Our Road to Building a Family - Our First Visit to the ER

It's been roughly a month since the situation I'm going to recount in this blog entry took place, and to be 100% honest with you we've been on a bit of a roller coaster ever since then regarding matters relating to the Duke's health. I don't want that to alarm anyone because he's really fine, it's just that we've had an interesting few weeks and it all began the morning of Wednesday, January 28.

Our routine is such that every weekday morning my wife & I get up between 6-6:15 AM to begin our day. My wife will get her shower and get dressed whereas I'll do what's necessary to prep Duke for his day. This always involves changing his diaper into a fresh Pampers Swaddler (they come with a Sesame Street character on them; I've grown fond of talking to the character, and I end the conversation with "I'm sorry but you're about to have a very bad day..."), sometimes a fresh outfit (depending on whether or not we re-dressed him the night before), and maybe a bottle if he's feeling hungry. Pretty standard stuff in the way of infant maintenance, and his attitude is such that he's very cheerful throughout whatever processes we're involved with. He's really quite remarkable in that regard.

The morning in question, though, Duke was not his normal self. He was fussy to the point of seeming agitated. Duke is a very warm-natured lad, much like myself, but I knew as soon as I touched his forehead that he was much warmer than what he should've been. We checked his temperature (in the most invasive manner possible - sorry, son, but it had to be done) and that verified what we both feared. He had a fever in the area of 102 at that moment. We checked it again a few minutes later and it had risen to 103.

That being the case, my wife & I - being the first time parents that we are - did what first time parents are bound to do when their baby is sick, that being to completely freak out in regard to what needs to be done next.

We threw on some clothes (I think I might have been wearing jogging pants, an old t-shirt I normally do yard work in, my cold-weather vest, a baseball cap, and a pair of Crocs - hey, at least I wasn't wearing socks with the Crocs), gathered up a few supplies for Duke in one of his travel bags, bundled him up in his car seat and drove as quickly as we could to the emergency room at the Regional Medical Center in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Why? Because that's what we had been told to do if he ever had any kind of urgent need, medically speaking.

My wife is somewhat familiar with the ER at RMC seeing as how she & I had been there several years prior when she thought she'd been bitten by a particularly nasty spider - turned out she had an infected hair follicle. (I will never let her live that down, ever.) When we got to the ER on this occasion we were somewhat haphazardly checked in by the staff at the admissions desk. (FYI: Patient identification wristbands that are sized for an adult DO NOT fit an infant.) We didn't have to wait long before we were taken into the triage area where Duke's vitals were taken. We then progressed on to an examination room where Duke was given a battery of tests to try and determine what was going on with him.

This experience made me realize that even though doctors and nurses can do amazing things these days thanks to medical science, the techniques they have for harvesting data from someone like Duke are rather infuriating to witness as a parent. At one point we waited outside the examination room while two nurses tried to get a blood and urine sample from him. Suffice to say when you hear your child screaming like he was then your instinct is to run to them, but we couldn't - we'd have only been in their way. I was able to get in on the act myself later on, though, as I was tasked with holding him in place while he was given a chest x-ray. As an aside to the unpleasantness we were all a part of then, I did get a kick out of hearing the imaging technician said "We're going to need a big one..." to his nurse when they tried to put a protective vest on me.

I'm going to fast forward through some things here, mainly because of the fact most of it involves the three of us sitting in an examination room that was the size of a jail cell while people in all manner of disarray wandered by the door (that part just about made me lose my mind - you know you've had an interesting day when one of your memories from it is the sight of a guy in a hospital gown carrying what could have been either a container of his own sick or possibly some kind of sample). What it all boils down to is that after having his blood drawn, urine collected, nose swabbed (to check for RSV and flu), chest x-rayed, and probably a few other things I've put out of my mind, we were told Duke likely has "something viral" and that we should give him some Child's Tylenol to help sooth the fever.

We were there from 7:30 AM until 1:30 PM, and "something viral" is the best they could tell us. That and a prescription for an antibiotic were our only genuine takeaways from the experience. (Apparently there's someone else in Walgreen's accounting system with the same name as the one Duke's biological mother gave him; hopefully that fellow understands why his insurance has been billed for a prescription of apple-flavored amoxicillin.) In the days following our little day trip to the ER, we learned from other parents that "something viral" is a common explanation for a lot of things when it comes to diagnoses that are given to children. I believe this is why doctors are said to be medical practitioners - they're still practicing because they haven't gotten it right yet.

Even though "something viral" is the only cause that could be determined for Duke's fever his initial blood work showed a few oddities for which we've had to take him back for several more blood draws and further examination. The results of those tests have been similarly inconclusive with everyone involved (as in the people making six-figures a year, who drive Range Rovers and wear Movado watches) more or less shrugging their shoulders while saying, "Well, it's probably his body's reaction to something viral."

I think I'm going to start using that myself as an excuse in everyday life.

"Robert, why didn't you come to work today?"
"Oh, it was something viral..."

"Robert, why haven't you paid the mortgage in 5 months?"
"Oh, it was something viral..."

"Robert, you caused World War 3, why would you do that?"
"Oh, it was something viral..."

My personal opinion of these additional tests aside (I know a lot of doctors and nurses mean well but I also know some of them look at a patient like Duke as if he were a living, breathing ATM machine), it goes without saying that we'll do whatever we need to do in order to insure his health. I just wish we weren't over a barrel with these suggestions from his doctors. Almost any other parent in the world could have refused those tests but we have to go along with whatever they say because of the fact that we can't do anything to jeopardize our standing in the adoption process. It is what it is - I'm just glad he's doing better.

And now we know better as well. You have to take a few lumps in going through this rookie parenting thing.

We seem to learn something new every day because he's changing every day. Duke just turned four months old last week. He's to a point now where he's picking up on things visually more and more, and he's learning how to use his hands better. (Jill will attest to this as he's to a point where he'll reach up and grab her lovely blond hair.) One of his latest tricks is that he can raspberry rather well and he can make a very loud "smack" with his mouth. He's measuring in the area of 14-15 pounds and is a little more than 23 inches, which his pediatrician tells us puts him right in line where he should be in terms of his physical progression.

Our Road to Building a Family - 10 Things I've Learned from "The Duke"

I will be upfront in saying that with this list I'm ripping off my wife's recent post over at her blog, The Truesdale Times, wherein she discussed 10 things she's learned from the time we've had thus far with our foster/hopefully adoptive child, who will be known in these parts until further notice simply as The Duke.

10) I don't know what we would do without family & friends

I pointed out in my previous submission to this blog series the fact that my wife & I had absolutely nothing in our home that would make it a suitable dwelling for a newborn when we got the call about The Duke being available. As a matter of fact, we had gone to great lengths to prepare our home for older children as we never anticipated we'd have the opportunity to potentially adopt a baby. Everything we were told in the training sessions we were required to sit through before we could be approved as adoptive/foster parents lead us to believe we had a better shot at finding a four leaf clover, getting struck by lightning, and winning the lottery all in the same day than of getting a baby.

That said, I don't know where we'd be if not for donations and gifts from the people we're lucky enough to have as family and friends. What most couples prepare for over the course of 9 months we did in a matter of hours, but only because we are surrounded by people who love us and who were willing to participate in The Duke's life. To anyone who helped us in any way, shape, or form, we can never say thank you enough!

9) Uninterrupted periods of sleep don't exist

I have to say that this has not been so much a learning experience for me as it has been for my wife.

Before The Duke came along I would typically get in bed around 10:30 PM, watch a little TV, and finally conk out by 11:30 or midnight. I drink a fair amount of water in the evening, and as a result I have to get up usually once or twice a night to relieve myself. (Too much information? Probably, but we're not done yet with the subject of bodily excretions in this blog entry, not by a long shot!) As such, I'm somewhat accustomed to having to put myself back to sleep every night after an interruption. The biggest difference now is that the "interruption" has to be fed, have his diaper changed, and then settled back into his own slumber before I/we go back to Dreamland.

The Duke is in a pattern of becoming needy about once every 3 to 3 and a half hours. So long as we time it right even with having to tend to him we can still get a good 6 or 7 hours of sleep per night, which is about what I was getting before.

8) Burping is not only necessary, it's encouraged

If you consider how newborns receive sustenance, you'll quickly realize why it is that they need to burp. They're on a liquid diet and they're going to wind up swallowing air. That air can be quite painful once it's trapped in their tiny bellies. Their little bodies aren't finely tuned enough to be able to bust out a burp as needed, so they need some assistance in the form of a pat on the back.

That said, The Duke burps like a grown man. He has all the power and volume behind his belches that I do, which is saying something seeing as how I've got roughly 34 more years of experience in the matter than he does. I'm sure that as he grows up he'll continue to hone these skills so that he's ready to vocalize a proper burp - because being able to throw a lighthearted jab at one of your buddies through a burp is part of what being a man is all about.

