This is Different

I won't be posting this right away. I need to think about it. But this adoption is different. Being a foster parent, you fall in love with the children who are placed in your care. They become "yours" in your heart. But in your mind, they are NOT yours. They have a family. They will be going home.
It is a very fine line to walk.
With Baby Girl, it was instantaneous love for her. But we knew she would go home one day. (of course she didn't) We knew that she would be the one to rip our hearts out the day that she would have to return home.
She came at three weeks old....and let me tell you, if my head had been thinking straight to realize that meant feedings every 4 hours that INCLUDED during the time that I was suppose sleep, I would have said no! But my heart won out and I said yes.
At eight months old the turning point came in her case. Her BM decided she could not parent and asked if we would be willing to adopt. OMGoodness, you have no idea how overjoyed we were. We KNEW it was a blessing and that God was giving us a HUGE gift.
At this point, she only knew us as mommy and daddy. It was easy. We loved her and she loved us.

I mean seriously, when she comes to you with that face and tells you that she is bleeding on both sides of her fingers and "Look, I got the band aids all by myself!" How can you not love her? How she got them both wrapped by herself is beyond me.

Then Missionary Boy. He actually came to us a week before Baby Girl. He was suppose to be "only a couple of weeks kinds of thing"...LOL...ummm yeah, not so. He just stayed, and stayed, and stayed. He kinda grew on us... No, seriously, he is a great kid. We are blessed to have him as well. When it came to the point that his case moved to adoption, the acceptance was already there. We were the parents, he accepted us as his parents. We loved him as our son and he loved us as his parents. We knew where we stood. We also had the understanding that he still had "another" family.

Then we got the call for Lil Bambino. He was 11 months old. His case was explained as "straight to TPR and adoption". But with the wishy-washy stuff that happens in cases like this...I still guarded my heart. When I got call for the court date to finalize I "dropped" the guard.

Now comes the difference. We have been in the process of getting a "match" for almost a year now. We wanted to adopt and didn't want to wait for the whole foster care thing...Foster Care is to help families REUNITE. So we want children who are "free" for adoption. Ones without families.

Let me tell you they HAVE families. Maybe not "legally" anymore...but they have families. Logically I know this. I pulled on those rose colored glasses and thought, "they will be just as happy to have a family as we are to have them".

That just is NOT reality. While I know they "like" it here....they would PREFER to be with their family...or even with their foster parents.

This is different. I fooled myself into believing that we would be one big happy family...I forgot about the work. There is work. It will be a LOT of work. It is going to take TIME.

So I am going to take a step back and pull off the glasses and get to work.