This past weekend, my foster daughter turned 18.  Naturally, we did it up right.  If you don’t believe me, allow me to present the evidence to you and Miley Cyrus that the party was, indeed, in the USA this past weekend.

Responsible party: the 20+ guests we had for the main party.

Responsible party: the six high school girls who spent the night at our house.

Responsible party: Snuggles y Cuddles.  To which I have to say, HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND, PUPPIES?

Responsible Party: it’s a long story but, unfortunately, me.  I’m sorry Barbie.  Truly.

I’ll be back whenever I get this house cleaned up.  Which, you know, should be sometime near September.

Dear boyfriend,

You know what I love?

I love when we’re on the phone and I start talking

in that awful fake British accent of mine

and you say “I can’t understand a thing you’re saying”

with that slightly frustrated tone of yours.

Love,

amy beth

P.S. — Half the time, I actually can’t understand what you’re saying either,

but I always just say “oh, yes” and “of course”

because I don’t want you to stop talking.

My other foster daughter, Miss Seventeen, turns eighteen this week.  As part of her permanency plan set by the state, she will move out of my home and into an apartment of her own.  She will then have ninety days to show the state that she is capable of living on her own, staying drug and alcohol free, etc. before the state begins action to return her son to her custody.   In other words, Mr. Three Year old is living with me for three more months while his mom lives elsewhere.

Getting Miss Seventeen ready for these upcoming changes has consumed much of my free time for the last two months or so.  She isn’t happy about the fact that she is going to have to live apart from her son for three months and I can understand why she feels that way.  I’m very grateful that she is going to be compliant with the permanency plan.  She is mature enough to understand that arguing the guidelines that the state has set wouldn’t work and so, instead of focusing her attention on arguing, she’s instead making strides to achieve all seven aspects of her permanency plan (graduating high school, completing a parenting course, etc.).

Throughout all of this, I’ve been working on trying to build a relationship with Miss Seventeen.  I genuinely love her.  I try not to blog about her too much, because of her age and her need for privacy, but I am extremely proud of her.  She has faced battles that no seventeen year old should face and she has come out on top.  She is not perfect, as I am not, and we struggle in our relationship with each other mainly because she is a child parenting a child (and I am a 26 year old parenting a child who has a child).  It’s difficult at best.  Last night we had a night that made both of us want to throw in the towel and give up.  At one point, I headed to my bedroom ready to just close my door on the real-life episode of Teen Mom that was playing out in my house.

But instead, we sat in the dark of the living room and talked it out for hours.  I gathered up my pride and apologized for the ways I fail her daily and then I gathered up my courage and told her that, regardless of how she feels about it, it’s my house and my rules.  At the end of it, she kissed my cheek as I went to bed and I thought to myself we can do hard things.  We’re going to cry and shake with anger and want to give up on each other nearly every day of the week but, if we’ll keep holding tight to the promise that family can be formed from fragments, we can do hard things.

Together.

Do you know anything about visas or green cards?

Specifically, getting that British Boyfriend of mine to the US

now that he’s been offered a job here?

If so, I wanna talk to you.

amybethbullard AT gmail DOT com

— — —

(Also, if you know how to successfully parent a 17 year old girl

who happens to be the parent of a three year old boy

feel free to email me as well.)

— — —

(While we’re at it, if you know how to fix my dryer

email me about that, too.)

Me, on vacation with my friend Cara last year (I think?).

I am very excited.

One month from today, I will be 27 years old.

Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve wanted to be 27 years old.

Don’t ask me why.  I have no idea.

Anyway, one month from now: TWENTY SEVEN.

I have a feeling good things are coming in year 27.

Well, let’s just get to the Miss Fourteen thing so I can get it over with.  Every time I’ve tried to write about, it’s just been too hard.  But, I’ll try again with the least details possible.