7) Baby formula is ridiculously expensive

We noticed that when The Duke was on a traditional formula after we first brought him home that it appeared to be going straight through him, meaning he wasn't getting the nutrition he needed. After talking to his doctor, we switched him to a soy-based product and he's really taken to it. He was a little over 6 pounds when he was born but I would say he's closer to 8 by this point in time.

I will admit that I had never looked at formula prices before now - all I can say about the matter is holy crap, why is this stuff so expensive?! It's just a powdered mix, how can it cost that much? Are soybeans on some kind of endangered species list? You'd think he was drinking something derived from a rare earth metal. And it's not like the stuff is packaged in a glass vial that was shaped by a master craftsman then scrubbed and polished by hand. It's a can for crying out loud!

Of course I say that even though when I was still working out regularly I used to pay $20 or more for a tub of protein powder. I guess that was different seeing as how I might take one or two doses a day versus him who's taking 7 or 8 per day.

6) Daycare is ridiculous

Up until now I had only heard stories of how daycare operations are so overcrowded that many have waiting lists and that if or when you do get approval for entrance into one the costs can be staggering. Suffice to say that we can verify both of those presumptions as being factual.

5) Baby poop is a horrific example of the sort of material our bodies can produce

I discussed formula earlier in this entry and I also mentioned how The Duke is on a soy-based formula. It still baffles me, to a degree, how a person like him can ingest what is a liquid (albeit one that is certainly loaded with vegetable fiber) and then poop what is most certainly a solid. It went in one end as a fluid but it came out the other end as this oddly chunky, not quite mustard yellow but not quite beige colored matter the odor of which is somewhere between rotting animal carcass and construction site port-a-potty.

It's a visual and smell that I wasn't necessarily prepared to have to deal with. I haven't gone so far as to invest in a HAZMAT suit but I am considering purchasing one of those inclosures with the rubber gloves in them - you know, like the type you see in monster movies where a scientist needs to examine a specimen but doesn't want to touch it for fear of contamination? I may have to run a ventilation line but that's alright.

4) When it comes to interpreting the needs of a baby, science has failed us

The Duke is a grunter. As in when he makes his presence known it's not through a coo or some kind of gentle sound, it's through a "HNNNNNGH!" or a "WUUUURGH!" When he starts to grunting you can safely bet that in short order he's going to need either a bottle or a fresh diaper.

That said, our boy isn't a particularly fussy baby however there have been times where he'll cry and we have no idea what his need in that moment actually is. Are you hungry? Here's a bottle. Wait, why are you still crying? Your diaper is full? Okay, lets change it - wait, I did what I thought you needed, why are you crying now? You don't like being naked and it's chilly in the house? Well why didn't you say that to begin with?

I'm shocked there isn't some kind of gadget out there that can accurately predict what it is that a baby like The Duke needs when he begins to sound off about a given displeasure he's experiencing. I don't know what a device like that would cost but I would be willing to at least consider buying it if it existed. It would seem to be a more worthwhile product than a lot of the other seemingly useless and/or limited baby tech that's out there.

3) Babies require roughly the same amount of gear as is needed for a military deployment

Speaking of baby tech, I am dumbfounded at the volume of gear that is available these days for parents to equip and accessorize their baby. I can only compare it to the cellular phone industry in that there exists this insane, fanatical culture centered around outfitting today's children with stuff that they don't know they have and would more than likely be just as well without. What's worse is the fact that to the modern parent all of it is apparently necessary, although I would say that aspect has more to do with Mom and/or Dad wanting to maintain a particular social status level through ownership of a certain stroller, car seat, or what have you than it does with serving the needs of the child.

There are things in my house right now because of The Duke that I have no idea what they do (some of which I have no desire to learn what they do) or that I could do without because I already had a device or process that accomplished the same task. Case in point, after we brought home The Duke I bought a lidded trash can (with the little step you can press to raise the lid) and a pack of stick-on air deodorizers thinking that would be an adequate containment unit for diapers and other waste. All totaled, it cost about $11. Was it sufficient?

Someone gave us one of these things, a Diaper Genie by Playtex.

If you've ever seen the bio-hazard disposal boxes mounted on the wall of a hospital or doctor's office examination room, this is essentially the same thing only instead of needles and bloody gauze this is for poopie diapers. Depending on what model you opt for, these things will set you back anywhere from $30-$40. The kicker, though, is that it doesn't use ordinary trash bags - instead it uses a cartridge pre-loaded with a sleeve of plastic that you must cut and tie off as needed. How long will the cartridge last? Who knows but refills of these cartridges cost $7 a pop!

So, just to re-cap where we stand with my trash can versus the Diaper Genie...

My Trash Can:
- Initial investment: $11
- Recurring costs:
     * $30 for 1,000 trash bags purchased from buying club
     * $3 per pack of deodorizer inserts

Diaper Genie:
- Initial investment: $35 (I split the difference)
- Recurring costs:
     * $7 per cartridge

If you do the math, the trash can wins handily in terms of cost of ownership over the lifetime of the device. Plus, who's to say manufacturing of the refills doesn't up and stop or that a new & improved model won't come out leaving you with no way to wrangle the poopie diapers? You're left with a gun for which no one is making bullets and that's not a good thing. Also, you can continue using the trash can well into the future either in the child's room or somewhere else in the house. At some point the child won't be in diapers anymore - what will you do with the Diaper Genie then? You might have gotten your money's worth out of it by then and I guess you could hold onto it until you're wearing Depends. The latter option is a personal choice and not one I'm ready to make right just yet.

2) Stores specializing in baby gear are oddly terrifying

My wife & I went to a Buy Buy Baby location last weekend in Columbia, South Carolina. (As it turns out, BBB is a sister store to Bed Bath & Beyond - whoever owns these things has some affinity for the letter B apparently.) It was the first time I'd ever set foot inside a store that sold nothing but baby products. To say that I had a hard time digesting the entirety of the thing would be an understatement.

Why? I can't hammer it down to be totally honest with you. I guess I assumed that babies weren't so complicated that the breadth of offerings in a store like that one would be as vast as they are. Sure, a lot of it is worthless stuff that people buy because they can, but I couldn't get over how it is that all of those products exist. Because if they exist, someone bought them and uses them. Babies have gotten along for a very long time without things like the Pee Pee Teepee (I'm pursuing a patent on a rival product right now, which I'm calling the Tinkle Tent), but there's a Mom or a Dad out there right now that won't change their son's diaper without it because they're mortified at the thought he might score a head shot on one of them with a well-timed stream of whiz.

1) Priorities

There was an indie professional wrestling event last Sunday (November 2) in Cayce, SC promoted by a company called WrestleForce which I have featured previously in my Rasslin' with Redbeard YouTube show. When I'm at events like that one I typically will record the matches (provided the federation in question has voiced no opposition to my doing so) then later on I'll add them to my YouTube channel (which you can find here at this link). I don't want to toot my own horn but after that particular show I was contacted by three of the wrestlers that had performed on the show who wanted to know if I was there because they were eager to see and share footage of their matches.

I wasn't at the show. For obvious reasons.

That's not my way of saying I'll never go to another pro wrestling event; far from it, actually, as I would hope to be able to get to one or two a month even now. I had just spent the night in North Carolina the weekend before in order to attend a show in that state. Even though the building where WrestleForce runs their shows is less than 45 minutes from our house, it wouldn't be fair of me to take off two weekends in a row and leave my wife to tend to our child by herself.

Only I would use professional wrestling as an analogy for pertinent life lessons, right? It's a valid example of the fact that we're parents now and there will quite often be times where our schedules, needs, wants, and desires are going to play second fiddle to The Duke's schedule, needs, wants, and desires. Parents have to be prepared for that.

To me, sacrificing things like personal interests for the sake of being a considerate, involved parent is just one more way of showing how much you love your children. That doesn't mean giving up on your own aspirations, rather that as a parent you've got to acknowledge the responsibility that comes with the life you're charged with shaping while continuing your own life. For some that might mean not going to the movies or out to dinner as often, for others it might be that your work hours have to change or that you'll have to look at your classes to see what will be best going forward. Everyone can do it, you just have to be willing to put in the work to make it happen.

Being a Mom or Dad takes a level of maturity that a lot of people just plain don't seem to have these days, and I feel like that's why some relationships fail after children come into the picture. My wife & I aren't as young as a lot of new parents are when they bring home their first child. We're fortunate enough to have already done a lot in our lives and are fairly content with where we are emotionally and professionally. I've made the comment before that I don't have a whole lot of goals left in my life. I met a President of the United States. I've traveled abroad. I have a stable career. I was front row at a Metallica concert. I could name others but I'm sure you get the idea. Saying you've checked off a lot of items from your list of things to do isn't bad. It means I can be more in tune with allowing things to happen in my life as opposed to having to chase them as hard as I would have otherwise. It's an especially good thing now because it will allow me to enjoy being a Dad without feeling like I've got to impose my will on my wife or The Duke in order to pursue some arbitrary gain that, in the grand scheme of things, doesn't matter as much as making sure that little boy grows up to be healthy and happy.

