Fostering The Love In Kansas

1,200 days... 28,800 hours... 1,728,000 minutes... That is how long Little Man has been in my life.  And my life has changed in more than 2 million ways. That's 1,200 days that his life has been in my hands and honestly, mine has been in his.  In those 1,200 days here is what I have learned about being a mom. 1. I am no longer calling myself his "foster" mom but rather just mom and that has been the most emotional change in my life.  I see myself as his mom, he is my son. 2.  The amount of times people have told me how much they are amazed of the changes in Little Man in even the last 6 months proves that we are doing something right, even when it's exhausting, repetitive, and doesn't seem to be working. 3. The village needs to get bigger. In order to provide more support to myself, Jay, and to Little Man, I need to ask for more help. I have done a disservice to Little Man and others by sheltering him and others from his differences and because of that...

This milestone in my life is not case related.  But is rather one related to the normalcy of life with Little Man. Today, he is graduating kindergarten.  I may have only cried a little bit when I dropped him off and clutched him enough to make him wriggle a bit but totally bawled when I drove away. He repeated kindergarten because he just wasn't ready for 1st grade last year.  He and I worked really hard over the summer in 2016 to get him to a point where he was going into the 2nd round of kindergarten prepared and really where he needed to be. I didn't have to fight hard to get the school to have him repeat kindergarten.  It was the best thing for him. Everyone could see that. So today is a celebration for not only Little Man but his teachers, his special ed teachers, his para's, and his school.  Everyone worked extremely hard to get him to this point. Look at that grin!