Thanks for your support!

This passed month has been amazing, I never thought I'd get to share our story on a platform like this. Creating a blog was scary in my mind and I couldn't grasp the concept of why you would want to do this. Then I read some comments on my sister's post when she shared one of my posts. The person was thanking me because they want to foster to adopt one day and didn't know where to start. They were grateful for the advice and I couldn't be happier that it worked out so well. These posts were more than just sharing our personal story, they were done to tell people that we still need a lot of amazing foster parents. There are so many foster kids out there and they need someone to take care of them, that's honestly what I want to get out there more than anything. I want everyone who has ever wanted to be a foster parent to have the information available for them and to know the truth behind fostering. It won't always be easy, but it will always be rewarding. With this being my last post of the month, hopefully Jess will welcome me back, I want to take the time to thank you all for the support. The comments on Jess's posts on her Facebook, the messages I've been sent, they've all been amazing and I'm so grateful to have so much support. I hope more than nothing that my posts inspired you all to at least help foster kids in someway, not necessarily as a foster parent, but even just lending a hand to foster parents. Just remember, foster kids are just kids going through a rough patch and deserve just as much love as biological children do. Thanks again, see you in November for National Adoption Month!

Explaining Adoption to kids

In our family there's a lot of kids. Like a lot, I think there's close to 40 at this points. As you can imagine my nieces and nephews had a lot of questions about our kids. Their adoption is a little different than the other adoptions in our family, in most of the adoptions we knew there was a child coming and months, or even years in one case, so the kids were a little prepared. For our kids however, they just kind of appeared one day and we were telling the other kids that they were their new cousins like how confusing is that? One moment were just a couple without kids and within 15 minutes we had four kids, how do explain that to a four year old(most of our nieces and nephews are four). We decided to let their parents do it-I know we're wimps, but I will be keeping my sisters way of explaining it. She sat down her kids and had them watch Annie, when the movie was over she explained that Annie needed a family and there were tons of kids just like her out there who need families as well. After explaining that she talked about how some of her kids are adopted and asked them how we should help kids who are adopted. They all had different ideas, but the main idea of giving them families was the same. Once she had them giving those ideas she told them we were going to be taking care of some kids until their parents can do it and if they couldn't we would end up being their parents forever. They were okay with the idea and welcomed our kids with open arms and even shared their toys! If we had waited a year to adopt there would have been an even easier way to explain it. The Disney show Doc McStuffins actually just did a whole segment on adoption and all of my nieces and nephews, even the 11 and 9 year old, watched it. It explained adoption perfectly for preschool aged kids to understand. I highly suggest if you're adopting and have any kids in your family to have them watch that, it will answer a lot of questions and will also open the doors of communication for you. Just remember kids ask questions, they don't hold back and they want to know everything even if you don't know the answer. Please try to answer them though, if you don't answer the questions they may feel unloved or like they're being replaced.

Fostering more kids?

Something that people don't realize is once we adopt these kids our options to foster are a little more limited. There are limits to how many children can be in the house especially under a certain age. With all that being said, we are more than willing to foster more children if the Lord sees fit. We signed up for fostering with more than just the intention to adopt, we wanted to be that safe place kids had while they were dealing with a crummy situation. We wanted to help reunite families, that is after the main goal of foster parents. We would love to foster as many children as we possibly can in the future, however right now our social worker has advised us not to take on anymore children until at least six months after our adoption. I'm going to be 100% honest, I'm so relieved. This adoption has been anything but easy and has taken a lot out of both Caleb and I. I want him to be able to relax, I'm leaving on an one year missions trip for work and I don't want him to get the same phone call as last time. I think he can handle four kids by himself, but adjusting a foster child while raising four of your own is more than an one person job. I may possibly come home to new children in my house though, but as rude as it may sound I'm not sure if we would adopt more. I always wanted a big family, I would pray for a big family to happen some how and I knew a "big family" was more than four kids, but now that I have four kids I just want to focus on them. I'm not sure what the future holds or what's going to happen, but for now our four is all we can handle. I know God has everything planned out though, so I'll leave fostering and adopting both up to him.