Our Road to Building a Family - When You Least Expect It

Since I last made an entry to my "Our Road to Building a Family" series, my wife and I had been doing our best to remain cautiously optimistic about our prospects moving forward.

We'd more or less re-established ourselves as we were prior to the moment when the three children who were placed with us came into our lives. We got back into our own routines; work, hobbies, house work, date days/nights, work, and more work. Jill's efforts at being an advocate for us were quieted - not silenced but they definitely became more reserved. Heartbreak has a way of making you rethink what you did to get to where you are, obviously. Her candle had been burning at both ends for so long and so hot that the wicks just couldn't sustain that same fire anymore.

I feel as though we both had accepted the fact that we might have burned a bridge with the organization we'd been working with in having to relinquish custody of the sibling group that was placed with us, and that in so doing we might have put ourselves into an "undesirable" category within their filing system for potential adoptive parents. You'd hope that sort of thing doesn't exist in a program like this, and just to be clear we have no legitimate reason to believe it does. (I wanted to make sure that statement was made as the Department of Social Services in the state of South Carolina gets dragged through the mud enough as is.) Even so, paranoia will make even the silliest untruth seem feasible.

Work, for me, has been particularly busy the past few weeks. As someone who works with information technology in the public sector, the beginning of a new fiscal year tends to be on the other side of ridiculous in terms of expectations. Offices and officials have budgeted for certain items and they want to purchase those items as soon as possible so that they can enjoy the benefits of having new tech in their employ. Quite frankly I can't say as I blame them. Between new installations and service calls, I haven't spent a whole lot of time behind my desk as of late. It's tough to juggle at times, however it's been a welcome respite as it's been something I can use to take my mind off things that have been bothering me. Feeling as though we'd missed an opportunity and not understanding why we had to go through that, mostly.

Similarly, my wife's work has kept her moving as of late. I don't know that I've ever mentioned this here but she's the assistant director for the Calhoun County Council On Aging. I will tell you that I know what she does for a living although I don't know a whole lot about what she does for a living, if you catch my drift. I hate to say that because it makes me out to be an inattentive idiot of a husband but I promise you I'm not. Our occupations really are extensions of our personalities. She's thinks with emotion, I think with logic. She works with people, I work with machines - go figure, right?

There are so many aspects of this process that can, have, and continue to blow my mind. Main among them is the speed with which entire lives can change. Case in point, with the sibling group, we were on vacation in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina when we were called about having been matched with them. We didn't have to rush back home because of it but the fact of the matter was that we suddenly had a choice to make: Play the hand you've been dealt or keep rolling the dice. Likewise, our lives changed in a flash again this past Tuesday when my wife received a call from our adoption worker that a baby had come into their custody and was in need of foster care.

My wife in turn called me - she didn't know if the baby had medical needs or if the child was a boy or a girl, black, white, Hispanic, or Kryptonian. All she knew was that a baby was being offered to us. I, of course, wanted to know more details. (I can't help it; I'm the one with the logistical brain, remember?) I didn't want to say no to the opportunity but at the same time I didn't want to immediately say yes and we wind up in another situation where we'd have bitten off more than we could chew seeing as how we've been down that road already.

Jill got more details on the situation and we talked again. The baby is male, Caucasian, roughly 6 pounds and 18.25" at birth, with no signs of defects or abnormalities. He is, for all intents and purposes, a perfectly healthy baby boy. The identity of the father is unknown. He came into the state's custody as a result of his birth mother having given a verbal relinquishment of custody, however there is a statute of limitations within which she can still claim him.

That last bit wrenched at my heart. Since he is a foster child, he could be with us for days, weeks, months, or forever. A child with circumstances like this is considered a high risk placement due to the fact that any number of biological family members could emerge and pursue custody, and that, in turn, can lead to legal entanglements. The notion that we might grow to love this child only to then have him leave us was so difficult to process. Nevertheless, we couldn't say no to this risk, this chance, this opportunity, this blessing. (As a humorous aside to this I'll say that after my wife & I spoke for the second time she said I had 10 minutes to decide whether or not I was okay with accepting the baby. Yep, 10 minutes. I can't take a shower in 10 minutes and she's expecting me to make a decision of this magnitude?)

After we'd made up our minds we contacted our adoption worker and began to make arrangements to pick up the child. Since our worker is located in Charleston we both assumed the baby was there. As it turned out he was only minutes away at a local hospital.

When we got to the hospital, we first had to figure out where we were going - we had a room number but no real idea of how to get there seeing as how neither of us knew a whole lot about the layout of the facility. We encountered a friendly member of the nursing staff who saw us wandering around and she directed us to exactly where we needed to be.

We met with several members of the neonatal nursing staff, a doctor, and a caseworker from DSS. Everyone kept addressing us as "the parents" or "Mom and Dad". (I've tried not to read too much into that, mind you, but you can't help but take impressions from the way people with more information than you about a given situation talk about that situation.) When you hear those words and aren't expecting them they have something of a sizzling effect on your psyche. It forces you to realize at that moment, if it hadn't already before then, that this is happening.

The doctor, a young woman who looked to have been in our age range, was very kind in her manner and took the time to go over a lot of answers to first-time parent questions without us ever asking them. The nursing staff were also very pleasant to work with. I have to say that seeing them handle the children in their care is like watching a skilled craftsman. Not to say they were twirling babies in the air while walking a tightrope, just that they clearly know what they're doing.

As part of the discharge process we had to watch a video on shaken baby syndrome and sign a batch of paperwork. Before we knew it, a loaned car seat was installed in the back of Jill's ride and we were on our way back home. The whole process took less than an hour.

I am in no way ashamed of saying that after Jill & I got him inside our house that I cried like men aren't supposed to admit to crying. I had accepted that I just wasn't going to get to have certain things in my life - in that moment, hope for those dreams returned.

Jill's Mom and Dad came to our house that evening and they brought with them a literal smorgasbord of stuff related to maintaining a baby that family & friends had given to them to share with us. (I've said it before and I'll say it again, we wouldn't be where we are without the support of loving, generous people. We've got some of the best family, friends, and co-workers imaginable!) I know my way around the realm of information technology but baby technology is a whole new ballgame for me, personally. I was introduced to several varieties of bassinets that either swing, rock, vibrate, or some combination thereof. I had heard the term Pack and Play previously but I'd never seen one - seemed kind of like a kennel for a child, but who's to argue with that logic? Also knew to me, the boppy pillow, which is a great example of what can happen when someone takes an existing product (the travelers neck pillow, in this instance), increases its size, and gives it a cute name. In addition to this, our kitchen is now overrun with baby bottles, cans of formula, and various accessories related to feeding. From the amount of bottles alone you'd think we had 5 babies instead of 1, however I'm quickly learning that bottles are much like .22 ammo - when you think you have enough, you don't.

The baby's biological mother did give him a name. We're not especially fond of it, so if or when we have the chance to change his name we already have one picked out. It's one of the names that Jill & I had talked about a while back when we were toying with ideas for baby names. I can't publish his real name because of the fact that we have to protect his identity, and I'm going to hold off on doing the same with the name we've given him until such time that it's appropriate. Don't worry, though, he's not going to have any identity issues because my Father in-law and I already came up with a nickname (or codename, as I've said to some people) for him - The Duke.

Feel free to read into that as you would like. And no, his name is not John Wayne. If it were that easy to figure out do you think I'd bother calling it a codename?

Back when we were still working with the sibling group, we had applied for a license to be foster parents. We did this in addition to being approved as adoptive parents because of the fact that it would have served as something of a contingency for that scenario due to timing of the proceedings. In hindsight we were fortunate in that we did apply for our foster license. Since they weren't ours, permanently speaking, we were able sever the relationship due to the disruption they had caused and have things end there. Not to make those children out to be horrors but I don't know what would've happened to us - my wife & I - had we not been on a foster to adopt path with them instead of straight adoption. That having been said, it is ironic that we finally received our foster license in the mail on the same day that we brought home The Duke.

At this point we (all three of us - well, four if you count our dog, Roddy) are settling in and adjusting to our new family dynamic. The waking up at night is what's going to take the most time to get used to, I do believe, but we'll get there. Interpreting his needs is an interesting thing to tackle; he's not a particularly fussy baby so when he does cry it genuinely means he's either hungry or in need of a fresh diaper. Jill took him to his first doctor's visit and it was recommended that we put him onto a soy-based formula as it seemed traditional mixes weren't staying with him long enough to get him the nutrition he needs. He checked out fine other than that and a little redness around his bottom for which the doctor prescribed an ointment.

