Tinker Bell had her first visit with her mom and dad today since coming to stay with us. The Case aid said it was a good visit, but obviously Tinker is confused by the enitre situation. Let's see, she lived with mom and dad, was in the hospital for a few weeks, went home with a stranger (first foster mom), lived with her for a month, moved to our house, hadn't seen mom and dad for almost 3 weeks, two hour visit today and then back to our house. It's confusing to me and I understand the what's and why's of it all, I just can't imagine what is going through her little developing mind.
She fell asleep briefly on the way home from her visit, I would guess it was no more than a 10-15 minute nap at the most, but that was all it took, she wasn't having anything to do with a nap when she got home. We tried, she tried but it just wasn't happening. She's was literally throwing herself around in the playpen, not having a fit, but laughing hysterically and appearing to be having a good time. I'm suspecting that it was some sort of coping mechanism and some way to deal with her emotions that she doesn't understand, as she had never done it before. After about a half hour of that, I decided she had some pent up energy that needed to be released and gave up on the idea of getting her down for a nap today, so I let her out to play. She was a little grumpy the rest of the day, probably partially due to missing her regular nap and partially due to what must have been a very difficult day having to say goodbye to mommy and daddy again after not seeing them at all for so long.
I decided to feed her an early dinner rather than waiting for ours to be done, just incase she didn't make it awake that long. That was a good call, she finished the last bite of her dinner and her eyes were closing as she was still chewing in the high chair. I woke her up just enough to finish swallowing, get a quick cleanup and it was off to bed. She slept sound for about an hour and a half, and then she woke up crying, I tried to comfort her but she didn't want anything to do with me. Lynsey tried too and she pushed her away as well. I'm quite certain she was dreaming about or reconcilling the days events as well as she could. Its really sad when these foster kids rage out after visits, especially when they are not verbal enough that you can discuss how they are feeling and why they are feeling that way. Its not that they don't want to see their parents, its usually quite the opposite, it doesn't matter if they have been abused or neglected, they still love their parents, its all they knew before foster care, they are angry and don't understand why they can't be with them. Eventually Tinker took the singing Barney from Lynsey and drifted back to sleep.
Hubby is going to have his hands full tomorrow, I have to go into the office and I bet she'll be up before sunrise going to bed as early as she did.
Well, we finally got a placement agreement today, which really only means that she can get WIC now (all foster kids of the right age qualify, you just have to have the paper to prove they are fosters) and that we have something that officially states that we did not kidnap this little girl incase we have some nosey neighbors wondering where she came from.
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