Family's reaction to our adoption

If you know my family you know they are very pro adoption, they believe in helping these kids and they love the idea. Several of my siblings and nieces and nephews were all adopted so it's not like this is a new concept for them. However, none of them have been fostered to adopt, they were mostly out of country adoption or a "sibling" adoption. This was our first time dealing with the foster care system and the first time we had a sibling group this large adopted all at once needless to say my siblings and my parents all had something to say about it. My dad straight up told us we were crazy, that we didn't know what we were getting ourselves into then he added "I support whatever you do, but please make sure you pray about this." My sisters, let me just say despite the fact there are over 20 little kids in the family they act like they have never seen a baby, so they were excited. They have an adoption shower planned, they have all these things they want to buy the kids-they're pumped. My grandpa however has expressed his feelings of not supporting this multiple times. He believes that me being gay is one of the worst things that could possibly happen to the family and to raise kids would be an abomination in his mind. He has told my dad so many times that he can't support this and won't stand by and watch me adopt four kids and "turn their lives into Hell" he felt so strongly about this that he skipped my wedding reception we recently had and packed up all my pictures. Yea. He's mad, but despite one family member feeling that this is wrong I know what I want in my heart. I don't talk about my job much on social media, but I work with orphans in one of the poorest countries in the world, I've seen first hand what happens when kids have nothing and I want to make sure I do my part not just away at work but at home as well to make a difference. My sister, Jess(you guys know her right?), and I were watching The Blind Side and a quote stuck out to me and I think it's super fitting right now "You're changing that boy's life" "No. He's changing mine.". No matter who disagrees with us, I will keep that quote in my mind. My kids have changed my life for the better and I'm so utterly thankful and I'm thankful for all of you reading this who are supporting us as well. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Changing names?

It's no secret that having a kid of your own is beyond exciting with all the things you get to decide. Names are probably my favorite things in the world. Literally. I have helped name almost all of my nieces and nephews and had names picked out for kids of my own. When you foster to adopt however, nine times out of 10 you don't get to pick the name. Our four came with names, they knew them, they answered to them-we got no say in them! However, they didn't have middle names-yayy!!! I got my chance to pick names for them! Even if it's a name they don't necessarily go by it's the name that I often use on social media due to not being allowed to use their real names. With that being said, their middle names put a lot of pressure on me, they needed to be perfect. In our family typically, with a few exceptions, the middle name is a family name. That means middle names are normally shared, if you know our family you've probably noticed "Lucas" is the most common middle name for our boys and "Joy" is the most common for the girls. No this isn't a coincidence, it's just a family tradition. A tradition so strong it shocked people when I told them my son's middle name was "Glenn" not "Lucas". Despite the fact "Lucas" is the family name and my "uncle" Luke was one of my favorite people I wanted to pay tribute to my dad whose name is Glenn. That was a no brainer and we felt so accomplished with naming one kid. Then we realized we needed to name three girls. Yea. Three. I couldn't even think of three girl names let alone really good middle names! Our oldest was kind of easy though, once we got going through the family tree, we decided on Colleen after my mom. The younger two were harder, you'd have to know their names to understand the struggle, but trust me it was hard! In all honesty we actually haven't decided on middle names for them. It's tough picking a name that your child is stuck with for the rest of their lives and I now understand why my sisters stress out so much when they're picking out names. I don't want to take away their identity, but at the same time I want them to know they're part of this family and giving them a family middle name will  do just that. I feel like picking a new name for an adopted child is just as hard if not harder than if we were pregnant and had nine months to do this, I mean really we were told the papers would be signed about two months before signing them! It's tough! If you ever decided to foster to adopt, if they're older kids, don't be afraid to ask their opinion, I mean after all it is their name. Wish us luck as we pick out two really adorable girl names for our youngest two!

Holidays with foster children

Our family is super big on holidays, probably because we're super big in general. We love spoiling each other and making each holiday better than the last, however when you have foster children it's kind of hard. Despite the fact we knew they wouldn't be going back to their bio parents there was still a worry in our mind that somehow someway they would be taken away from us. Christmas was really hard, it was our first big holiday and they had never celebrated it before. Yup, our kids never got a Christmas before. That meant we had to somehow explain Santa and why he didn't visit them prior to coming to live with us. I know what you're thinking, why didn't you just tell them the truth? Well you see we wanted them to be kids, we wanted them to have this normalcy and to enjoy all of the magic of Christmas. Around Christmas time our social worker contacted us and told us that their one set of biological grandparents were now fighting for custody, that scared us more than anything. It also put a damper on our Christmas plans of spoiling the crap out of them, we had to scale back incase we lost them. Don't get me wrong, Santa still did really well, but he didn't bring the big items we planned on. It was also a bittersweet Christmas, seeing them open presents and be so happy with the simplest of things and knowing this might be the last Christmas we get with them and possibly the last Christmas they get ever. Thankfully, God was on our side and the grandparents stopped fighting for custody-literally just stopped-and we moved forward with our adoption. That means this Christmas gets to be my Pinterest perfect Christmas complete with the big items we wanted to buy. It may seem stupid to be that excited about Christmas, don't misunderstand what I'm saying it's not all about the gifts. We might be gay, but we're also Christians and will be adding Jesus's birth into the mix this Christmas, we didn't feel right about teaching someone else's children about God without their "Okay" first. Once you have kids there is a certain magic about Christmas that's hard to explain, but I've seen it with my siblings and their kids and I can't wait till this Christmas to experience it first hand.