Many people have asked if there are things that we need. At this point, I feel as though we're on good standing thanks to what has been donated to us (it seems as though almost everyone we know has gently used baby gear tucked away in storage somewhere), but we would never say no to things like diapers, wipes, or gift cards. Jill had the idea to suggest bringing a meal - fresh or frozen - for us wouldn't be a bad idea either.

Above all else I would ask that you pray for our family. Like I said earlier in this entry, we don't know how long this ride will last but we're going to take it for all it's worth. With God's will and love, we'll endure. I believe The Duke was sent to us for a reason - we're going to love him with all the affection we have because that's what he deserves.

Our Road to Building a Family - A Lesson Learned

To make a long story short, the foster-to-adopt placement with the three children I've written about previously in this blog series did not work out the way we'd hoped it would.

The children came to our home for a weekend visit August 9 and were taken back to their previous foster home the morning of August 11. This was part of the plan as we wanted to get a sense of what having them around our house would be like prior to them moving in for what we assumed at that time would be a permanent arrangement. The visit went well, as we had a cookout that weekend and spent a majority of it trying to acclimate to one another while also working towards establishing rules, boundaries, expectations, and something of a routine. They came back to us on August 13 and got fully moved in over the course of the next few days. My wife took that time off from work to spend with them, to get them better acquainted with their new surroundings, and to handle a variety of errands.

If I've never told you how strong of a woman my wife is allow me to do so right now. During those three days, she took the children for eye exams and hair cuts. She did every bit of the leg work involved with getting them enrolled in school. She made Lord only knows how many phone calls in an attempt to get them seen by a local pediatrician as we wound up in something of an emergency situation seeing as how by the time they got to us they were each in need of refills on their ADHD medication. (This was one of the first bits of evidence we would uncover that their previous foster home was inconceivably inept at providing adequate care.) She wound up having to take them to a facility at which they'd been seen previously (in a town 90 minutes away from where we live, mind you) to make sure they wouldn't run out. All this on top of making sure we were fed a hot meal at supper time every day - yes, I include myself in that category because while I do cook she's always been the primary preparer of sustenance around our house, and a damn good one at that.

We began to face challenges with the children almost immediately in terms of their behavior. This wasn't unexpected obviously as they're children after all; as a parent, they're going to test you to see how far they can get with whatever it is they're up to in the moment. Our friends and family who are parents kept reminding us of this and I can't say they steered us wrong as these three were certainly excited and lively. In hindsight (I'm going to use that phrase repeatedly in this entry), I think those were labels my wife & I used as blinders early on to make it seem as though things were going to get better.

The first few days we had the children in our home were full of revelations. We didn't have a lot to offer them in the way of toys as we were expecting them to have had some items of that sort. We were surprised as we unpacked their belongings to find out they were sent to us with not much more than a few stuffed animals. Some friends of our family had been kind enough to give us a basketball goal and we had gotten a few outside toys as we thought they'd enjoy being able to play together. That idea went out the window when they realized this new house they were in was stocked with things like an Xbox, tablets, cable TV, and the Internet.

My wife & I had gone through the paces of trying to shore up our multimedia devices to do the best we could at making sure the kids wouldn't have access to questionable content. (I've had my share of fits with Time Warner but I will say that their parental controls are quite good.) We let them use our tablets as it seemed like they were pacified when they were each individually engaged in a singular activity. They would watch programs on TV or Netflix, and I believe they managed to download more games than I knew existed from the Android marketplace. We allowed them to use YouTube (which, in hindsight, wasn't a good idea) but this became an issue as we noticed they weren't watching what either of us would consider kid-appropriate content. (YouTube's content ratings are looser than a Zeta Tau Alpha pledge during rush.) They wanted to watch videos by Rhianna, Nicki Minaj, Chris Brown, and other artists whose material isn't exactly PG.

This would turn out to be the tip of the iceberg in terms of our learning what kinds of material to which they'd been exposed in their previous foster home. We found out through casual conversation one evening at dinner that they'd seen Django Unchained. It came up as a result of our talking about the buildings that are near our home and how they're used by a cotton ginning operation; the topic of cotton brought up a question about slavery and that lead to them saying they'd seen a movie about a slave. I thought they might have seen something historically relevant like Roots or Glory - nope, Django Unchained. Quinton Tarantino. Blood, guts, violence, nudity, harsh language, and more. They also had some knowledge of the Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween films as they knew who Freddy Kruger and Michael Meyers are.

Keep in mind these kids are 10, 8, and 7 years old. And yet the people who were caring for them before they got to us couldn't figure out why they were afraid of the dark and had nightmares?

Seeing as how the weekend of August 16 presented the kids' last real opportunity at having a good time while still out of school, we decided it would be nice to take them to Chuck E. Cheese's for an afternoon of fun and games. For about $100, the three of them got 3 and a half hours of all the games they could play - Jill & I got a chance to sit around, eat horrible pizza (in hindsight, the salad bar would've been a much better option), and drink soda. I had never been to Chuck E. Cheese's before so the whole experience was new to me. It's about the same as the midway games at any given state or county fair in terms of its gimmick; huge prizes get dangled out in front of the kids as they walk in the door and they spend every ounce of energy they have trying to get the giant panda (that being a metaphor in this instance for a Nerf gun that the 10 year old had his sights on) only to be disappointed when they find out they have earned enough tickets to get a plastic slinky and some glow-in-the-dark vampire teeth. Toys that will last about as long as the drive home, in other words. But hey, they enjoyed themselves and got to interact with other children, and that made it worthwhile in our minds.

Bed time wasn't the most difficult thing with these three as it seemed like they enjoyed sleeping, particularly the 8 year old. We put them to bed around 8:30 PM the Sunday evening before their first day of school and story time followed. My wife would read Diary of a Wimpy Kid to the boys meanwhile I read a Junie B. Jones book to the girl.

The boys would usually stay up for 30 minutes to an hour after their story, just talking to one another about gosh knows what. The girl was a real talker as well - always asking questions and chiming in with her two cents, never with any sense of a filter or consideration for how what she was saying might affect others. Of course it's not unusual for a child (especially a little girl) to be chatty, so I don't want that comment to come off as me complaining. It's just that the kind of things she would say often caught me off guard. It dawned on me in the days to come that what we had been told about the boys being in a sibling rivalry was exacerbated by their sister as she would say things to them that would send them into a fit of rage. I don't know that she understood what she was doing but the fact of the matter was that she was most certainly a trigger to their minor behavioral issues becoming a much more profound problem. The anger they exhibited during those moments was startling to me, and there were many of them over the course of time that we had them in our home. This is why I began to feel as though I wasn't being a parent to them so much as I was a referee in a mixed martial arts fight, only in this particular arena the fighters sometimes hit the ref simply because they feel like it.

Monday morning rolled around and my wife & I were forced to come to grips with the fact that our schedule would consist of getting up at 6 AM for the foreseeable future. That said, the school day routine never became an issue for us because I feel as though we knew what we had to do to get everyone ready for the day. Make sure everyone is up by 6:45 AM, teeth brushed and dressed by 7:15, and ready to go out the door by 7:40 as my wife would be dropping them off on her way to work (it was a perfect fit as she kicks off her work day at 8 AM). The first day was slightly different in that we had them there earlier than normal seeing as how we wanted to walk them to their classrooms and hopefully meet their teachers (we hadn't had a chance to do that yet seeing as how open house wasn't scheduled until some time in September). Once we had them at school we were sure that the pacing of the day would lead to breakthroughs for the group. They'd make friends, get into the swing of things, adapt to this new culture and surroundings, and we'd be off and running as a family, onwards and upwards.

In hindsight, that was wishful thinking.

My Mom was a blessing to us as she was willing to pick up the children from school, bring them back home, and then begin doing whatever was needed with them in the afternoons (homework or what have you) so that our work schedules wouldn't get disrupted. I knew this was going to be a tough assignment for my Mom but I also knew she could handle it - she taught children their age for 30+ years, for crying out loud. If anyone we knew was up to the task, it was her!

It seemed as though frustration set in for the kids the very first day of school. The oldest boy in particular had a tough time because I don't think he was quite ready - academically, socially, etc. - for the experience or the fact that he'd have homework. The after-school period became a trial each day as none of them wanted to do their homework, rather they just wanted to play with the tablets or video games. My Mom did what she could to keep some sense of structure for them, to no avail.