About a month ago, I began seeing behavioral problems.  I had no idea at the time but, each night when I was giving her medicine to her, she was hiding it under her tongue and pretending to swallow.  There’s no rhyme or reason to why she decided she didn’t want to take her medicine anymore.  None of us understand why and she can’t seem to give us any reasons.

Within days, she became physically violent towards me.  The crisis line had me call the police which resulted in her being taken to juvenile for a several day stay.  The judge had some hesitations about what to do with her, but I (politely) begged him to release her back into my care instead of putting her in a group home.  I took her back into my home after she was released from the detention center and, about six hours later, she threatened to come after me with a metal studded belt when she didn’t get her way about something.  After the police took her from my home that night, I found a drawing depicting her killing me.  At that point, I knew that something was seriously amiss.  A little investigation proved that she hadn’t been taking her medicine and we suddenly began to have some answers as to why we were seeing such violent behavior when, weeks before, she had taken to calling me mommy.

It would be nice if the simple solution to this was getting her back on her medication and placing her back in my home.  Unfortunately, that’s not the way the law works, much less real life.  Miss Fourteen is somewhere else now where she will, hopefully, get the kind of help she needs in life right now.  It is obvious to the judge, the case workers, the mental health workers and myself that there is more that needs to be done and addressed here.  I could have never kicked Miss Fourteen out, even with her violent behavior so, in a way, I suppose it is good that someone else made the decision that she needed more help.

Meanwhile, my life goes on.  I slept on the couch for several nights after she left mainly because I’m currently sharing my bedroom with the college girl who is living with us for the summer and I didn’t want to keep her up with my crying.  Ironically, in the months since the five little girls have been gone, I haven’t cried much over the situation with the little girls (probably because I didn’t want to emotionally deal with it).  But having three weeks of very intense problems with Miss Fourteen culminating in having her removed from my house was the very thing that broke down the emotional wall I put up when the little ones left a few months ago.

I’ve been a little quiet on the blog lately because I’ve just been privately dealing with all the emotions that come from loving children in unstable conditions.  Sometimes I work my heart out on the computer screen and other times I work it out crying in the shower.  This has been one of those times when I’ve been working it out privately but, now that I’ve moved past a lot of the intense emotions associated with the loss of Miss Fourteen, I can almost talk about it.  I didn’t want to let any more time go by without addressing why I haven’t been mentioning Miss Fourteen lately so, well, there you go.  It’s disappointing.  But it is the reality of foster care.

We can do hard things.

I just realized that I uploaded these photos months ago but forgot to ever show them to you.  Want to have a peek at my first (last? only?) Mother’s Day as a foster mother?

(A painting by Miss Seventeen, who has never

seen the ocean.  She told me that just like she doesn’t know

what the ocean is like, she didn’t know what a mother was like.)

(I will take her to the ocean.  Wait and see.)

At least once a day I contemplate quitting.  Unlike all of you with biological children, I actually can quit if I want.  All it takes is a call to an office and a signature on paper and I can be done with it.  I can get out far easier than I got in.  And, if you dealt with some of the issues I’ve dealt with the last few months, you might want to get out too.

There is no way for you to know what it has been like at times because I cannot and will not tell on a public blog.  I have never known children with stories as hard as these children; I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  I guarantee I could stun most of you into silence if I told you what these children have seen and experienced because, when they tell me about it, it stuns me into silence.

But we can do hard things, this little family of mine.  We can do hard things.

Including but not limited to:

planning a birthday party for Miss Seventeen.

mourning the loss of Miss Fourteen from my little family (more later, when I can write it without crying).

taking Mr. Three Year Old on a train ride through the mountains.

working over 80 hours in six days (real job + photography).

praying for someone to offer my boyfriend a job so he can move here.

trying to eat healthier.

wearing my hair down.

buying items for Miss Seventeen’s apartment and trying not to cry.

drinking caffeine free Diet Coke.

organizing all my photography business paperwork + receipts.

obsessively buying baby clothes for Marisa’s little bundle.