Same Sex Adoption

If you haven't caught on yet, I am a guy who is married to a guy. Which means our adoption is classified as a same sex adoption. When we were told that we would be labeled this way we were scared, what if that made someone not want us to raise their kids? What if my sexual orientation caused us to lose out on raising the kids of our dreams? I know it's stupid to think about, but this was literally what was going through our minds we were on every adoption registry out there not just listed as foster parents, biological parents could see our profile and see we were two men and decide just not to allow us to raise their child based on this one little fact. Being foster parents we also had to worry about the kids we would have placed in our house, what if their biological family has told them bad things about gay people? What if it wasn't something they understood? What if we got an older child who makes fun of gay people? So many questions were going through our minds on this topic. Luckily, our kids were raised in a pretty relaxed household where the parents both never mentioned anything about what it means to be gay. With that being said, when they were placed in our house we had to sit them down and explain to them people might make fun of them because of us. So far, no one has said anything, but it's always in the back of our minds that people can be jerks. I am so thankful for the state we live in and the area being pretty relaxed about these things and am hoping and praying that these kids grow up to be strong because of the things that may be said to them in the future.

Open or closed adoption?

As our adoption date gets closer and closer we have been asked so many questions that its kind of getting overwhelming at this point. One of the biggest and hardest questions was do we want an open or closed adoption. We thought it would be simple and we would want a closed adoption with no contact from their biological parents, but after seeing our oldest daughter's face and knowing her little heart was breaking into millions of pieces we realized that we had to think about what they wanted too. After talking to our parents, siblings, social worker, and fellow adoptive parents we realized an open adoption might be exactly what we need. It allows our kids some normalcy and allows them to know that this isn't the end of their biological parents being there. Their mom has been there since day one, I will never publicly say why her rights were revoked, but I will say she did her best in the situation she had. She was the one who made them and the reason we have them, she deserves to be involved as much as possible. We also have the doors open for their dad, but he doesn't seem as interested, mom however is very happy about it and we're hoping it encourages her to keep doing her best. The moment we told our oldest that even though we were adopting her she could still see her mom from time to time and write to her she felt more at ease. We signed up for this foster parent thing knowing it might be hard for us and we might not always like what we have to do, but we have to do whatever is best for our kids. I highly suggest if you're adopting a child who is old enough to understand what's going please get their input with what they want. We could have just written her off and done the closed adoption anyway, but it would do more harm than good to our daughter and that just isn't fair to her. Foster kids go through a lot and like I've said before, giving them some form of control is the single most important thing, they have almost no say in anything in their life give them this one thing.

Making your foster child feel at home

Let's face it, foster kids often have pretty crummy lives and it can take a lot for them to feel safe. My oldest daughter is a perfect example of that, as I've mentioned before she was the "mom" to her sibling group and we struggled with making her feel like a kid and tried everything in our power to do it. One of the biggest things we realized was our kids wanted some form of control, they had no choice to come to our house. They had no choice to leave their biological family and the whole situation to them just sucks. We decided to let them have as much say in things as we possibly could, obviously we had to set boundaries and we needed to show them we were in charge but for little things they got total control. That meant wearing their "Spiderman" costume to Target was totally acceptable, that little thing alone allowed our son to realize he wasn't going to get punished just for the sake of punishing him. I will warn you though, they sometimes will push their boundaries and see how far they can go-make sure you discipline when necessary. Discipline however can be hard especially if you don't know what happened to these kids prior to your placement, you have no idea if they were just never taught what is acceptable and what is not. Our oldest daughter is another perfect example of this, she was eating food right out of the fridge even meat, without cooking it. We told her that wasn't okay and she cried and told us she was sorry but that was how she was used to eating. Use that as a teaching moment, it will make them feel loved and they'll know that now someone has their back and is going to teach them all these things that we take for granted. I've realized now that fostering is more than just being a "temporary" parent at times, you may possibly be the only one to ever show that kid that someone cares so making them feel safe is super important. Our first week we just got to know our kids and let them pick some things out to have to feel safe, it wasn't long before our kids were saying "Let's go home" instead of "Let's go back to your house" and I couldn't be happier.

