Christmas in PA and NJ, Part 1: The Drive

Before my grandmother died in 2015, it was the family tradition to celebrate the Saturday AFTER Christmas at my aunt's house in Point Pleasant, New Jersey.  It would be a combination Christmas celebration and birthday party for Gram, who was born on Christmas Eve.  

But after she died, we were all too heartbroken to keep the tradition going.  We just couldn't.  2015, 2016, and 2017 passed, all without a family get together other than Miles's first birthday.  But this Christmas, 2018, Aunt decided that we were going to get together again.

My brother only had Miles for Christmas every other year, and this year he would get to spend Christmas with him.  The plan was to get to Pennsylvania early enough to see him open his presents that Santa brought on Christmas morning.   Then that weekend, we would all drive to New Jersey to spend the day at Aunt's celebrating together.  

We were very fortunate to still have Joshua, and since so many people in my family knew and loved Bram, we invited him too.  His parents had their Christmas celebration on December 24, and late Christmas Eve, we drove down in two cars:  Tiernen, Joshua, Bram, and I in one car; Darryl and our two dogs (Nox and Zephyr) in the other.  Tiernen's best friend Zach agreed to come over during the week to change the litter boxes and feed our six (that's right, six) cats.

The ride down was, in a word, hell.

We didn't leave until it was dark because Bram was having his holiday with his family and because we wanted Joshua to be tired and sleep all the way down.  Joshua was a terrible rider.  He hated it.  According to his mother, this was from birth.  He literally would scream even on the shortest rides.  It didn't matter if there was another person in the backseat with him, whether it was day or night, whether we played music, gave him toys, provided snacks, the poor baby was miserable.

Bram, on the other hand, is a fabulous rider, but he was set off by Joshua.  Within ten minutes from our house, Joshua was screaming and nothing could soothe him.  Did I mention that my brother lives four-and-a-half hours away?  Joshua was overtired and wanted to sleep but could not.  He screamed.  He howled.  He begged me to pick him up, "up, Mama, up!" over and over and over again. His screams upset Bram and Bram was screaming too.  I put on soothing lullabies and told myself they would fall asleep... eventually.

By the time we got to Syracuse, about 45 minutes away, it started to snow.  This is nothing new.  We live in Central New York. It snows.  I have an SUV.  Darryl drives a Subaru.  We are equipped for snow.  Still, driving in a snowstorm is no fun and is often nervewracking.  Snowstorms coupled with two screaming toddlers is a recipe for a nervous breakdown.

Tiernen's nerves were shot and she wasn't even driving.  Her freak out was only adding to my freak out, and so at one point I pulled over and told her to go into Darryl's car.  

Now I was alone.
With two screaming toddlers
In a snowstorm.
Listening to soothing lullaby music.
Trying desperately not to fall asleep.  

I hated Darryl so much for NOT having to experience this, that I wanted to punch him in the dick. And, not one to hide my feelings, I told him as much.  Repeatedly.

The four-and-a-half-hour ride took about six-and-a-half-hours.  The boys screamed for roughly half of his.  I AM NOT EXAGGERATING ON THIS AT ALL.  We had to drive super slowly because of the crap road conditions.

We got in roughly three o'clock in the morning at which point I had to pee so badly there were points on the trip where I seriously thought, "fuck it, I'm just going to pee myself.  The seats are leather.  Easy cleanup, right?"  By the time the boys finally did fall asleep, I was PETRIFIED that if we stopped at a rest stop they would wake up and the cycle would begin all over again.

My brother was not home but had left me his key.  I bolted up the stairs to the bathroom while Darryl let the dogs out and Tiernen stayed with the sleeping boys in the car.  Bladder empty, I went to help them bring all our luggage (two toddlers require a LOT of luggage for a week) and the sleeping boys into the house.

As soon as we got inside, Bram and Joshua immediately woke up.  They were not crying (thank God) but they were ABSOLUTELY AWAKE.  They had napped for three hours in the car, and they were excited to be in a new place with a huge ten-foot Christmas tree and all of Miles's toys.  I was ready to pass out.

Tiernen retreated to the guest bedroom in the loft, and Darryl and I changed diapers, made bottles, and climbed into my brother's kingsized bed with both babies and both dogs (boys in the middle, dogs at our feet).  There was plenty of room, but after they drained their bottles, they decided that rolling over one another and us would be great fun.

This went on for hours.  I don't know how long, but I remember daylight creeping in through my brother's heavy curtains.

They finally settled down, but then Bram started having night-terrors and waking up Joshua.  Bram thought this was only fair since Joshua had kept him up for so long with his screams.

