Getting to Know Our Daughters

8/7

Their first overnight at our house went pretty well. We anticipated that bedtime would be very scary for them in a new house, especially because going to sleep is the ultimate vulnerability. They also do have nightmares/night terrors and so obviously that makes it even more vulnerable. Not to mention we haven't created or established or practiced bedtime routines over and over, so it's all very new and exciting. It took us three hours to get all of them asleep, which may just be the norm for us for a little while until they settle in and we figure out the best routine to set them up for success. But all things considered, we had them all asleep by 10pm, they all slept through the night, and they didn't have any potty accidents. So that feels like a solid medium-sized miracle. And it's a great place to start. Everyone was relatively well rested the next day, if a little sleepy.

We put water in the water table only to discover that the girls really wanted to get inside the water table. They like playing with water, but their main objective is to get as wet as possible. So we went to the community pool, which is set up really well for kids. It's unclear if our older two kids have been to a swimming pool before but if they have it's certainly not been more than once or twice. And we suspect our youngest has never been. We have life vests (like modern water wings) for them and we just let them slowly get more confident in the water. We definitely want to do swim lessons with them at some point in the near future. They are low key obsessed with the pool right now, and that's great because it wears them out. 

Also we had to brave a trip to Target to buy them bathing suits! We reiterated like 20 times before getting there that we were getting ONLY three things at Target - their three bathing suits. And of course when we got there it was, "Can we get that? Can I buy candy? Why not??" So we told them there are lots of temptations in Target and asked them how many things we were going to buy at Target today. That was helpful. I think next time I will tell them we are going to play a game where we each have an imaginary basket and we can pretend to put things in our imaginary baskets (kind of like the If I had a million dollars sort of activity). That kind of thinking helps to satisfy cravings a little bit even if it's not 100% instant gratification.

The kids also met the dog for the first time this weekend, and they really love him. Sometimes too much! We reminded them of the animal safety rules, which we have posted on the wall (only grown ups pick up the animals, if the animals run away from us we have to respect their space, etc). Luckily our cat always wants to be petted so that makes for an easy redirection when the dog runs away, which is frequent. "Oh, he doesn't want to be petted right now. We have to respect that. Look, kitty wants to be petted!" Translation: kitty is currently asleep and doesn't give a crap what you do.

A couple of times while they were here they wanted to know if they were sleeping over "forever and ever yet." We explained that right now they are sleeping over just one night but next weekend it will be forever and ever. They are very excited about moving in, although I don't think they've realized that it also means saying goodbye to their foster parents. Their therapist is going to be working on some of that transitional stuff with them and we are going to try to get a photo of them together with their foster parents for their life book. We hope that we can still see their foster parents a couple of times a year, as it can be very beneficial for kids to have connections with their past. But they will need some time away from them first in order to solidify their attachment with us and deeply feel the transition of caregiving from the foster parents to us.

Two more weeknight visits left, and then it's move-in time! So this is our last week of work for both of us. I will have 16 weeks off and John will have 6 weeks up front with subsequent 1-week periods later. The older two girls start school in just over two weeks, and we will have the youngest at home with us for several hours on school days. This will be great for us to work on some of the delays she has left over from a life of neglect, including speech, listening to an entire picture book, sitting down to eat, using forks and spoons, and not pulling all the tissues out of the tissue box one by one, to name a few. We anticipate that she will make a lot of progress when we are home with just her. We will eventually put her in some sort of pre school situation, but for now we think we can help her a lot by being 1-1 with her.


8/2

The weeknight visits are super intense because we have to pack up, order food, pick up food, drive to BART, take the train for two hours, walk to their foster home from the station, pick up the girls, walk them to the park, enjoy the park for an hour, walk them back to the foster house, walk back to BART, wait for a train, take the train for two hours, and drive home from the station. This whole time we are carrying all of our food and water and supplies (in 100 degree weather), and the park does not have drinking fountains. The process starts before 3pm and we get home after 9pm, all so that we can see our girls for 90 minutes. It would take us even longer if we tried to drive because of rush hour traffic. This is not a typical visitation schedule. Most people we know going through this process or who have gone through this process see their kids once a week until they move in. Our aggressive, four times per week pre-placement schedule is very unusual and a big part of the design of it was to attempt to settle the kids into our house before the school year starts.

As grueling as these evenings are (and the following day at work), they are totally worth it. The girls are making enormous progress in attaching with us during each visit. Even their therapist said she is shocked at how quickly they are attaching to us. But the most wonderful thing about it is that we love being with our kids. Weather they are laughing or crying or sad or disappointed or angry or defiant, we love being there for them and using each moment as an opportunity to deepen our connection with them. We have done a whole lot of research and self-education on attachment, trauma, grief, loss, adoption, trans-racial adoption, etc, and it is all paying off now as we parent our children in the best possible way we can. 