Before I go further, I want to make sure that I don't make our home life or the way we were trying to parent these children come off as though we were running a military operation. We were not expecting them to be perfect children. We were very keen to the idea of "picking our battles" in that we knew we didn't need to call them out for everything. We were trying our best to instill in them things like respect and consideration as these were qualities they'd been introduced to at church and we wanted to further re-enforce them at home. Simple concepts, but clearly ones that they had never been asked to take on before now.

The challenge we faced with these three in terms of trying to correct their behavior was that there wasn't much we could do realistically. We tried to establish a points system whereby they could earn points for positive behavior. These points could then be cashed in for things like bonus electronics time (we set them all at a limit of 1 hour per day), a movie night, or even money. The points could also be taken away for bad behavior. I hate to say this but none of them had a chance to cash in their points because they couldn't maintain any long enough to have earned anything of "value" in our system. When the taking away of points didn't work, it became a matter of having to take away privileges like toys, electronics or TV time. All this did was to make them more defiant.

They repeatedly called my wife "mean Mama" and said that they wanted to go back to where they'd been previously. We tried to press on in spite of this because we still wanted this to work. In my mind, they were like wild horses; I felt like it might take them being "broken" before they would realize that there's a right way and a wrong way to conduct yourself (because clearly wherever it was they had been before never tried to put over such things to them). The difference being wild horses don't scream, yell, kick walls, slam doors, and tell you how much they hate you.

I feel like the moment when my wife began to have doubts about our relationship with these three working out came one evening during supper. My wife has a recipe for shepherd's pie that is from her mother and it's a favorite of ours because it's a hearty meal that's easy to put together. If you don't know what shepherd's pie is, it's a dish that consists of layers of mashed potatoes, seasoned ground beef, and cheese that's baked to a warm and bubbly consistency. We thought it was something the kids would enjoy seeing as how it is what it is - potatoes, meat, and cheese. My wife served us all up a helping and I began to dig in. The kids took one bite and they all began to make noises and faces as if they were going to vomit on the table. (This is an example of how none of them had a sense of gratitude about anything we tried to do for them.) You would have to know my wife to know why that action in particular was so troubling but I think that was when the dam began to crack, for lack of a better phrase.

So long as they were on an individual task the boys weren't that difficult to deal with. The moment you inserted them into a situation where they were in any form of competition was when their attitudes shifted. (This dynamic of how they were fine on their own but problematic when put together verified what we had been told in regard to reasons why their previous adoptive placements didn't work out as those families tried to adopt one or two of the group but not all three.) It didn't matter if it was us throwing around a football in the back yard or playing video games, if they could have a disagreement over what was going on they were going to wind up in an argument. And since I know you're probably wondering, the games we had for them were intended for children. No Call of Duty, Gears of War, or anything of the sort - just titles like the Lego games, a few old Super Mario selections, and Just Dance. They did have a WWE game but it quickly "went missing" after they repeatedly got into shouting matches, usually over the fact that one wouldn't let the other win, no less. The Lego games are fun and actually quite challenging, even for an old gamer like me. To them, they became frustrating. One would blame the other for their not being able to complete a task and it was all down hill from there. The shouting would ensue, then one would draw back as if he was going to hit the other in an apparent act of intimidation (the girl would argue with her brothers and she, too, would draw back her arm as if she was going to strike them).

The girl's behavior became progressively worse throughout the week. She would not listen to us, refused to take direction, and acted in a way that was so blatantly defiant that it boggled my mind. (A learned behavior, in her case; all kids act out but what she was doing had to have gotten in her mind from another source, likely from watching people she had been around previously.) When we would attempt to correct her she would turn it around on us as if she were in charge. Concepts like restriction or being grounded prompted an "I don't care" sort of response, as if to say I'm going to do whatever I want in spite of you. At one point when we were trying to play outside she became upset and tried to lock us out of the house. On another evening she walked out of the house saying that she was running away (she got about as far as the stop sign at the corner of our property before coming back). Again, this wasn't a response to any kind of difficult request from us, rather it seemed to be because she felt as though she wasn't getting her way 100% of the time. All the while we were trying to plan a birthday party for her as she turned 7 while she was in our care. We threatened to cancel the birthday party if her behavior didn't improve and in hindsight we probably should have gone ahead and canceled it because she was a true terror to deal with.

I mentioned how our hands were mostly tied when it came to discipline. It goes without saying that spanking wasn't an option, so we did what we could in trying to show them that if their behavior was unacceptable they would lose privileges. First off the list was access to things like tablets, TV, video games, etc. The boys seemed to get the idea as they would become apologetic and try to get back on our good sides, whereas the girl just plain went into a massive fit. She continued to be disrespectful so we began taking away her toys. The same attitude persisted and we were to a point where there was nothing left in her room but her bed. She wailed as if she were crying but she wasn't genuinely upset as my wife saw her smirk at her at one point, as if to say "I know if I do this long enough you're going to cave." We never did and she kept at it until she finally went to sleep. To their credit, her brothers tried to calm her down, telling her that all she had to do was "act right" and she'd get her things back.

We had her birthday party on Saturday, August 23. We invited a number of our friends and family over for the occasion, all with children roughly the same age as the three for whom we were caring. The goal was for each of them to see that they were surrounded by loving, kind folks who are concerned about their well being and who want to be involved in their lives. The events of the day wound up being the final straw in our decision to officially disassociate ourselves from the children.

The party went off well, for the most part. Jill's Mom was staying with us and she had organized a painting activity for the children to do. The youngest boy had slept most of the day and his demeanor reflected this as he was grumpy, especially when the other boys at the party went outside and began playing with some of the balls and sports equipment. I tried to encourage him to share and be friendly, he acted like they'd disrespected his territory. The oldest boy was the opposite, seemingly overjoyed at the fact he suddenly had a whole bunch of new playmates. He could be the most docile, innocent kid - he really was the most agreeable of the three as he would often try to take the role of parent in trying to get the other two to settle down when they would fight. The girl was a whirlwind of activity and emotions, excited one minute, disappointed another, outgoing then suddenly shy. Through it all the underlying attitude she exhibited was one of ungratefulness. Nothing seemed to be good enough for her, which was in stark contrast to the theme of the event as she was dressed in a Cinderella costume.

A couple who are close friends with my wife's family had graciously given us money to use to purchase a new bicycle for each of the children. They enjoyed riding their bikes and we, of course, tried to keep an eye on them at all times while they were riding them. They went out for a ride that evening after the party was over and all our guests were gone. My mother-in-law was outside watching them play and my wife had gone into Orangeburg to pick up a pizza for supper as we were going to eat then watch Frozen together. I didn't see the incident but something happened that lead to an argument between the girl and the youngest boy. My mother-in-law tried to get them to settle down and come inside; before she could, they began tossing around each others bikes. This lead the youngest boy to say to his sister "I wish you were 16 so you could die in a car accident."

At that moment, this family we had tried so hard to keep together fell apart. We called one of the adoption workers we'd been assigned and made arrangements for them to be picked up the next morning. I had it in mind before then that there were two reasons why I would pull the plug on this effort: 1) If they hurt our dog Roddy (he was "on vacation" during this as he was in recovery from being neutered), and 2) if they did damage to property. I didn't think that the third option would wind up being us just plain having had enough. My wife and I decided we couldn't do this any longer as we had had 10 days of almost non-stop fighting and unruly behavior with no sign of things changing.

I know some people will say we didn't do enough or that we didn't give it enough time. The fact of the matter is that until you've lived with children like this you have no idea how difficult our lives became. I was to a point where I did not want to come home from work because I knew that they were there waiting for me. My nerves were shot because I felt powerless to try and remedy the situation. (Truth be told, I left most of the attitude adjusting to my wife, opting instead to keep up with the logistics of keeping the house in order. Why? Because I'm good at that sort of thing and I'm also the type who would just as soon drop a proverbial nuclear warhead on a situation and walk away as opposed to trying to handle the matter constructively.) Our bedroom became the only sanctuary we had as we'd retreat to it each night in the hope that things would get better the next day. I'm sad to say that they never did. We could not allow them to ruin our home, our relationships, and certainly not our marriage.

They were picked up the morning after the birthday party. Not wanting to out and out make it known they wouldn't be coming back, we told them that we had some things we needed to work on before going forward and that they'd be going away for a few days.

I know that I've levied some harsh criticism at these children in this blog entry but the truth of the matter is that I do not blame them for being who they are. These children have been in the foster system for better than 4 years now. They are a product of that system's failure to cultivate a network of supportive, nurturing homes throughout the state of South Carolina. They are the unfortunate victims of predatory adults who see foster children as a means of earning a paycheck instead of an opportunity to help raise a well-adjusted, productive member of society.

To all the people who donated time, effort, clothing, prayers, or whatever else to the children, you have my most sincere gratitude and thanks. You are each examples of the fact that agape love exists and that goodness will always outshine the darkness of the world. Anything that was given to the children while they were with us will be staying with them. Hopefully they will someday be able to appreciate those gifts and the people who cared enough to give.

