Fostering The Love In Kansas

With every line item checked off towards adoption, there is a time period that comes afterward that kind of takes away from the glow of checking off an item. Today was SSI.  Kansas Legal Services called today to verify a lot of what I had already provided for Little Man to get SSI.  They were submitting his application for SSI this afternoon.  The woman we worked with stated she has no doubt that Social Security will approve it.   But it will be 4-6 months, most likely before that will happen. Which pushes back some plans I had.  It probably means I'll have to renew my foster license AGAIN.  It means the educational needs of Little Man are going to have to be handled differently than I wanted.  We will continue to have people in our home every month and this dysregulates Little Man every time.   I truly had hoped this would be done by March.  But it's not looking like it. I should be happy that things are going the way they are.  That we're in the home stretch.  Bec

Now that we are in the homestretch with the adoption of Little Man and going through the process of getting him set up with SSI and disability services, I get a lot of emails and phone calls.  Most of the time, it's just me being copied on correspondence between agencies. And most of the time, it's stuff over my head but I appreciate being kept in the loop. There has been a lot of terminologies being applied to Little Man. Some of them I have heard before, some are new.  There are some that are not news to me but some that are.  And then there are those that rankle me.  Get my blood boiling. The one that got me this morning was the B word. Little Man was described as being a burden.  He was being approved for services because he was going to be a burden on me and on society. And I saw RED... My child is not a burden.  He will never be a burden.  He's a lot of things but never a burden. He is a blessing .  He made me a mom and learn things about myself that I never k

This morning started off just like any other day.  I woke up, I got the boys up, I started the process of getting everyone ready and out the door.  Nothing different.  Except Little Man decided to pee on the couch instead of getting up and going to the bathroom. Not the end of the world. It happens to the best of us but this morning it just set off a chain of events in my head that resulted in me putting myself in timeout.  I sent myself to my room, closed the door, and cried a little. After he peed, instead of asking the "why" because I knew the answer would be "I don't know", I sent him to the bathroom and sprayed the couch down.  This isn't the first time someone has peed on the couch. Diapers/pull-ups leak, no one's fault. But this morning, Little Man had already taken his pull-up off and just chose to not get back up and go pee. I gently reminded him he needs to use the toilet and not just pee. I could see him starting to shut down so I left a