My favorite thing we learned about is emotion coaching, one of the tenants of which is to recognize your child's display of emotion (whining, crying, pouting, yelling) as an opportunity to become closer with them and coach them through a situation that is difficult for them. It may seem like something stupid to get upset about, but showing that you care about how they are feeling and that you want to help them to feel better teaches them how to regulate their emotions and helps them understand their own self-worth. Kids whose parents emotion-coach get better grades, sleep better, get sick less often, are less likely to experiment with drugs or risky behaviors, and grow up to have healthier relationships and happier lives. And the best part is that we have come to really cherish the moments when we are helping one of our kids when they are devastated that their sister flushed the toilet before they did or the twig they were playing with broke in half.

To learn more about emotion coaching (whether you have kids or not!), we highly recommend the short book What Am I Feeling? (https://www.amazon.com/What-Feeling-John-Gottman-PhD/dp/1884734529/ref=sr_1_1) or the longer book Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child (warning: this book is a bit sexist and deeeeply heteronormative, but if you can ignore that aspect, it has absolutely invaluable information that is all research-backed).


7/29


First visit to our house! They came over for the day. We did A LOT with them. We played with toys, played with the cat (we boarded Gandhi for their first visit to reduce variables), went to the park at the school up the street, went to the park at the bottom of the hill, pretended to sleep in their beds, tried on new pajamas, drew on the white board, read books, watched My Little Pony, ate lunch and dinner, marked their heights on the wall, went down to the yard to "look for treasure", and jumped on mami and papi's bed. Our oldest did some major bonding with John yesterday. She asked him to carry her like a baby, and he did for quite some time. Great workout for him, and as he put it, "She deserves and needs it." So that was wonderful to watch.

The girls did seem a little nervous/excited at first but they chilled out and got into the routine of things. They wanted to know if they could spend the night, and we told them no, they will spend the night next weekend. We also reiterated that they will move in the following weekend. Their therapist said they seem totally ready, so even though this is a fast transition, she thinks they will be successful with the timeline. Also we are starting to understand our youngest's threenager version of spanglish better. A lot of it is just her declaring names of ponies ("bodash" = rainbow dash, "labago" = twilight sparkle). We were hoping and praying we could get our older two girls into the school that's only a block away from our house (it was not guaranteed bc they fill up quickly), and we found out today that they did get enrolled there! The alternative would have been a 15 min drive, so this is definitely easier. Plus it's an awesome school. Overall, things are going really well and we are so in love with our little bundles of joy. We're still getting our footing on things, but that's to be expected.


7/21 and 7/22

Saturday at the park with their therapist was really great. She really helped us to make a slow transition and set us up for success. A huge turning point with our oldest daughter becoming comfortable with John's presence was when there was a cockroach under the picnic table and she asked the therapist to squish it because she was really scared, and the therapist said "Daddy's gonna squish it!" and John jumped up and squished it. From there on out, daddy was the protector. It was incredible how this cockroach saved our family. I want to make a shrine for it. We all sat down together to eat lunch and the girls played in a nearby water fountain and when there was a bee there, John protected them from the bee. Cut to five minutes later and we're all hanging out together drawing with sidewalk chalk and playing frisbee and being close to each other and laughing.

Sunday we went to pick up the girls by ourselves for six hours. Went to pick up food, went to the park, sat down in the grass to eat, then went to play on the playground. Them wearing matching dresses made it easier to spot all of them on a busy and large playground. We made sure to stay in range of eye contact for all of them so that they could see we aren't going anywhere and we are making sure they are safe (we also told them that ahead of time). We also took breaks to bring their stimulation levels back down by coloring, going for a walk around the lake, and reading books. We snuggled with them a lot and they all wanted to be carried, so we tried to carry them as much as possible! It's really good for attachment. Our middle daughter wanted daddy to hold her like a baby, so he carried her around like a baby for a long time. We were all tired and happy by the time we got back in the car. 

