Happy Easter

Easter was coming.  It would be our first "holiday" with a foster since Baby O spent New Year's Eve with us.  I was excited.  Even though Tiernen is an adult, I still make her an Easter basket every year.  It is the same one she's had since birth, the one my Gram gave her.  Now that's she's an adult, instead of candy, she gets earphones, clothes, and plastic eggs with cash.  Every year we dye eggs in one form or another too.  This year, I found black chalkboard eggs that you could decorate with chalkboard markers.  

Oh, where have you been all my life???

I was excited to make Bram's Easter basket too!

We brought him to the mall and had his picture taken with the Easter Bunny.  He was in the height of his drool phase with teething, so his face was perpetually red, like a little alcoholic!   

He was at the age where he didn't mind sitting with the Easter Bunny.  I know that Tiernen hated the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus.  The only pic I have of her with any holiday character was the year when Mrs. Claus was a friend of mine! Other than that, she avoided them like the plague.  True confession:  Darryl is still afraid of the Easter Bunny!  We made sure we got a huge photo package to share with Erin, Ibro, and Bram's grandmother.  

Easter is pretty mellow at the Nix residence:  we eat a big breakfast together, Tiernen goes through her basket stash, and later we go out to dinner somewhere.  When  your closest family member is states away and you aren't particularly religious, Easter is:  meh.

This year we would have a baby though!  Yay!

I had so much fun getting this for Bram's Easter basket!  He was too little to eat candy, so I filled it with new sippy cups, stuffed animals, books, and bath toys.  Of course he wouldn't understand what was going on, but that was okay.  We would have a fun photo opportunity.

A week before Easter, Bram's case planner called me and told me that parents were allowed to have their children at their homes for holidays.  By this time, Erin had been granted unsupervised visits, and Bram would spend a few hours on Saturday and sometimes Sunday at his Erin's house with his family so he could see his brothers and grandmother.  Erin and Ibro still came over often to see him at our house during the week too, but this was an chance for the boys to see him.

On Easter, we were told, he would be there for 12 hours, approximately 9 am - 9 pm.  That was the longest at that point that he had ever been away from us.  Still, I understood that Erin wanted him with her family for the holiday.

After he woke up and opened his basket, I gave him a bath and dressed him in the Easter outfit that Erin had bought for him.  He looked like a little man!  

We drove him over and his family were all  SO excited to see him.  You forget that having a child in foster care really affects others in the family, not just the parents.  His brothers and parents kissed and hugged him repeatedly.  It was extremely touching!

I went home and took advantage of my baby-free time and took a nap, showered, got dressed, and then we went out to an early dinner.  It felt odd to leave the house without a diaper bag, odd not to have Bram with us.

When we got home, it was only 3 PM.  What now?

I could not figure out what to do with myself.  The three of us just looked at each other.  Without Bram in the house, the house seemed incomplete and sad.  "This must be what it feels like at Erin's house," I thought.  Damn, what a sucky feeling.

How could this baby who had only been with us since January be such a big part of our lives?  We had lived years and  years in this house without him, without any baby, and got by just fine.  Now it seemed unbearable.  We all watched the clock, waiting for 9 PM when we could go pick him up.