I don't know how much sleep Darryl or I got that night, but before I knew it, my brother texted me and said that they were on their way home from New Jersey with Miles so he could open his presents.

Merry Christmas.

Preemptive Christmas Haul

When Toys R Us went out of business, it was like a part of my childhood died.  Granted, I hadn't shopped in there in years (too expensive, even during the final days when things were supposed to be discounted 90%... you could still get them cheaper at Target).  

Still, Toys R Us always reminded me of Christmas.  If you were a child in the '80s, I have no doubt that you not only remember this commercial but have fond and cozy memories of it hailing the start of the Christmas season as much as seeing Santa Claus at the end of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

(Note for my millennial readers:  once upon a time, Christmas decorations did not go up mid-September.  Christmas season started after Thanksgiving.  It was magical.  Now it's just consumer bullshit.  Back-to-school supplies in the stories July 5?  No, this is wrong!)

Anyway, when Toys R Us went out of business, Darryl and I headed to Ollie's at the beginning of October because we heard that they had bought a lot of TRU stock and we wanted to check it out.

If you've never been to Ollie's, think Big Lots, where they buy all the crap that isn't flying off the shelves quickly enough in other stores.  They buy it up and sell it to you for a fraction of what you would pay in the initial store.  (Example:  I bought over the counter hair dye at Ollie's once for $3 that sold at Target for $7... I was so excited at my findings that I bought a case!)

A lot of what we saw was crap, but then we stumbled upon the stack of age-appropriate toys for Joshua.  First of all, they were all WOODEN, which thrilled me to no end. I hate toys that remove all creativity from the child playing.  A toy car doesn't need to make noise when you can go, "brrrm brrrm."  In our overly electronic world, let's give infants a break.  Secondly, they were all Fisher-Price, which I loved.  Thirdly, they were all dramatically, dramatically reduced.

We spent about $100 for all pictured here.  


Then I looked up the prices on Amazon, which are usually on the cheaper side compared to most big box stores, and I almost passed out.  

• barista set (Darryl insisted) was $24
• wooden shapes were $23
• octopus thingie was $26
• plane $9
• whale shape sorter $27
• ice cream truck $16
• moving animals $12/each (we bought 3) 
• shape animals $7.50/each (be bought 6 of them) 
• deep blue sea stacker $50

$256 worth of stuff for about $90

I was super proud of my haul, especially since all the toys were high-quality, educational, and used imagination.  But it was only October.  I didn't want to think that maybe we wouldn't have Joshua for Christmas, that maybe this would have been for nothing.

But Darryl brought it up anyway.

"What if he goes home before Christmas?  What will we do with all this stuff?"

I didn't want to think about it, so I said, "Then we'll give it to Bram."

Except we didn't have to.

Thanksgiving

Let's be real:  holidays with children are just better.  When you are a foster parent, you never know whether you are going to actually "have a baby" for a holiday or not.  

Sure, I had Baby O for New Year's Eve, but Darryl and I usually just spend those home alone anyway (I know, par-tay animals!)

When Easter came, Bram went all day to visit his family, so we didn't have a baby that holiday either.

We did have Joshua for Halloween, my all-time favorite holiday, but it isn't considered a family holiday if you get my meaning.

Thanksgiving was coming and the question loomed:  would we have Joshua for this holiday?  Would he be spending it with us or would The Agency allow him to go spend it with his family?

My brother only has Miles every other Thanksgiving, so it seemed stupid to drive down to Pennsylvania when he wasn't really celebrating.  I invited him up, but he declined because he had work the day before and after.

If you want to know the truth, I hate Thanksgiving.  I've hated it since I became a vegetarian in college.  Unless I cook myself, there is usually nothing I can eat when visiting someone else.  I end up only eating what I brought and what fun is that?

I don't shop and loathe crowds, so the "thrill" of Black Friday is completely lost on me.

Then there is Thanksgiving week, or as I call it, the historical week of shittiness.  

In 2009, two days before Thanksgiving, I had to put my dog Seamus to sleep.  Shitty.

In 2013, two days before Thanksgiving, I had a surgical biopsy to find out whether or not I had breast cancer (I didn't, thank goodness) but because it was the holiday weekend, I didn't know that until Monday, nearly a week later.  Also shitty.

In 2015, my beloved Gram died the day after Thanksgiving.  I'm still not over it.  That is the shittiest ever.

The week is cursed, I tell you.