We have a playlist for them for the car that consists of Frozen, Moana, Coco, Trolls, and My Little Pony soundtracks. Our two youngest love to sing along emphatically. The littlest always requests Moana and "Bee Me Dow!" which is a song that starts with the words "You're never gonna bring me down." On Saturday our middle daughter was telling us how it goes because we didn't know it and promised we would get it for Sunday. One of the lines she sang was "I not doing it a clapularity," and our oldest said "it's not clapularity!" but she couldn't remember the real words. We discovered on Sunday that the line goes "I'm not doing it for popularity." We like clapularity better :)

They are visiting our house for the first time next weekend (on the 29th), so we have a lot of stuff to do to get ready. We will see them Tues/Thurs evenings near their foster home for an hour and a half each, and then we'll see them for 8 hours on Sunday. We miss them so much but it's good to have some processing time in between visits to talk and problem solve and think about how we want to do things. Love to all! 💜💙💚💛


7/17

An evening visit with the girls went really well. Our oldest wasn’t ready to meet John yet but she wanted to meet me. I spent most of the evening in the room with her, and their therapist came in and out with notes from John. So there was a little bit of connection there even though she wasn’t ready to meet him. She was a bit nervous with me at first but I was surprised at how quickly she warmed up to me. She even leaned against me while I read her a book, and then asked if John was nice. The fact that she wanted my opinion indicates a level of trust already. And she poked her head out at John a few times, so she is definitely curious but also very nervous. We had made a video of us reading a book together and sent it to their therapist to show her ahead of time, and that went really well, so we are going to make more videos for her tomorrow and show them to her on Thursday. We are excited to see them again and it’s totally worth the two hours each way on the train (would be longer if we tried to drive). We’re both exhausted and excited and completely in love. 


7/14

I can't believe we met our daughters today, and that we have to wait three whole days to see them again! Actually, we only really met two of our daughters, as our oldest was very scared and wanted to stay in the bedroom. We said this was completely fine and we wanted to respect her needs. So we wrote her a note saying that we are excited to meet her when she is ready and that we are proud of her for asking for what she needs, and that we will return on Tuesday. Then their foster parents took a photo of us holding the note so she could feel that connection. Our other two daughters were very excited and made lots of eye contact and wanted us to read them the book we made for them with pictures of our house and our pets and ourselves. We brought them plush My Little Ponies and we asked them about the tv show they were watching. There were a lot of people in the room and the foster parents spoke with us quite a bit about the girls and their routines and how they wanted to help us out. They were great. And we figured out our visiting schedule for the next few weeks: 5:30 - 7 on Tues/Thurs, and longer times on Saturdays and Sundays. We made a schedule for the girls and we showed our middle daughter that where there is a sticker on the calendar that means we will come over to play. We showed her today, which had a sticker, and then tomorrow, then Monday, then Tuesday there is another sticker. She was very smiley and gave lots of eye contact. Honestly we were really impressed with how well she handled all of it. 

The meeting was at their current foster home and it was only for an hour. I think this was designed to not overwhelm them too much. And no, we don't have any photos yet. On Tuesday their therapist will come to our meeting with them, so she can help our oldest daughter with the scary feelings of meeting her new parents. In the meantime, we are going to take some videos and photos to send to them and maybe make some drawings for them too. We love them so, so, so much. We are really excited to go on this journey with them and eventually share with all of you the joy of playing with them!

7/10

AHHHHHH! We got a proposed transition schedule and it's a LOT faster than we thought. Basically we are going to see them all day Saturdays and Sundays, and on Tues/Thurs evenings until they move in, which is tentatively set for Aug 11. The social worker assured us that if we or the kids need more time, we can push the date. The most important thing is that everyone feels ready.


But meanwhile we have a lot less time to get things ready at home than we thought, not only because they are moving in soon but because we are going to be spending all our free time between now and then bonding with them and parenting them. So this Sunday is our last weekend day of not being a parent. Forever. We are trying to prioritize our list and figure out what can be done later. Love to all 💙💚💛💜

7/4

Somehow we are matched with the most incredible kids in the world, who come with an incredible social worker and an incredible therapist, and their whole team is fiercely dedicated to them. It honestly seems unbelievable. We are going to have the best support system possible, especially during this transition.

We spoke at length with their therapist today, and she gave us more insight into their personalities, triggers, coping skills, interests, and needs. She said that she is here for us 110%, and we responded that we are 110% ready to take any and all advice she has for us. She said that she has never heard that in her entire career working with foster kids. We found this kind of astounding. Why wouldn't you want to take the advice of someone who knows as much as she does? I'm not saying people should blindly put their faith in just anyone, but this person knows her sh**. 

We are going to mail her the book we made about our house so that she can share it with the girls in their next session. They know that their social worker found a forever family for them and they are excited and nervous and curious. The book will be really helpful and we're glad they'll get to see it before we meet them. It's a nice, safe introduction to us and our home and our pets. And apparently they LOVE books. Can you believe that? I can't wait to read with them. 

