Mommy Guilt

Definition - feeling like crap because of something that you may or may not have had control over, that involves your kids(s).

This morning, I had to take my little CJ to the ER because he smashed his face at the playground, knocking out his front tooth. He had been trying to climb a ladder with a cracker in his hand and slipped. Honestly, he was more upset about losing the cracker than losing the tooth. Even so, talk about a Mommy guilt moment! In the moment, I would like to think that I held it together. It is easier to hold it together when you have an audience observing the chaos. As soon as we got home from the ER and I had a chance to process everything, I lost it.

Let me begin by saying that I've had Mommy guilt in the past. Working full-time stirred up plenty of guilty feelings (even though I know that was the best option for our family). The moments when I lose it and yell at CJ also open the flood gates of guilt. I'm sure I have a lot more examples. While I've experienced it before, nothing prepared me for the guilt that I felt today.

Once we knew that CJ was fine, my brain automatically turned against me and started the "what if" game. What if I had made him sit down while he finished his snack? What if I was on the equipment with him (implying that I could have prevented the fall)? What if we didn't go to the park today? And the list goes on.

What I wasn't thinking about were the other "what ifs." What if he had bit through his lip? What if he had gotten a concussion? What if I had walked to the park, instead of driving? Ahhh, that makes me feel a little better. This could definitely have been a much worse scenario.

Why is it so easy for us, as moms (and probably dads too), to blame ourselves when things happen to our children? I wish I had an answer. The best I can say is that we love them and don't want to see them suffer. I have worked all day to stop thinking about it, which is a little difficult because my son's smile is a constant reminder (see below).

Not even a knocked-out tooth could bring this guy down!

My answer? I prayed. I finally came to the realization that I cannot fix what happened, and that I probably could not have prevented it. With no other options left, I asked God to remove my guilt and allow me to be thankful that it was not worse. While I still feel bad that he had to experience such a bad fall, I do feel a lot more peace about everything. I just wish that I had gone to God first, instead of trying to rely on myself. That sentence could be the beginning a whole other blog post!

Fear of the Unknown

As I look at what the future holds for our family, I find myself a little scared. We've been in this holding pattern for the past three months. Now that the end of the initial process is near, I'm realizing just how comfortable I am where things are. That's not to say that I don't want to bring Alex home. It's just saying that talking about it is one thing, and doing it is another thing. Reality can be scary!

While I am having a hard time defining exactly what I'm thinking and feeling, a few of my fears are:
* Transitioning Alex from Ana's family to our family
* CJ's response to the upcoming changes
* Our feelings toward Alex
* Following the many rules and regulations related to fostering a child
* Preparing ourselves if/when we need to return Alex to Tucson

I had the same feelings when we were in the adoption process. When you work for something for so long, I think it's only natural to experience a little anxiety when you get close to the end. Ultimately, it's just a fear of the unknown, and we have a lot of unknowns in our future right now.

The best I can do is just trust that God has His hand firmly on our family, and will guide us throughout the next year. Your prayers and support definitely help as well.

To give a quick update, we went in for our second set of fingerprints for the licensing department. We're waiting for them to call us to set up the walk-through of our house. Once that is complete, they'll submit our paperwork to Arizona and we'll just wait to be told when we can head down to Tucson. Yesterday, we got some paperwork from the State of Arizona to complete, so I know things are moving forward there.

One Step Closer!!

We are now one step closer to bringing Alex home! On Friday night, we attended our final kinship foster training class. I wish I could say that we ended the class with positive attitudes, but that just wouldn't be true. In fact, I think my blood pressure actually went up during this final session. It was as if the people in our class realized that this was their last chance to share facts about their lives, so they wanted to purge everything. The instructors actually wanted to let us out early, but they could not control the random stories, thoughts and complaints that our classmates had to share. We ended up leaving just 10 minutes early.

The last three weeks, we've talked about discipline, boundaries and the logistics of foster care. I've found little tidbits of helpful info each week, but in general much of what was discussed was also shred in our adoption class. I actually appreciated this last session. I took the class in hopes of learning the rules and regulations, timeline, and logistics of being a foster parent. Well, in all reality I took the class because I had to, but I had decided to use the experience to better understand what we were committing to. This last class finally clarified several questions that we had going into the process.

I have been surprised by some of the differences between foster care and adoption. In the end, I'm glad we had to take the class because I did learn a lot about the requirements needed to be a foster family. I just hope we can remember all those details when we're in the middle of trying to parent two children.