Two recent career-related funnies from Sunshine (I’m going to miss this as she gets older):
1) Mom, see that lady on the street with the sign? I seen her at school before. She must have stopped working at the school and got a job as a stop light.
(The art teacher at the school now doubles as the after-school crossing guard.)
2) Mom, when I grow up I’m going to be a painted lady.
(Butterfly. A painted lady BUTTERFLY. She was ” ‘tending” to be a larva making a chrysalis–a fancy leopard print chrysalis. Yay for big bro’s hand-me-down bedsheets…lol.)
Well, we got the call yesterday. They picked a different family. We’re supposed to be consoled by the fact that we are the “backup family” in case the other family change their minds. And the fact that it was a “coin flip” between two equally good families. Thanks loads.
We had our hopes up (especially Pop) after being told by the child’s social worker that we were top of the list a couple of days ago. She and our social worker and the supervisor guy, all of whom we have met or spoken to by phone, all thought we were a great family for this girl, especially since we had experience with successfully (so far, knock wood) raising a particularly difficult child like Cricket. A third member of the committee was a therapist who has never spoken to us, and never met Cricket, but has worked with other children with Asperger’s. Since this child would have some “issues” (although it sounded pretty tame compared to what we’ve dealt with before, and there were good indicators that it would be temporary), especially while adjusting to a new family, the therapist was evidently concerned that adding this child to our family would cause Cricket to regress and then we’d have two difficult children to deal with and that would just be too much. Grrr…. We know Cricket and how he is likely to react. Yes, he will probably regress a little, but we’ve got a pretty good notion of what exactly that would look like and we know how to handle him. We deal with regressions from him regularly (though not as frequently or as severely as once upon a time; I used to call it sling-shot development, pull back, shoot forward, pull back…and back…and back….shoot forward….).
For the child’s sake I hope it works out with the other family. But I confess to shedding a few tears last night. And Pop looks a little lost today. She really had worked into his heart, even though we hadn’t even met her yet. We knew so much about her. Sunshine is disappointed that she will have to wait to get a sister. She is well consoled, though, by the fact that her butterflies have emerged from their chrysalises. She took them to school for show and tell today and was the belle of the ball. Cricket seems conflicted–both relieved and disappointed. If he’s getting a new sister, he’d like to get it over with, I think.
Well….we knew it was a roller coaster when we bought tickets for the ride…sigh….
News item 1: Uncle J was accepted to next year’s class at a medical school in Ohio, so he will not be studying in the Carribean after all. He and Aunt A have realized that if they move to Ohio now, they can establish residency soon enough to save big bucks by qualifying for in-state tuition rates, so they will not be here when their baby is born after all. They packed up last week and headed out, leaving a gaping space in my basement where they’d been storing boxes. I’m sure I’ll find some form of clutter to close the gap ;). We’re sad to have them gone, and will miss our monthly get togethers and being able to help with a new baby, but we’re excited for them to be moving on to the next stage of their lives. They grow up so fast! We had a fun visit from Grandpa and Grandma D and Aunt W who came to help them pack up, and we got to help celebrate Aunt W’s birthday while they were here….it’s been quite a birthday season around here lately.
(As a completely irrelevant side note, I also went to a baby shower given and attended by Aunt A’s (very young seeming) friends. During the festivities I discovered that Aunt A’s father’s sister is the same age as me. This fact a) makes me feel old (since Aunt A is my little brother’s wife), and b) makes me feel like there was some kind of generational mix up somewhere and I got in the wrong line at the wedding or something. How can I be in the same generation as my brother’s wife’s father? I mean, that’s just weird. Perhaps it is even more awkward for Aunt A, having an aunt/niece relationship with one woman and a sister/sister-in-law relationship with another woman of the same age? And how utterly silly for me even to care! I mean really!)
So, moving on…
The other exciting news at our house is that this Tuesday (tomorrow) we have a nice new social worker guy coming to our house to get to know us and ask lots of questions in order to evaluate whether we’d be the best family for the young lady presented to us as a possible new daughter a couple of weeks ago. Her profile had been placed on the regional and national listings and they’ve evidently had quite a few home studies to review. We’ve stayed in the running down to the last three or four, and this person who will be visiting is one of the people on the committee who makes the decision. Time to make a good impression! And we’re hoping to be able to get a little more information about her as well. But we’re so new to this whole process that we’re not sure yet what we’re allowed to know when. We did get a little more information when Pop spoke to the man last week, but not much. Enough to know that so far the “red flags” are things we think we could handle. But then, we’ve had Cricket to break us in. No a lot scares us…lol. And there are a couple of things we do want more specifics about before we say yes. Not that we’d even have the chance to say yes or no if the committee picks a different family in the first place. Did I mention this is all a little nerve-wracking?