What do they call you?

When you foster you have a lot of things going through your mind, one of them for me was "What should the kids call me?". I knew if we fostered older kids they might not be comfortable calling us "dad" or "daddy" or anything along those lines so we settled on Mr. Ty and Mr. Caleb to keep it simple. We also let the kids know that if they wanted to call us dad they could, it was open to them and they got to choose which one was more comfortable for them. Our oldest understood that we were just her foster parents and that her biological parents were still out there and decided to call us by our names, her younger siblings followed her lead and called us our names until she was Okay with calling us dad. This is however where it gets tricky, having two dads can be super confusing so one of us had to go by a different name. It was kind of easy for me to decide to be the one "renamed" my dad never went by dad and still to this day goes by "Papa" by my siblings and myself, our kids also call him "Papa". So being a "dad" wasn't a huge deal to me, it's just a title, however Caleb really wanted that title. We decided on "dad" for him and "Papi" for myself, it seemed like a nice little play on "Papa" and a head tilt to my dad. The kids helped us decide on my name so it was a fun little family activity. However, if you're not in a gay relationship this probably doesn't apply to you and finding your name will be easy. I do still suggest getting the kids input on what they feel comfortable calling you, you have no idea what their lives were like prior to coming into your home and they may not be Okay with calling another person "mom" or "dad" read out the situation and do what fits best for you and your foster kids. Fostering isn't a perfect science and no two cases are the same.

Preparing the rooms

The bedrooms may possibly be the most important part of preparing your home. Your caseworker is going to look at them during the home study and the kids will probably spend a lot of time there until they adjust. It was beyond important to us to make sure these rooms were a place where they could feel safe, loved, and just be able to be kids. It was kind of hard to get a room together for a child I've never met, I didn't know what kind of things they'd be into so we had to keep it pretty basic. We went with pretty neutral themes and filled up a book shelf with some toys and books for various ages. We did however decided since we have three bedrooms to go ahead and make one room a "boy room", a "girl room", and a nursery it made planning a little easier especially with Pinterest having some awesome ideas for bedrooms. Since our caseworker wasn't looking for an over the top room though, we kept it simple, something I suggest doing. You never know how long the kids will be staying with you, but if you're in a case like ours where you're told that the parental rights were terminated give the kids some time to adjust and then you can ask them what they want done in their room. The worst that could happen is that they end up taking some of these things home with them and 9 times out of 10 that's not a bad thing considering what they've been through. Our son is obsessed with Spiderman, it was one of the first things we found out about him even though he had never seen a Spiderman movie or show. He pretty much came to us after a day or two and said he liked the "red spider guy" on my husband's shirt. We went and got him a Spiderman toy and the obsession grew from there so it was easy to know our boy needed a Spiderman room. Our girls however, were more standoffish and didn't want to tell us what they liked so we had to kind of trick them into picking out things. Regardless our three older kids got their bedrooms how they wanted well before our adoption process started to become a reality. Our nursery where our youngest sleeps however was still very gender neutral and will soon becoming a toddler room for her and we're trying to figure out how to do it. Rooms are really important to kids, adopted or not. I highly suggest putting some thought in them and getting your kids input after they're placed with you.

Shopping 101

One of the first things you will need to do when you start your foster care journey is go shopping. You need to have the room or rooms ready for a kid when you're home study is done, the house needs to be perfect and kid ready at all times. Luckily I have tons of nieces and nephews so I was able to pull from that and figure out what different age groups needed. I'm just going to list some of them for you so you can be prepared when the time comes.

