on a lighter note

"porkchop" our delightfully chubby foster son, is now 8 months old and is cruising around on all fours faster than the speed of light (well at least faster than I can keep up with him!) and, having figured out how to pull him up to a standing position the same day he decided to crawl, happily rearanging all of the books on our bookshelves, grabbing the remote off of the coffee table, and plotting to scale the sides of his exer yard/play pen contraption!

he has been pretty sick this month- we spent three days in the hospital thanks to dehydration and rotovirus- and continues to struggle with severe reflux, wheezing, and a never ending battle since the day he came to us with oral thrush, yeast infection in the diaper area, and ringworm. Still, he is such a trooper and has a smile that could cheer up even oscar the grouch!

Sleep continues to elude all of us, but we have managed to stretch sleep periods to four hours at night before he wakes up with a belly ache (rumbly tummy, as pooh bear would say!) and the crying that goes with such discomfort in the tummy region. He sleeps best propped up a bit in our arms (either we take shifts in the recliner or in the bed propping ourselves up in pillows and holding him propped in the crook of our arms) - the crib being nothing more than a nice piece of furniture in an equally nice nursery that is never visited by porkchop except for diaper changes and outfit changes. On the plus side, we all may be sleep deprived, but Porkchop is definitely a less anxious, more attached baby than he was five months ago!

Naps are starting to stretch out from 10 minutes to about 30- again, if he is held in my arms, he sleeps longer and better. lay him down in a crib and it is tears, reflux, and wheezing within ten minutes- if we make it that long.

We have an appointment with a pediatric GI in a couple of weeks at a well known children's hospital. here's hoping that we can get some answers to help little pork chop feel better. Luckily he is gaining weight, so at least that is not a worry at this time. Still, he can't eat solid foods yet (it all comes back up) and I am not sure how long a baby can exist on formula alone (expensive, stinky formula I might add. that stains everything. I have a real love/hate relationship going on with Nutramigen). I am anxious for the appointment time to be upon us, but dreading the ten hour trip to the specialist.

hey, maybe by then the snow will all be melted!

I wish I could post pictures, but since Porkchop is not our child, I simply can't. There is so much I would love to share with you all about Porkchop and our lifes as foster parents- but I am silenced by confidentiality and legal issues. I wish I knew what was ok to blog and what wasn't...hopefully I can figure that out soon so that I can come back to blogger land. I have missed all of you and hope that I can touch base with everyone of you via the net very soon!

I seriously need to update more often!

I can't believe I haven't updated this blog since Feb!!! Of course, I never expected life with a baby to be so emanding and exhausting.....still, I must try harder to get in blogging time.

This will be a short post, but I did want to let everyone know that we received a phone call from our international agency today. The situation in Vietnam does not look good, and they were checking to see what we wanted to do (given that we inquired a few months ago about a partial refund as it looked like we would adopt Hoss and Little Joe). R told the worker that, given the situation in vietnam and our current situation as foster parents that we might as well go ahead and pull our app and ask for a partial refund.

So, I guess that door, that dream, is now closed.

I am not sure how I feel about that. I guess I still had a lingering hope that it would all work out and we would adopt from Vietnam after all.

Now I am wondering where we go from here. If we will ever have a family. If I have the hutzpah necessary to keep fostering and deal with falling in love with a child that is not mine and very likely going to be reunified with his/her birthparent.

How in the world did we end up here? Doing the one thing we swore we had no interest in doing- foster care?

And now it looks like foster care adoption is the only viable option left to us.

I really do not know how I feel about any of it.