We found out that we could indeed have Joshua for Thanksgiving, and we planned on just finding someplace to go and eat out.  But then Erin invited us over.  We were thrilled.  She lives less than ten minutes away (by foot!) and we got to see Bram and I love all of her family.

We brought tons of food and dressed up Joshua and were on our way.

Joshua and Bram had a ton of fun together, and oddly enough, were wearing the same sweater from H & M in different patterns.

It was one of the most relaxing and enjoyable Thanksgivings I had had in a long, long time, surrounded by friends and family and babies.  Who could ask for anything more?

Haircut

Tiernen never had a haircut.

She was born with black finger waves and looked like a little Eskimo baby.  Her hair was so long at birth that it literally cascaded over my arm when I held her.

And then, like with most babies, it all fell out.  She was bald until well after her first birthday.  Then, thankful to see hair again, I just let it grow.  Every once in a while, I would trim her brown bangs so they wouldn't get in her eyes, but other than trims, she never got a haircut.

Joshua, however, needed one.

It wasn't that his hair was incredibly long.  It just was incredibly uneven, longer in the back and choppy, almost mullet-like.  Since Darryl thinks any hair on a male longer than 1/8 of an inch is "too long," he really wanted Joshua to have a haircut.

As foster parents though, we were not allowed to get him one.  We would have to get permission from his mother.

I had a bad history with haircut permission.  When we had Baby O and W, W's hair was in desperate need of a cut.  He had light brown loose curls, but his hair was so thin, the weight of his hair would show his scalp and make him look bald.  

What was worse is that he desperately WANTED a haircut.  He was a very pretty little boy with an angelic face, and whenever we were out, people would mistake him for a boy.  (Being misgendered on the regular is traumatic, even for your average cis three-year-old.  Every time we got in the car, he would ask, "Are we going to get a haircut?"  He would pretend to call his father and say, "Hello, dad?  Can I get a haircut?  Okay, thanks!"

Except his father flat out refused to give permission.  He wanted it to be long.  He talked about getting it professionally braided "once he came home."  I paid a LOT of money to get his hair professionally braided, not once but twice.  His hair was so fine that by the next day, all the braids were coming undone, leaving him with a fuzzy halo of fine hair around his head.

I feared the same thing would happen with Joshua.  

I texted his mom and she gave permission with the caveat that we keep all of his baby hair and give it to her the next court date.  I said I would.

Darryl was THRILLED to bring Joshua to his barbershop.  According to Darryl, ONLY Dominicans know how to cut his hair.  And so, the day before Thanksgiving, we trucked on down to Darryl's place and Joshua had his first haircut.  I took a million pictures to send to his mother.  Along with, of course, his hair.

Here are some of the better ones.

The Judge

About a week after Joshua came to live with us, Joshua's mom was summoned to family court.  

The purpose of this initial trial was to determine whether removing Joshua from his parents' custody by CPS was warranted or not.

I had not been informed that any court was happening, or I probably would have attended, even with the short notice and even though it was so close to the beginning of the school year.  

The Agency cannot tell me anything about WHY a child is put into foster care.  The only details a foster parent gets is on the permanency paperwork from CPS six months in or at court.

Unless the family discloses, you are kept in the dark, which kind of sucks.

I found out about this one because, in the middle of day, I started getting texts from the case planner.  

She was in court with Joshua's mother who, understandably, was frantic not knowing where her son was or who he was with.  The case planner wanted to know if I was willing to give Joshua's mom my phone number so she could text me (no one uses phones to actually make calls anymore, do they?) and see how he was.  Of course I said yes.  If there was one thing I was good at, it was being open to the parents of our foster kids.

Back when we had Bram, his case planner would constantly tell me that the relationship that Erin and I had was atypical and NOT to expect that with other families.  She said they were tolerable at best, but mostly, parents were outright hostile towards the fosters who had their children, in many cases blaming them for their children not being with them.  

I get it.  Rarely does a parent, even one who has been deemed "unsafe" by CPS think anyone could do a better job with their child then they could.  And there is the jealousy aspect; as a foster parent, you get to see the child many more hours a week than they do.  There is the fear that the child will love the foster family more...  I get it. I do.

The case planner told me that Joshua's mom couldn't stop crying, even when she showed her the texts from me saying that I would happily text her, call her, and send her pictures and videos of Joshua whenever she wanted.  

The judge did indeed find that the removal was warranted and set another date for two months later.  I asked the case planner for the date and she gave it to me (I don't know if that was allowed or not).  I immediately put it in my planner and called in for a sub for a half day on that date.  

We knew we would have him for at least two more months.