*Bed-this can be a twin, full, bunk bed, crib whatever age group you have make it appropriate for them. We chose to get a crib, toddler bed, and a few twin beds.
*Bedding-this is a little harder, you don't know the age or anything about the child so picking their bedding can be weird. We went with a solid bedding in neutral colors for all three rooms.
*Toys-let's face it. Kids love playing. It is an awesome outlet and they needed it, try not to overdue the toys though but a handful for each age and gender that you could end up with is helpful.
*Family movies-One thing we love doing as a family is having family movie night, even when it was just my husband and I popping popcorn and watching a movie was the best. We wanted the kids to know they're part of the family so we got pretty much every Disney movie we could find.
*Personal care items-This might seem stupid that I have to list this, but the cashier at Target was confused when we bought so much stuff so we told her what we were doing and she was surprised they "Didn't come with a tooth brush". Sadly, they normally don't. Be sure to stock up on tooth brushes, tooth paste, mouthwash, kids shampoo, body wash. Pretty much go down the personal care item at Target and if it says "Kids" on it scoop that up.
*Lice shampoo-I can NOT stress this enough, get lice shampoo. My son came to us and we almost had to shave his head. My sister, luckily for me not so much for her, had lice a lot growing up so she knew a few secrets we could try in a pinch but I suggest just buying the shampoo ahead of time.
*Car Seats-this is another obvious one, but surprised some people. No the social worker isn't going to give you a car seat. Our social worker didn't even have a car seat in the car when they dropped our kids off. Have one for every age you are open to. A lot of the times you can get them from a friend when they're done. We didn't pay a dime for ours-except the car seat base-I do suggest making sure you know and trust someone before taking a used car seat since they do expire and can't be used after being in an accident.
*Clothes-Our kids had the clothes on their back and that was it. Their clothes didn't even fit correctly. Be sure to stock up as much as possible. We are fortunate enough to have a garage to store things in, I know this isn't the case for everyone so do what works for you. Labeling the boxes of clothes is so important. My husband figured out what size each kid needed when they came home and got the boxes out for them. It was comforting for the kids to know they had clean clothes. Thrift stores are a huge help in this area.
*School supplies-literally never thought of this, our kids were placed with us a little bit before school got out so we didn't have to send them, but when we were buying stuff this year I realized we had nothing purchased already. Have some stuff on hand just incase a school age child gets placed with you mid school year. It saves some stress.
*Child friendly snacks-my husband is a grown child when it comes to snacks so this was easy, but if I lived alone I wouldn't typically have fruit snacks purchased. It's a nice thing to have when they get there at an ungodly hour and can't sleep. It also shows them you're cool and eat fruit snacks-my son's logic.
*Booster seats/High Chairs-another thing that's easy to get if you know someone who has kids, we got a few of each because we literally had no clue what age we would end up with or how many kids.

I am sure there's a lot more things that I'm missing, but these were the most important for us. I always tell people to just think of what they need for daily living and those are the things these kids need. At the end of the day they're just kids so keep that in mind when shopping so you don't stress out too much!

What to expect when fostering

You can read as many books as you want, nothing prepares you for the real deal like actually fostering. Don't get me wrong, the books were beyond informative and told me what classes needed taken, what I should buy, and some other helpful tips. What they didn't tell me is that I should be prepared for anything, which I guess is common sense but I lack common sense and so does my husband. I wish someone would have told me to expect the first few months to be "the adjustment" stage where we just awkwardly all stare at each other and we try to love them without overwhelming them something that was a major struggle in the beginning. One thing my husband noticed well before I did is that the kids will warm up to when they all decided it's time-mainly waiting on the oldest to give them the go ahead. We also quickly realized our oldest was the mom figure. She didn't know how to be a kid, at five years old she was making breakfast, helping the younger ones get ready for school, and everything else that we were supposed to be doing and desperately wanted to do. We decided the first week to just let her do it, but help without her noticing. If she was making cereal we got the dishes ready for her and washed them when they were all done. If she was getting the baby ready for the day we had diapers ready for her. This made her realize that someone was ready to take care of her when she felt it was fit. Luckily she slowly, but surely fell into the groove of letting us take care of her even though her mom instinct still pokes through from time to time. I never realized how much a persons life can effect them as a person even at such a young age, I figured it was something that came with time. I didn't realize that I would have to teach my kids to be kids. The books never prepared me for this. The other thing books never prepared me for but I wish they had was kids being afraid I'd get rid of them. Our son, who was three when he got placed with us, knocked over a ceramic something or other that someone had made us-clearly it was super important because I can't remember what it was-and he ran to his room and hid under his bed. He was afraid we were going to send him away for breaking it. We quickly told him we weren't planning on sending him away, cuddled him for a little bit, then told him to help us clean up the mess. This wasn't the first or last time any of the kids thought they would be sent away for doing something bad, but it's the time that has stayed with me the most for whatever reason. If you plan on fostering, please make sure the kids know that they are staying with you for however long they need to. Make sure they know you care and that you're there for them in anyway you can be.

