having my own children feed off the defiance , yet still goldenly they create the best example for her, has taken my natural motherhood into question as well.
I still believe on a given day I am a good mother. On a bad day I still never strike my children or deny them food or shelter. On a great day we all love each other. Most days we make it through without severe burns although a little crisp on the edges.
And where does my new years resolution come out of this? I really haven't figured out that much yet, which frustrates me. I normally love sitting down and looking through past progress and future potential. This new aspect of me is a conundrum. Well, better to have bounced around a little more of what this all means before I settle on a cause/effect or forward motion.
Any suggestions?
(Josh spent about an hour yesterday just admiring and playing with the lazer beam on the machine). Add in the streamers
, chocolate cheese cake, 
and some giggles from the kids and Josh had all the ammunition he needed to launch into a full on 'better than you' birthday giving streak!
Danny was the intagator of this one, he wanted a n umbrella from Santa, well, we have learned from experience that one umbrella is a lot of problems. Three umbrellas is really cute.
Faith had asked Santa for a toy puppy, and boy does she lover her little 'Belle' puppy. And Viv got her pink kitty too.
By far the best moment of Christmas morning (which we actually celebrated on the 24th since Josh worked the following day) was Danny's face when he first woke up. Josh and I actually woke up before all the kids, that seems strange, and were waiting in the living room when Danny woke up first. He was a bit groggy and squinty eyed until he noticed that the stockings were no longer hanging up, they were down and full. When we asked him what happened, he said 'Santa' coyly.
I did manage to follow through with some of the Christmas Eve traditions even though I had been flying solo for a long time. The kids got to decorate their own personal pizza, and we actually got some of the toppings on the pizzas this year!