So where are we now? We're hurt, deeply, and we all need time to heal from this. But we will use this as a lesson learned and try again someday because our goal is still the same - to build a family of our own.

Our Road to Building a Family - Supervised Visits, New Furniture, and Zone Defense

I think I've said this previously when I've written about our experiences in navigating our way through the adoption process, but my wife Jill has done an extraordinary job of keeping a running narrative going of all that we've been through over in her blog, The Truesdale Times. People have made me quite bashful over the years by pointing out how well I write but I will be the first to tell you that my wife's writing style captures a range of emotions that I know I've only rarely, if ever, been able to convey with any substance. That said, if you would like more frequent updates about our journey, please stay tuned to her blog. She adds entries quite frequently, which is another ability she has that I don't when it comes to writing; it might take me a week to write a blog; she wrote one while we were driving home from dinner a few days ago.

To catch you up on things from where we were since I last added a submission to my "Our Road to Building a Family" series, I'll begin by saying that a lot has changed for us! In my previous entry, I relayed how we were at a point of frustration with the process as it seemed that we weren't getting anywhere. Despite my wife's best efforts at being an advocate for us, it didn't feel as though we were being kept in the loop about the goings on of what may or may not have been happening on behind the scenes with the various organizations with which we'd been working. Then came the afternoon of June 19, 2014.

My wife and I were on our annual vacation to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and we were making our first visit to WonderWorks. (As an aside to this, I will say I'm not a fan of WonderWorks - it could be fun, but it was way too busy when we were there. The crowd made for a scene that was chaotic, and it was made worse by the fact that there's not enough guidance or direction to how the whole thing is laid out.) I was in line for one of the attractions when my wife & I received phone calls, one after the other, from the same number but one that neither of us recognized. As it would turn out, the call was from an adoption specialist contacting us about the fact that we'd been selected as a potential match for a sibling group of three children.

Yes, you read that right - three children, ages 6, 8, and 10. Two boys and one girl.

The rest of our vacation was a blur, and to be honest the time since that phone call has been a constant whirlwind of activity. We have gone through the paces of learning more about the children, their individual histories, their background, and essentially everything a prospective parent could hope to know - on paper, anyway. I point that out because one of my recent frustrations has been the fact that my first knowledge of these children came in the form of a 3-ring binder as thick as a soda can is tall filled with documentation. I understand that the paperwork is there for a reason as it unveils every facet of their lives, and it is most certainly an effort towards the organization we're working with covering their butts as they'll be able to say "Well, we told you so..." But as I have told my wife and many others, I truly wish the process was reversed so that you could meet these little people first, then be handed their details.

As you might gather from how I worded that last paragraph, yes, after pouring over literally hundreds of pages worth of records we did decide to go forward in trying to make a connection with this group. And yes, we realize that to go from no children to three children is a lot in a short period of time. Trust me when I say that I've grown tired and a bit annoyed by the fact that more than a few folks have seemingly gone to great lengths to remind us of the fact that life's about to change if this works out the way we're hoping it does.

Really? Life's about to change? You don't say! Like when life changed when I moved away from home, got married, bought a house, and started a new job? It feels like the last decade of my life has been nothing but change.

Ever since we've been together, Jill and I have always said we wanted 2 or 3 kids. In my eyes, this is no different than when people become parents via more traditional methods. What if Jill and I had been able to have kids naturally and we'd wound up pregnant with triplets? Or if we'd staggered the births of our children over the course of a couple years yet still wound up with three? Would we still be getting told "Life's about to change!" in a way that makes it seem like the person voicing that comment is telling us we're about to make a mistake? Some folks need to work on thinking before they speak and learning that when you apply inflection to a statement the connotation of those words changes significantly.

My frustrations aside, I have to say the process has gone quite well for us, and quickly at that. We were able to meet the children for the first time during a supervised visit that involved having lunch at Mellow Mushroom Pizza then going to EdVenture, a children's museum and activity center. It goes without saying that I learned a lot that day, both about myself and these kids. First and foremost, kids don't care that a pizza is artisanal - there is no point in paying $20 for a pie that, to them, is no different than a $5 from somewhere like Little Caesars. (That's not a knock on Little Caesars, their pizza is quite good to be as cheap as it is.) Second, when visiting an attraction like EdVenture with three kids who are full of pepperoni and soda, you'd best be wearing good shoes and be ready to play the finest zone defense of your life.

What I mean by that is this: I understand now that supervising children as a parent isn't so much about keeping your kids from doing things as it is keeping track of where they are when they're doing things. Sure, you don't want "doing things" to involve stuff like jumping off a balcony or drinking water out of an unsanitary basin, but so long as they're not destroying property or hurting others whatever they're doing is probably alright.

EdVenture is an expansive facility filled with activity stations that are spread out across several floors. Keeping track of these three quickly became a test of our skills of being able to read & recognize their movements, tendencies, and preferences. I truly am convinced that being a parent is about being able to understand the concept of zone defense. When the play begins, everyone on defense (read, myself and Jill; in this instance, we had a third member of our squad, that being the kid's adoption worker) has a zone of the playing field to cover. It's an effective strategy, so long as everyone does their job. I'd say we did pretty well that first outing - at the end of the day, everyone was still alive and still equipped with all their fingers & toes.

That's how I'm measuring success now as a prospective father: Limit property damage to a minimum while keeping everyone alive and as intact as possible.

We have had a second "play date" with these kids since that first outing and it involved lunch at Zaxby's as well as bowling. Things learned from that get together include the fact that not all grilled cheese sandwiches are created equal and that bowling isn't as appealing as the bright, blinking lights of arcade games. I can't say as I disagree much with the second part of that statement because only God knows how many quarters I plunked into arcade games when I was their age. Despite my former fascination with them, nowadays my opinion of arcade games is that they are essentially wooden boxes filled with strobe lights and MP3 players loaded with bad music that require a person to connect the business end of a shop-vac directly to their wallet in order for them to work. And by "work" I mean kick off a game that's configured in such a way that you'd have to be the 1972 Miami Dolphins of video gaming in order to get past level 1, stage 1. Seriously, I don't remember games being this difficult when I was a kid. I watched these three play and it was like they were getting beaten about the head by a technological behemoth.

The kids came to our house for the first time this past Friday, August 1. We were able to have lunch together - everyone made their own personal pizza, pizza being a recurring theme with this group as if you couldn't tell - and spend a few hours roaming around the house, allowing them to learn the ins & outs of what up until now had been the personal, exclusive space of my wife and I. I think that may be the biggest hurdle I have to get over, the fact that suddenly there will be three small people living with us. Not just living with us but depending on us for everything.

At this particular juncture, we have decided to change our outlook on adoption when it comes to these children. Up until now we had been working under the pretense that we were hoping to adopt children instead of being involved in a foster-to-adopt scenario or serving as a foster home . In order to speed up the process of them being placed in our home, we have opted to get on a foster-to-adopt path specifically with these children. What that will mean for us is that they will be moved from their current foster home and placed with us. (We will not be a traditional foster home in that we could be contacted to provide shelter for kids in need at a moments notice.) At that point we will be functioning as foster parents with the ultimate goal still being adoption. This changes a few parts of the process but it will be beneficial to all involved seeing as how the kids will be with us, we'll get to build our relationships, and they'll be in a stable environment where they'll be able to move forward with their education and development.

I have long believed that if the opportunity presents itself for you to shop local, you definitely should. People get attracted by big national ads for chains and they forget about the fact that there's probably a Mom & Pop establishment not far from where they live that would be able to get the same or comparable wares and for less money. That's exactly what we did when it came time to refit two rooms in our house so that they could become proper bedrooms for kids. Grubb's Furniture in Saint Matthews, SC is a fantastic purveyor of furniture as we were able to get exactly what we needed at a real bargain price and delivered quickly.

From here, the timetable is tentative in terms of what happens next. The plan is for them to have a weekend visit with us in the near future and then they will be able to move in on a date soon thereafter. At that point, we'll officially be their foster parents. I don't know how long it will take but their becoming our children will come sometime thereafter, depending on the swiftness of how things go once they're placed with us.

Jill and I have the great fortune of having a tremendous support structure around us. We couldn't do this if not for our parents and our families. It means the world to us that everyone has opened up their arms to these kids because they are great kids. They are not broken. They are not damaged goods. They are normal, vivacious, energetic kids. I can't wait to see them flourish once they can be in a stable environment that I believe we'll be able to provide.