I neglected to mention a couple of weeks ago that Sunshine turned six. Six! Already! It can’t have been that long already. I still remember the smell of her fuzzy little newborn head. Her favorite part of her “when you were born” story is that just before the nurse weighed her after she was born, she peed all down the front of the nurse’s scrubs. That’s funny stuff when you’re six! We all laughed in the delivery room too. I remember that hillarious little smidge of potty humor mostly because when the nurse weighed her she was one ounce shy of six pounds, and in my drugged out state I remember thinking that she squirted at least an ounce of fluid all over the nurse, so if the nurse had been a little faster on the draw with the scale, Sunshine would’ve broken the six pound mark. Cricket was six pounds nine ounces. Both of them had a full head of fuzzy black hair. Funny how rapidly Sunshine turned blonde afterward, though. We blame it on the water around here. Everyone in this state is blonde, it seems. (No, she was not switched at birth. It wasn’t THAT rapid of a switch. And besides, the baby in the bassinet next to hers weighed over ten pounds. I’d have noticed the difference.)
For her birthday this year we had a Strawberry Shortcake beach party. Normally around here we limit the number of party invitees to the same number as the age of the birthday child–in this case six. However, Sunshine is such a social little critter that to get just her closest friends, the ones she plays with all the time, we had to either issue eight invitations or hurt someone’s feelings by leaving them out. Rather different than planning a party for Cricket The Antisocial. Lol. So we invited all eight. There were still some peripheral friends from church and school who didn’t get invites, but eight six year olds is plenty for a good time and we got all the most important ones. We set up a wading pool and a sprinkler in the back yard and had everyone wear their swimsuit and bring a towel. While we waited for everyone to arrive we watched a beach party episode on a Strawberry Shortcake video. Then we went out to the side yard, laid out towels, which gave everyone a designated spot to sit and kept them from mauling the birthday girl while she opened presents. Then we sang off key, blew out the big number 6 candle, and dished out cake and “rainbow floats” made with swirled sherbet and Sprite in fancy little plastic cups with stems and a paper umbrella. They thought they were in heaven. Then they went and washed off all the sugar in the water. A good time was had by all. Even Pop, who got sprayed good by an overenthusiastic party goer moving the sprinkler….lol.
While she gushed over all her gifts, the one she has been the most excited about has been the “Mini Butterfly Bungalow” from her adored big brother. She spent the first week and a half or so using it as a tent for little plastic puppies and kittens and other assorted “Littlest Petshop” friends while she waited with high anticipation for the larvae to arrive in the mail. Do you remember how exciting it is to expect something in the mail when you’re six? Seems to me that hordes of ingesters of “recreational substances” are really seeking in vain to recapture that high. Nothing like it. They arrived safely last week, three little fuzzy black critters in a cup with green sludge in the bottom for them to feed on. Happily, painted lady butterflies have a short, rapid life cycle. They grow so quickly that you can see the difference in their size from one day to the next—and even from morning to evening. (This is our third batch so we know what to expect, which is nice.) Yesterday two of them turned chrysalis, and the third one looked to be getting ready this morning. We may get to move them into the “tent” this evening or early tomorrow. They should be butterflies just in time to take them to school and show her new first grade class. She is SOOOOOO EXCITED!!! to be starting school again this week. Playing with a friend or three every day during the summer was just not filling her social appetite sufficiently. I think sometimes that Cricket handed off his share of sociality to her on his way out of heaven. He’s had friends over a little, but most of the time is perfectly content all on his own. In another place and time he would have made an excellent mountain man, wise old hermit (we could’ve rigged him a long beard until one grew in), or alpine sheep herder. Sunshine is likely to soak up the spotlight wherever she goes.
Ok, so our social worker stopped by this morning to get to know us. We had a really good chat, and we think she’ll be great to work with. After getting to know us, and our reasoning a bit, she mentioned that she had with her some very basic profile information on a little girl who has recently become available for adoption. She said she thought it was such an interesting coincidence that we should happen upon the scene just at the time when they need a family for her. Usually people who want to adopt are looking for babies, but here WE are with our unusual age preference, just at the right time…and there SHE is, with her unusual availability…heh. There was nothing too scary in the info she shared with us, so cogs are turning for the next step. There are at least two other families being considered, so the next step is more waiting (of course…lol) while the committee meets to discuss options. But she is currently in a shelter situation, which means they want to get her settled somewhere more permanent asap, so if we are selected it could all happen rather quickly (or else we won’t be selected, and we’ll be back to where we were). The next step if we’re selected will be an information gathering stage where we get a lot more specific information about this child and then get to make our decision about whether we still want her or not. Then we presumably would have a few visits to get acquainted. But all that won’t be worked out unless or until we’re actually selected. This will involve some travel, as she is on the other side of the state, but at least there are no airplanes involved. 
We’re trying not to get our hopes too high. But it’s hard not to fall in love, and it will be hard to say no if the additional information turns up something we can’t live with. We WOULD say no if we thought we needed to, but oh it would be hard!
Anyway, we’re feeling a little dazed today. But in a happy way.