Holiday Greetings,
This year went by so fast. Some of you know and I guess some of you don’t….Connor Gene joined our family at the end of last November. He came home just before Christmas after spending three weeks in the hospital being weaned off of heroin. He is our grandson and Audrie’s little brother.
So for those who don’t know….Cassie got pregnant last spring. Her plan was to give the baby up for adoption. When it came down to it, that didn’t happen. The state of Washington stepped in and took custody of Connor. They contacted us and asked us to take him since we have Audrie, even though we didn’t have certain paternity. We talked about it and let our hearts decide. I already knew he was ours.
The next year was filled with diapers, bottles, supervised parent visits with Mike and Cassie and then later Wes, who thought he was the dad, background checks, relative placement through CPS, doctor appointments, educational opportunities screenings for development, pediatric development, home health nurse visits, CASA visits and all the normal baby life stuff.
This in turn got Audrie being monitored also and she had several months of speech therapy. Lucky for us that happened at home.
We got the final paternity results at the end of October that said Mike was his father. It was nice to have it be confirmed and we could get on with life. Wes got his heart broke as he really wanted to be the dad. The results came in just as it was time for the state to do a permanency hearing. That is where they decide what is going to happen next. Both Mike and Cassie have pretty much quit doing visits and neither one to date has opted to jump through the hoops necessary to get him back. So it was ruled that it is time to look at permanent custody for us just like we have with Audrie.
I’ve heard a lot of complaints and I’ve heard a lot of support. I take the complaints with a grain of salt. I love the support. Yes I think it is ridiculous for grandparents to be raising grandchildren. And yet it is what it is for a lot of us. Look at the alternative when the parents can’t parent for whatever reason. For us we would not have it any other way since our little kids can’t live with their parents.
The rest of the year has been playing at parks, hiking, trips to the zoo, trips north to see their cousins and aunt and uncle and now Nana Nita. We have been dealing with Mike’s addiction and trying to keep consistent boundaries. We deal with Dave’s recovery. Dave also had another surgery this year for a fusion in his neck. We managed to get away by ourselves for our anniversary and spent a weekend in Seattle. Spending time with Mom. She gets a little more forgetful all the time and we just roll with it.
We are just living life in increments of child time. And they are really great little kids, but then I am prejudiced. The old saying is be careful what you wish for. When Mike was about ten I wished we would have had more kids. ) Life is good.
Hope this finds you as happy as I am
This holiday season.
No comments:
Post a Comment