Our Road to Building a Family - The Moment Things Got Real

I will fully admit that I haven't written much about the experiences my wife & I have been through in trying to adopt children. I don't want it to seem like I feel it's not important enough to chronicle here - gosh knows all my thoughts on professional wrestling, movies, and the like deserve their space - but Jill has taken the reigns when it comes to keeping all those stories together in her blog, The Truesdale Times. (That blog was originally supposed to have been a shared space for the both of us. Over time it's metamorphosed into her personal chunk of blogging territory just as Redbeard's Rambling is mine.) She's done a fantastic job of documenting our every move and what it amounts to is that I simply don't think I could do a better job, so if you're curious to read more about what we've encountered thus far please take the time to check out her entries. They're quite insightful, especially for anyone who may be thinking of or otherwise already involved in dealings similar to ours.

That said, I wanted to share an update with you, dear reader, about a realization I had recently.

Truth be told, Jill & I have been having some frustrations with this process here lately. We've done all the paperwork, we've gone through all the inspections, and we've gotten our approvals. It is my understanding that where we are at this point is more or less a waiting game. When it comes to adoptions through the Department of Social Services here in South Carolina, there are boards in place the members of which work to try and pair up children with prospective parents. We're to the stage where it seems like the best we can do is hope we get noticed - to make a sports analogy, it's like we've declared for the NFL Draft and our Wonderlic scores came back high but we don't know which team (if any) will give us a chance to prove ourselves.

Jill has gone out of her way to be our own best advocate. That she has done this was no surprise to me. Jill is her mother's child; when I say that, I mean to point out that - much like her mother - she is not content to merely sit idly by when it appears that there's work to be done on something she's passionate about. (I added that last bit regarding her passions because while my wife will not hesitate to assume the role of master and commander when it comes to a situation in which she's emotionally invested, I have yet to have her sprint to action over matters of state like laundry, cleaning the house, or dish washing.) She has done all she can to investigate details on children, those in South Carolina as well as in other states, who are available for adoption by contacting the agencies providing them care. On top of that, she has sent countless emails and made Lord only knows how many phone calls to our own social worker.

I understand that everyone is busy these days and that it seems like every government office is having to learn to do not more with less but more with nothing. (Having worked in the public sector for more than 6 years, I can tell you that statement is true on a variety of levels.) Be that as it may, it's been difficult to get over how uncommunicative certain entities have been with us now that we are where we are. You're in the office 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Did you forget your voicemail passcode? We rarely get a callback, and when we do it's typically not in a timely manner. How hard is it to reply to an email? We're not expecting a message that's 10 paragraphs in length, just a simple acknowledgement that you are still there and that we're not wasting our time by contacting you is more than enough.

I feel like patience is one of my better virtues, and as it relates to the adoption process I have done my best to be patient in navigating the various twists and turns. When we got into this I knew it wasn't going to be something that came to fruition within a couple weeks. For that matter, I knew it was going to take a number of months if not more than a year for our efforts to pan out. (People I know and work with ask me often how long it's been since we've been at this; I try to keep it in perspective by remembering that were we genuinely pregnant we'd only be about 7 months into the delivery. In reality, were things to have worked out differently, we'd still have at least a little ways to go.) As much as I would like for it to be different, this isn't a situation where you can force someone's hand with sweet talking, threats, bribes, or even litigation (which would probably draw it out even further, more than likely). Jill, on the other hand, has never been a particularly patient person. Try as I might to remind her of the teachings of Master Yoda ("Patience you must have, young padawan..." is a favorite quote of mine to use on her), I've learned over the course of our relationship that there's not a whole lot I can do to divert her away from whatever path she's on. I'm not saying that her desire and passion is a bad thing, especially in these circumstances, rather I merely wish she would understand the subtle difference between persistence and insistence (she knows I feel this way, so don't go thinking I'm taking to my blog to air dirty laundry).

Be that as it may, within the past week we made contact with an out-of-state agency about a child in their care and they responded to us almost immediately (as in within 24 hours; that's a precedent no other group has lived up to). The agency said that they were fielding a number of inquiries about the child and that they were in the process of trying to narrow down prospective families but they felt we would be great candidates, part of their reasoning being Jill's experience as a social worker. They granted us an opportunity to learn more about the child's history at which point we were required to sign confidentiality waivers which is why I have to be somewhat guarded in saying what I'm going to talk about next.

There is no reason a child should have to endure what this one has. The report we received spelled things out very clearly and concisely, detailing the data they've collected over the span of time the child has been in their custody (roughly three years). As painful as it was to read, it was more painful to come to the quiet realization that it didn't seem like there was an opportunity for us to help. The list of issues they are dealing with felt insurmountable in my mind, and the fact that the child has begun to develop defense mechanisms in order to deal with them made their plight that much more awful.

It wasn't until I read the report that it dawned on me, this is the kind of abuse that gets found out and these are the kids that we'll be adding to our family. It hasn't dissuaded me from the prospect - not in the least. However, it has made me come to terms with the fact that we're all broken in some way, shape, or form. No one gets through life without chips, dings, and cracks. Sometimes the damage is so bad it seems like it can't be fixed, and even when it can be sometimes you have to admit, no matter how bad you want for things to be otherwise, you aren't the one to handle the repairs.

I mentioned earlier about how the agency representing this child made a point to bring up my wife's career as a social worker. A close friend of ours made a fantastic comment about this and it is one that I'm sure we'll need to be reminded of again as this process continues. The comment was that my wife isn't going to be our child's (or children's) social worker, she's going to be their mother. While her experiences in social work give her a unique perspective, she shouldn't have to be saddled with that role because it would undoubtedly get in the way of the bigger task, that of being a parent.

We decided this particular child has needs we are not prepared to tackle. We have had a tough time of admitting this because we don't know how many opportunities like this we may get. Sure, there are thousands of children out there, but there are potentially as many prospective families. As odd as it may seem, this is something of a competition. What's more, we've both felt in a way that we're letting the child down. Even though we'll never meet the child and the child will never have any idea that we made an inquiry, it's been as though we had to tell the child "no" face to face.

That is what's broken my heart. Two letters, one word, and yet so much hurt it can cause.

Our Road to Building a Family - The Story So Far

[AUTHOR'S NOTE: My wife has done an auspiciously better job of detailing how far we've come in this process than I ever could in her own blog, The Truesdale Times, so please check it out as well - http://thetruesdaletimes.blogspot.com/]

"When are you going to have a baby?"

"You guys do want kids, right?"

"How much longer are you going to wait before you start a family?"

"You're going to be an old dad!"

I don't know that people understand how offensive or otherwise poorly timed their words can be. I can't count the number of instances where the questions above, or a variation on them, have been posed to my wife & I since we've been married. (I'm so jaded about it that I'm at a point where when I hear of a couple being pregnant, especially through some cutesy, staged announcement, my reaction is to smile and mutter a very sternly worded assault of their character, occasionally sprinkled with expletives, under my breath.) They've come from members of our family, friends, and people we barely know. The answer was always the same for us: "We've been trying - so whenever it happens, it happens." We were putting on a good face, as it were.

Except nothing happened. At least not what we were expecting to happen.

I've had a difficult time of convincing myself that I should write about this, mainly because it's a topic that involves some of the most painful realizations I've ever had to deal with. I wasn't sure I wanted to share those moments with anyone other than my wife, for various reasons all of which I'll leave to you, dear reader, to interpret for yourselves. Even so, I find that the path we're on now is one best not walked alone. For that reason, I am putting pen to paper - or finger to keyboard, as is actually the case - in an attempt to convey what I, we have been through in the process of building a family.

After my wife & I got married in May of 2010, we were living in a house in Orangeburg, South Carolina that I'd been renting since I moved into town back in February of 2008. It was a good bachelor pad and more than enough room for one person, but neither of us wanted to live there forever as we both had dreams of owning our own home, somewhere that we could settle into and enjoy as it would be ours, not just a space we happened to be inhabiting. My wife waited patiently as I asked her to give me two years to work on getting to a place financially where I felt like we'd have more stability. Truth be told, I had a plan in mind; first would come the house, then we would work on our family (not to say a baby wouldn't have been welcome before then, just that in my head that's the way it would've panned out best). Call it a blessing, clairvoyance, or just dumb luck but we closed on our house June 1, 2012.

So I needed an extra month. Sue me.

It was time to get down to business, and that became a problem for me.

I'm not going to beat around the bush here. Making love is awesome - or at least it should be. When it becomes a chore, you know something is wrong. And in my mind, when we were trying our hardest to get pregnant the whole thing lost its appeal. Sex had become not something we were doing for fun anymore, instead it was this thing we were doing because we had to and in my head that made it less desirable. It wasn't that I wasn't attracted to my wife, it was the stress and the pressure from the mindset of, "Okay, we've got to get this done now...If it doesn't happen now, people are going to keep bugging us about it and even though we're never going to live up to their expectations we have to do this or else we've failed as a couple."

