A New Addition

About a month ago Brandon came home from the gym and said that one of the instructors wanted us to watch her foster son (just shy of 2) for an evening I said sure and so we finalized plans for us to keep little T on the 22^nd of January. We kept T that night and took him to church with us the next day. Talk about a cutie pie! We didn't want to take him home. We kept him with us until 6:30 Sunday night. He was the sweetest thing. He called us mom and dad, which isn't uncommon in the foster care world, and took to us so easily. When we took him back to Tonya that night she told us about their (did I forget to mention he has a 3 year old sister K) situation and about the upcoming hearing at the end of February. She then asked us if we'd be willing to take T as a temporary placement because she was overwhelmed with some of his sister's upcoming medical procedures and couldn't do her three children along with two others right now. We talked it over and said yes. Tuesday evening I picked T up from daycare and he has been with us ever since. He turned 2 on the 29^th.

After talking with his caseworker we learned that all parties involved are asking for rights to be terminated at the end of the month. The kids suffered severe neglect and abuse, both have chronic medical conditions from the abuse and K has a genetic issue and had never received medical care for it. It really is a sad situation but you couldn't tell from the way these two kids behave. The caseworker informed us that the two would be adopted together and that if we were interested in them they would allow us to take placement of both T and K after the hearing on the 28^th. We decided to try out a weekend with both of the kids. We had a blast. They play so well together and it was a great weekend.

We had a staffing this last week and the lawyer for the parents asked them to think about relinquishing rights to the kids because she thinks it would be easier on the parents than to have the judge do it. Neither are mentally capable due to years of drug use to raise the kids. It really is a sad situation. I could see that the father loves the kids but he isn't able to take care of them. It breaks my heart to see all of this take place.
We took T on Tuesday to an asthma specialist and are hoping to get a lot of his breathing problems under control soon. K had tubes put in, tonsils and adenoids removed, and several other procedures done on Wednesday. She has some heart abnormalities that can be corrected and they did scans on Wednesday as well to see what the next step is.

Please pray with us on this situation. We have not officially said yes to adopting them. We are a little timid in making that decision again because of the situation with baby B. I know that God has all of this under control and that He has guided us so far and will continue to do so. We would love to be parents to these two precious babies. They are so so sweet.

Love you!