And then on July 14th we are going to meet our daughters! It will only be one hour (probably best not to overwhelm them) at their current foster home. I honestly have no words to describe how I feel just thinking about this. 

As a reminder, the transition process often looks like this: 


First meeting is short and at their current foster home. Then we set up a time to come back and take them out to a park, then another time we will have them over to our house for dinner, then have them over for a sleepover, then for a weekend. This allows us to build up trust with them, to show them that we follow up on our promises, and to ease them into our family and our home. When they feel ready to move in and their therapist and social worker think they are ready, they will obtain a court order for their official move in date. We have no idea how long this will take, but we are taking it one day at a time and we are beyond excited to get started.

How You Can Help Our Kids

People are eager to help us out with our new daughters, and we can't tell you how much that means to us. There are so, so many ways we need help and they might not be exactly what you think (or as glamorous as you might think). I decided to put together a list of ways people can help, which I plan to update as needed. I hope this also gives folks an idea of the many ways there are to help foster kids, even if you can't be a foster parent yourself! 

A lot of these are things we can do without help, but we can't do all of them without any help. However, we're not looking for you to do things that you don't already enjoy though, so...

Let us know if there is something on this list that excites you!

💜💙💚💛💖

Research and Preparation Help

• Come over and install a hanging ceiling light in the girls' bedroom (they currently just have a floor lamp)
• Make a "St John Bat Signal" google group of people who are willing to help us when we need it. That way we can email out if there is something we need and if someone is available they can volunteer to help us :)
• Research options for securing trunk items in case of car accident
• Kid shows - research and create a spreadsheet of kid shows or family shows
• especially Spanish and Spanglish
• starring brown people, esp girls and women and queer people
• spreadsheet would ideally contain: show title, very brief description, where it can be watched (we have an apple tv, limited cable, hulu, netflix instant, amazon prime video, hbo go)
• Organization - come to our house to help us figure out how to organize better/use our space better AND/OR come help us actually accomplish that
• entry way - shoes, coats for adults and kids
• living room - couch area, charging cords, small tables - fitting an art table?
• bedrooms - finishing storage/closets, organizing clothes
• kitchen - mostly storage organization issues
• bathrooms - install towel hook (already purchased)
• De-Junking
• come over and help us go through things we don't need in various parts of the house
• take our unwanted stuff to donation centers, the dump, and elsewhere

Housework and Pet Help

Notes: We have a team of cleaning people who do the floors, counters, bathrooms, etc but we have other house work items that we would love help with. Especially in our first year or so, we need to be spending as much time as possible directly caring for and playing with the kids, so any house work you can help us with will allow us more time to help them attach and heal.

• Be part of a list of people I can reach out to for dog sitting and/or cat sitting
• dog sitting would be more for daytime things like trainings we have to attend or court dates
• cat sitting would be if we are gone overnight (probably further in the future)
• Mail Elimination
• we were devastated when PaperKarma went out of business, and we are constantly drowning in a sea of mail, including for people who haven't lived here for five years, including new(!!) subscriptions to magazines for people who haven't lived here for five years
• take a pile of mail from us and attempt to somehow get us off the mailing list
• Bay Area Christmas Housing for my mom
• My mom is visiting for a week this Christmas and we don't know yet if the kids will be settled enough for her to stay at our house. Do you live on the peninsula and have a room she could stay in? Alternatively, will you be gone over Christmas and are willing to let her stay at your place? (note: She is allergic to cats and some dogs). This would be really helpful for keeping our kids on their normal routines
• Laundry, Dishes, Errands
• come over and help us deal with undoubtedly an enormous pile of laundry to fold, an enormous pile of dirty dishes to run through the dishwasher, and/or various errands
• I'm still working on this list....let me know if you have any suggestions not listed!

Self Education

• Read "What Am I Feeling?" by John Gottman (very short book and we have extra copies if you are local) so that you can eventually come help with babysitting
• Learn about adoption microaggressions and educate others (spoiler: don't tell our daughters that they are lucky)