Foster Care Awareness Month

It was brought to my attention that it is Foster Care Awareness Month. I don't personally have much experience in that area, however my brother does so he agreed to share his story today so the following story is written in my brother's point of view. Enjoy! When my now husband and I got engaged we talked about a bunch of different things including if we wanted children being two men our ways of having said children were limited. We decided on adopting and started looking at all the different ways to adopt, after talking to several different families all of which had different kinds of adoption we chose to foster to adopt. When we chose this we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into, we went to classes and got our home ready for our child or children. It varies state to state,  but they suggested saying we were open to a sibling group to get a faster placement and to open up the age we were willing to get a little bit more, most people just want babies and that's hard to get. We decided on birth- six and planned accordingly. This was one of the hardest parts for us, we didn't know the gender or size of the kid(s) we may end up with, they could be a newborn or a six year old boy/girl we had NO clue what God had in store. We hit up every thrift store in our area, searched yard sale sites, asked friends and family for hand me downs, and got family themed games and movies-who doesn't love Frozen? We had enough rooms to make one a "boy" room, a "girl" room, and a nursery that was gender neutral. Once we had our home study and we got the seal of approval we waited for our call. I travel for business which often leaves my husband to fend for himself which he is beyond good at, but this trip was a little different. Literally the moment I boarded my plane he got a phone call asking if we were willing to foster a sibling group of four. He said yes and the social worker said "Okay, we'll be there in 15 minutes." Yea, it was that fast. He called me right away and asked if I could come home, I had a meeting with my boss to get to so I said I'd come home after that. He then called my sister, my dad, and his grandma-they were our go to people to make any runs to the store for any emergency supplies. About 15 minutes later a sibling group of four was at our door, there were three girls and a little boy ranging in age from 11 months to five years old. These kids came into our house with just the clothes on their back which barely fit and were rather dirty. Despite the fact my husband is a neat freak he didn't make them bathe or clean up before telling them to come in and see their new home. He gave them a quick tour and gave them a snack, one of them vocalized being hungry on the way there and the social worker made sure he knew that before leaving. While they got their snacks he got them pajamas and underwear in the appropriate sizes and gave them the option to take a bath now or when they woke up, it was rather late at night. Once everyone was tucked in he texted my sister and dad asking to get a few things when they got the chance. The first morning was hard for him, he woke up and made breakfast-bless his heart breakfast isn't his strong suit and typically he makes cereal and toast, but today he made pancakes and bacon. He got them all bathed and dressed and showed them the basement, it doubles as a playroom in our house. While they were being mesmerized by the toys and everything else down there he checked his email for the email from our social worker explaining their story, because it's not my story I won't go into details except for the fact we knew these kids weren't going back to their biological family. He called me after reading this and told me what it had said, he then told me he was going to call the social worker and tell him we would adopt these kids. I hadn't even met them yet, but after hearing their story I was in full agreement. This started almost a year ago, we got the ball rolling and waited. We bonded more and more with our kids and got them to feel safe in our house. We were finally called about a week ago to be told our adoption date in June 6th of this year. I couldn't be happier to be welcoming these kids into our family officially. When I first met them, about two days after they were placed in our home, they were scared of being near us and didn't pay much attention to us. Now they want to be with us all the time and will come to us for help. They have clothes that fit now and each have a special "lovey" of their own, something we made sure to buy them right away just incase they got placed with someone else. I can't wait till our adoption day so I can officially say I have kids. I highly suggest fostering to adopt or even just being a foster parent, it would make a huge difference trust me.

Don't call me brave

Something I've realized recently is people will tell you how brave you are when they hear you adopted. This isn't something that bothered me too much until it was all I was hearing all the time. Literally anytime I said my kid was adopted the compliments ranged from "oh you're so amazing" "you're changing that child's life" and "you are so brave". Don't get me wrong, I love hearing I'm amazing as much as the next girl does, but hearing it 24/7 because you did a human act is kind of annoying. I get that adoption isn't everyone's cup of tea, but it still is a way of becoming a parent for a lot of people and is all we see it as. I don't see my adoption as a huge heroic thing, sure I stepped up in a time when no one else would, but it wasn't because I wanted complimented. I stepped up and adopted my kids because I already felt in my heart that they were mine and I knew that is what was right. People who adopt are a special breed, I will give us that, but we don't do anything different than other parents. We wake up and take care of our kids and try to raise well mannered human beings and hopefully they know they're just as loved as biological children are. I also hope they realize I didn't adopt them just so people would compliment me. I want them to grow up and forget they're adopted, to be so loved that they just forget that they weren't born from me. I want them to know that I didn't have to be brave to be their parent and that I wasn't the one changing their lives they were changing mine.