Three Weeks In

My first post on my very own blog. Yikes...there's so much pressure.

The purpose of this blog is to document the adventures that occur during our journey in parenthood. I guess to start off it would be good to catch everyone up on the history of how and why we became parents to an 8 year old little man named William. William is Lawrence's (my partner) nephew. William has been in foster care for over a year (February 2007). It was in his best interest that he was removed from his parent's house. At first everyone thought that it would only be a temporary thing and that his mom would do what she needed to do to get him back. It quickly became apparent that wasn't going to be the case. So, last summer we started the process to become licensed foster parents (or kinship parents because we are his family) for William. We actually were ready to go in October of 2007, but there was a delay of several months due to some school issues. It is really complicated, but I'll say that in St. Louis the city and county are separate entities and their school districts don't play well together. William goes to school in St. Louis County at a school for kid's with behavioral issues, but we live in St. Louis City. Anyway, it finally all got worked out and the state moved him into our house on Saturday March 15, 2008.

It has been an interesting couple of weeks. The first week was insane because his bus situation wasn't set up. We would drive him to school and pick him up and take him to his after school program. I missed many hours of work. Luckily I've been at this job for 5 and a half years and they were flexible with me during this time. The second week we had him was his spring break and he went to visit his grandparents at their B&B in Hermann, Missouri. The third week started out great, his bus situation was in place and we could all settle in to some routine. Of course Monday morning the bus has mechanical difficulties and never shows up. I take William to school, get to work late, and then two hours later get a call from school that he has the chicken pox. So I took another week off work to be with the chicken pox boy. Luckily he had the vaccine and had a pretty mild case, but let's be honest it is still the chicken pox. We tried everything to keep him from itching.
And as you can tell from the SpongeBob pajamas, bedspread, and alarm clock- we are dealing with a hard core SpongeBob fan here.

We have just started week four and while Monday morning was rough after not being at school for two weeks, we are starting to find a routine and settle in.