Registry

     http://a.co/9X9r1jv

Cultural Help

• Music - Curate playlist(s) (on Apple Music?) of music:
• by Mexican/Chicano artists
• in Spanish
• in English
• in Spanglish
• Mexican/Chicano traditional music
• Mexican/Chicano pop music
• Mexican/Chicano EDM/techno/dance music
• Mexican/Chicano kids music (especially traditional kid songs and lullabies in Spanish)
• NOTE: we have a subscription to apple music. Is there a way for someone to create a list there and share it with us...? Need research
• Books - Research, identify, and/or buy children's books (please let us vet them first!)
• prefer hardbound
• love used books
• prefer non-branded books (not Frozen, My Little Pony, etc)
• prefer books with high picture to words ratio
• especially in need of bilingual books in both Spanish and English, and those in just Spanish
• Art - Research, identify, make, and/or buy art (please let us vet these as well since we will be putting them on our walls!)
• especially prefer from Mexican/Chicano artists
• depicting brown people
• depicting traditional and modern Mexican styles
• Food - make us food or snacks! (NOTE: no cilantro, or at least a safe batch without)
• Mexican and Mexican-inspired dishes are what we need most!
• traditional food from other cultures as well (no cilantro 😊)
• even just making food for us once will be super helpful!
• Toys - research, identify, and/or buy (please check with us first!)
• dolls that are brown, especially dolls with wavy or straight black hair
• other toys that have brown kids/people (eg this type of toy only has white kids 😒)
• traditional Mexican toys
• Role Models
• we need people in our kids' lives that look like them
• we need people in our kids' lives that don't look like them (we've got it pretty well covered on the white people front), including people of different races, gender identities, ability/disability statuses
• Spanish Speakers (I speak enough Spanish to get by and we are both working hard on our Spanish)
• come speak Spanish with us and our kids
• be part of a list of people we can ask for help with translations, common slang, or nuanced meanings
• Other - let me know if you have other ideas not listed here that you are interested in!

One, Two, Three! (earlier posts)

7/4

Somehow we are matched with the most incredible kids in the world, who come with an incredible social worker and an incredible therapist, and their whole team is fiercely dedicated to them. It honestly seems unbelievable. We are going to have the best support system possible, especially during this transition.

We spoke at length with their therapist today, and she gave us more insight into their personalities, triggers, coping skills, interests, and needs. She said that she is here for us 110%, and we responded that we are 110% ready to take any and all advice she has for us. She said that she has never heard that in her entire career working with foster kids. We found this kind of astounding. Why wouldn't you want to take the advice of someone who knows as much as she does? I'm not saying people should blindly put their faith in just anyone, but this person knows her sh**. 

We are going to mail her the book we made about our house so that she can share it with the girls in their next session. They know that their social worker found a forever family for them and they are excited and nervous and curious. The book will be really helpful and we're glad they'll get to see it before we meet them. It's a nice, safe introduction to us and our home and our pets. And apparently they LOVE books. Can you believe that? I can't wait to read with them. 

And then on July 14th we are going to meet our daughters! It will only be one hour (probably best not to overwhelm them) at their current foster home. I honestly have no words to describe how I feel just thinking about this. 

As a reminder, the transition process often looks like this: 

First meeting is short and at their current foster home. Then we set up a time to come back and take them out to a park, then another time we will have them over to our house for dinner, then have them over for a sleepover, then for a weekend. This allows us to build up trust with them, to show them that we follow up on our promises, and to ease them into our family and our home. When they feel ready to move in and their therapist and social worker think they are ready, they will obtain a court order for their official move in date. We have no idea how long this will take, but we are taking it one day at a time and we are beyond excited to get started.

---------

7/3 

We have a tentative date to meet our daughters for the very first time on July 14th. It will only be an hour because they don't want to overwhelm the girls. It will be at their current foster home. More details as they come <3

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6/25 

We are matched with our kids! I don't want to post too much info about them, partly because we are still in the early stages and partly because some of it is personal and it's their story to tell, not ours. But I will say that while we were looking for two kids, we actually fell in love with three (eek)! Three girls, incredibly resilient and wonderful and beautiful and we are beyond excited to meet them. The older two girls are school-age and the youngest is three years old.

We have no idea what the timeline will look like, and it may not be possible to predict. We need some further training and the girls need to get to know us slowly to build trust and security. They HAVE to feel safe and ready to move in with us. Rushing this process could be incredibly traumatic for them. I think it's safe to assume the transition will take quite some time (probably several months? We just don't know). But we will have tons of support before and after placement and we are excited to start this journey.

Before you get excited about seeing pictures of them, please know that we won't be able to share photos until they are adopted, at least not photos with their faces. This is for security reasons, but we promise to take tons of photos and share them with you at a later time. When you meet them you can take pictures but you can't send them or post them anywhere. And as for meeting them, please understand that we need a lot of time with them alone before they can meet others. This is for their emotional health, and we will be working closely with their therapist and social worker around all decision-making, including introducing family and friends.

Words cannot describe how excited and honored we are to be these girls' parents. We will try to keep everyone posted. Love, love, love, Ava and John 💜💛💙