Notice the word failed there. I'm not afraid of many things. I'm old enough to have a sense of logic that affords me the comfort of being able to differentiate between what's worthy of fear and what isn't. Failure never has been kind enough to make itself so conveniently sorted. The fear of having done all that I could and still come up short has always haunted me, ever since I was a child. I had terrible stomach cramps when I was in college because I had put myself into a position of being incredibly fearful about whether or not I'd be able to perform (I'd say taking advanced courses in logic and mathematics would be enough to upset most people's stomachs). I still deal with it to this day. It's a debilitating feeling, trust me. People act surprised when I tell them about this because they say I don't have the outward expression of someone who's constantly tied in knots. I guess I've dealt with it long enough that I hide it well, or at least better than others.

That said, the fear of failing in this particular instance was getting to me, mainly because I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what was going wrong or how it could be remedied. My wife had been off of birth control for a while and we'd had no luck as of yet. She was doing all that she knew to do, going so far as to take prenatal vitamins and at-home ovulation tests (she even had an app on her tablet that was supposed to help predict when she'd be at her most fertile, for crying out loud). It dawned on the both of us that we were getting to a point where we would have to look into the possibility of there being medical reasons as to why we weren't seeing any results.

My parents got divorced when I was very young and the only father-figure I had growing up was my Grandfather. Unfortunately, he passed away when I was 12 and as I grew up there was a hole in my life that never quite got filled. I've made it known in previous blog entries that there was a point in time where I didn't believe in the concept of marriage and that I thought I'd never get married. I think the desire to be a father set upon me around the same time that I became mature enough to put away those beliefs. I knew in my mind that I wanted to give a child (or children) the sort of love, guidance and upbringing that I had but in a complete, whole family setting. It had become a dream, the desire to someday go out in public with pride while wearing one of those baby slings you see dads wearing - you know, the kind where the baby is more or less strapped to the guy's chest or back? I wanted to be that guy, in the worst way.

Jill and I finally did consult with a specialist regarding the issues we'd been having in trying to get pregnant, and it broke my heart when we found out that it would be all but impossible for us to conceive a child of our own.

We had picked out names for our children, one for a boy and one for a girl.

To have a dream taken from you is one of the most painful things a person can ever experience. The hurt from that news is still there, to this day. The questions, the wonder about why this happened to us, the urge to shake my fist at the sky and scream with every bit of anger I could possibly muster - all still there and probably not going away any time soon. (I am saddened by the many prospects that were dashed by this turn of events but what weighs most heavily on me now is that the bloodlines of our families will end with us. That's a medieval concept, I know. I've just not been able to shake the hurt from that.) But life goes on, with or without you, and so has our effort to build a family.

We have talked openly about the idea of adopting at least as long as we've been married. It wasn't a stretch for us to discuss that opportunity, what with my wife having a background in social work and several cousins who were adopted. However, I'll admit that I never thought we'd actually pursue it because I didn't think we'd have no other option when it came to growing our family. I know that could sound harsh but the reality of the matter is that adoption prior to now, in my mind, would've been an effort of last resort. As it would turn out, it was always our best option.

Around the end of September, we began the process of getting involved with an organization called Heartfelt Calling which is associated with the South Carolina Foster Parent Association and the South Carolina Department of Social Services. Prospective applicants have the option of being foster parents, foster-to-adopt, or adoptive parents and we at least for now have chosen to take the latter route. We received an application packet from them, which was just shy of the thickness of your average textbook. It goes without saying that the sort of information they gather on prospective adoptive parents is vast (a background check complete with fingerprints, financial reports, a floor plan of our home with an evacuation route, proof of our dog's vaccination records, etc.), and not all of it was necessarily the sort of data you'd expect to have to submit. Apparently it was vital that they know my cholesterol levels as I had to have blood work done in order to get every piece of information required for the application to be completed. As of this writing, I believe the only portions of the application that haven't been turned in are reference letters from a few of our friends (if you're reading this, and you know who you are, GET ON THE BALL).

The paperwork was tedious and time consuming, and so too have been the classes we've had to attend. There's an old joke about how some people should be forced to take a training course before they can be parents. As it turns out, in certain cases, that's exactly what you have to do. When talking about them, I've referred to the trio of classes we've attended as Parenting 101, 102, and 103. Combined, we wound up spending about 20-25 hours in a classroom setting. (None of the meetings we've had to attend have been nearby; even though we're closer to Columbia than Charleston, a majority of the sessions we've had to attend have been in the Low Country, meaning we've sacrificed our free time and put a good amount of miles on our vehicles these past few months as well.) Fortunately the classes weren't a pass/fail scenario as all we had to do was show up and participate in order to receive credit. They weren't so much curriculum-based in regard to teaching people how to be parents or even better parents; they were sessions geared towards preparing prospective foster or adoptive parents for the kind of children who find themselves in this system (kids with disabilities, who have been abused or neglected, or what have you) and the associated issues that they may encounter as a result of inviting such children into their home.

This process of completing paperwork and going to class is leading up to our eventually being licensed to serve as adoptive parents. There's another aspect to all of this which involves in-home inspections and home studies. Thus far we've worked with the local Department of Health and Environmental Control and we're waiting to be seen by the fire marshal as well as a home study to be conducted by DSS.

Prior to the DHEC inspection we went about making a series of changes to our home - "child-proofing", as it were. The cabinetry locks were simple to add as they slip over your existing knobs and handles, however let me be frank in saying that I highly doubt the people who design the drawer latches we purchased have ever had to install them. Those things were an absolute nightmare to get into place because the cabinets we have are made from material that evidently was never intended to be modified. We got them in, though, albeit not without the usage of a variety of colorful metaphors, as Spock would call them.

We emptied out the storage spaces underneath our kitchen and bathroom sinks, tossing out a fair amount of clutter in the process, then gathered together all of our cleaning supplies. Our laundry room is more like a closet than a room as it's situated in the main hallway of our home and features a set of double doors. A friend of mine had shared an article with me on life-hacks a few weeks prior and in it was an idea about using over-the-door shoe organizers to keep all your cleaning supplies together and in one place. This was a brilliant concept for us as we were able to use the organizers and that closet to effectively secure every cleaning product we have.

My wife and I came to the conclusion that the term "child-proofing" is an absolute misnomer. It doesn't matter how thorough you may be or how many precautions you may take, kids are going to hurt themselves because they don't know any better. That's not a bad thing, though. It's how they learn about the world around them. I did it, she did it, we've all done it - we're all still here and more or less intact. One has to hope, as a parent, that dropping a TV on their heads isn't part of the learning process.

We made sure to cover a few other random items before DHEC had their way with our home, such as verifying that the temperature of our hot water didn't exceed 120°, that the refrigerator was at an appropriate level of chill, and that our firearms were stored in locked containers away from their ammunition (because a gun purchased with the intent of being used as home defense is useful in that scenario). Our home has a septic tank and so the inspector would have to walk over it as well - I assume the idea there being that you're in the clear so long as they don't see a puddle of turds and toilet paper in your yard. We felt like we knew what to expect because we were working off of a cheat sheet that had been given to us as part of the applicant packet.

As I expected it would, the DHEC inspection went off without a hitch. (I will add that we did something of a mad-dash cleaning of the house the night before as we were running short on time with all we had going on the week of the inspection.) What can I say, I was confident in the work we'd done. By some odd turn of events, it happened that my wife and the inspector had been acquaintances in college as they were both students at Winthrop University. He was thorough, nevertheless, as he did all the things we had counted on and he even went so far as to check our window blinds in order to determine if they were a variety that could potentially contain toxic metals (that wasn't on the cheat sheet). We were in the clear all around, though, as he signed off on our home without encountering any potential issues.

At present, we need to work on getting a fire extinguisher (which has to be mounted to a wall in our kitchen - I'm not thrilled about that, to be honest) and a carbon monoxide detector as the next phase of this process will involve the fire marshal inspecting our home. I didn't mention this earlier, but part of the applicant packet was a worksheet wherein we had to submit measurements of the openings of our windows. I forget what the specification was but ours appeared to have been up to snuff. It wasn't explained to us as to why the windows needed to be a certain size. I assumed it was to insure they were adequate evacuation ports; this is true but as it turns out there's also a consideration here for whether or not a firefighter wearing SCUBA would be able to get in through that same space. That's an example of the kind of thing that wouldn't cross an average person's mind unless you're being made to endure a process like this.

To that end, it's rather mind-boggling to think about what we've been through so far. We've jumped through one hoop after another in order to confirm that we're fit to be parents whereas there are people in this world having babies every day who don't want them and won't love them. It doesn't seem fair, is what I'm getting at. I'm a natural cynic and I can't help but express these feelings.

Regardless, we are where we are and we know where we're going, and that's what we will continue to focus our efforts upon. Building a family, one day at a time.