4 Months Old & Loving Life

Great news! We finally heard from our new case worker. We met him in person and he's been pretty responsive to my e-mails along with e-mails from counselors, our agency, etc. It's nice to know some CPS workers take their job seriously. However, the bad news is it appears we are sort of starting over with the case plan for birth parents. The birth parents stated the prior worker didn't explain what they were supposed to be doing so the new caseworker explained it and now we just wait and see what happens. I just don't understand how it wasn't documented that the case plan was discussed or that they had to sign something. Why do we just start over with a new worker? Anyway the next hearing is January 30th so hopefully I'll have a better update then.

This month hasn't been as difficult as others. I'm not sure why but the twins seem to be in a routine and everyday something new is developing. It's fun to see how they change and find new things interesting everyday. A new habit of baby girl's is to throw a little tantrum while being burped which is mildly irritating however during Christmas she'd stop crying when she saw the Christmas tree lights. Then she'd just sit there and stare in awe - it was amusing. Baby boy has really start laughing but only when you take or put on his clothes. It's such a cute little giggle that I just want to change his clothes all day long. He also seems to only want to perform for one parent at a time because if I'm changing him and he's giggling, Jon will come running from the other room to hear but if baby boy sees Jon, the laughing disappears. Such interesting little personalities are forming!

We attended our agency's holiday party which was really fun. They throw a big event with catered food, a DJ and dancing for the kids, hot chocolate bar, arts and crafts, Santa, and a present room where each foster child gets to pick a Christmas present. It was a lot of fun to see some of the people from our classes and see their children.

Our daycare is amazing. They gave the kids Christmas pajama's from Santa, books, clothes, stockings, and gave us ornaments from the kids. We were overwhelmed with the amount of gifts the babies received from everyone!

This month I also booked our tickets to Kansas for my cousin's wedding in March. I got approval from CPS to take them with us!! Booking a flight with a lap child and twins is very difficult! Then I started thinking about hotels and rental cars and car seats and cribs and all the items babies require! Basically airlines can't charge for car seats or strollers so we will probably check the car seats. I'm not sure if we are bringing the stroller or not yet. However, pack n play's cost the price of checked luggage which is quite expensive for twins. So I started calling around to hotels and some have cribs available but some only allow 1 crib per room. RIDICULOUS! Luckily my parents and sister are all going so I may have them reserve a crib to one of their rooms too. They don't come with sheets though so that's another thing I'll have to pack. Traveling with babies is very difficult! I'm excited to take a 4 generation picture with my grandma though!!

MILESTONES:

• First Christmas
• Baby girl can roll over from her stomach to her back
• Baby girl is pushing buttons on her mirror toy
• Baby boy is giggling when he's being changed
• Both babies are grasping toys
• First New Years (neither baby made it to midnight nor did Grandma!)

Baby Girl's first new years resolution is to stop throwing tantrum's while being burped and realize it's for her own good.

Baby Boy's first new years resolution is to start sleeping through the night!

Anyone have any advice on flying with a 6 month old?

1/4 of a year old

We still have the twins and the birth parents finally stopped contesting CPS dependency (I didn't make it to this hearing). Now our case will finally move out of the investigative stage and move into an on-going phase. This also means we get a new case worker. Our case has been transitioning to a new worker for over 3 weeks now...I'm still waiting to hear from someone.

Before our case worker switched the file she gave me an update and then asked me if we were interested in adopting the twins to which I replied "Yes, of course!". I was flying high the rest of our conversation until she so nonchalantly said at the end "Oh, and there are some out of state relatives interested in adopting them too." That crashed my hopes pretty quickly so now I'm back to taking one day at a time.

This month has been more difficult for me with the supervised visits. Right now there are 2 visits a week and both parents can attend together. It seems like I either get a note or a verbal complaint/concern after every visit. On top of that the twins come home fussy and starving after the majority of their visits even though I'm always told they "just ate before we left". The most recent note complained about FIVE different things. One of the items birth mom knew that I had already addressed because I sent a note telling her I had already gone to the doctor for it. Another concern of hers is that the babies smell and she wants to know how often I bathe them. As far as I've been told I shouldn't bathe them everyday because it'll dry out their skin and according to the doctor it's not necessary to bathe them everyday because they aren't crawling or walking anyway. Birth mom again told me to take both babies to the doctor for her concerns (I should start a tally). Since the two major things in her note I had already addressed with the doctor the day before, I'm not going back until the next scheduled appointment.

Dealing with birth mom's notes is one thing but its even more frustrating because the case aide seems to support birth mom's accusations. On top of that, she's very uneducated about babies which seems odd since her entire job is to transport children and supervise visits. She asked the daycare why the babies always sleep on their backs and she asked me why baby boy was losing some of his hair.

As much as I get frustrated, everything just melts away when I hold one of them in my arms. This morning baby boy woke at 4am and after he finished his bottle he just cuddled with me - there is nothing like cuddling with a tiny baby in his cute little footy, fleece pajamas. Those are the moments that make me keep fighting.

MILESTONES:

• First Thanksgiving
• First road trip (to Yuma for Thanksgiving!)
• Baby Boy has started hitting his giraffe toy that hangs in his carseat
• Both babies can sit in the Bumbo chair unassisted
• Baby Girl can roll onto her side
• Both babies can lift their heads when on tummy time
• Baby Girl is on the verge of laughing
• First weekend alone with Mommy (Jon was in Chicago for a death in the family)
• First weekend alone with Daddy (I was running a half marathon in Las Vegas)

We made it to the 2nd Month!

Things in the Lyons household have been just as busy and crazy as ever in the last month!

The big news of the last month is that I attended the parents court hearing where they were contesting if CPS had probable cause to take their kids or not. We don't have to attend court but it is open to the foster parents. We learned in PS MAPPS (Yes - some things have proven to be beneficial!) that the best way to get information on your case is to go to court. If it was determined that CPS didn't have probable cause the kids would go home the very same day which also happened to be the day before they could start daycare. I am glad I went because I learned tons of information on this case! Needless to say, we still have the twins. It was determined that CPS did have probable cause but perhaps CPS didn't try hard enough to place the twins with relatives. So for the past month we've just been waiting as it's possible they could be placed with grandparents, siblings, etc. at anytime.

The second biggest news of the past month is the excitement of starting daycare! We no longer have to depend on family to help us every single day. (A HUGE thank you to all those that helped us survive the first 5 weeks AND more or less still let us make it to work) Within about 9 days of starting daycare baby boy caught a cold. Of course he caught it while Jon and I were on our first getaway and we had family watching them (Thanks Lisa, Ryan, & Kris).

We have also been to the doctor twice in the last month. The first time was for baby girl as she had been throwing her food up for a day and had a bad diaper rash. We also took her because we got a note from birth mom telling us how bad the diaper rash was and that we should be using diaper rash cream (we had been) and that birth mom was very concerned about baby girl. The doctor determined it was just a GI bug and as long as she was staying hydrated, he wasn't too concerned. The second visit was due to another note from birth mom along with a call from the CPS case aide telling us that baby boy was fighting to breath and I needed to take him to the doctor right away. I won't get into how angry I was at this phone call but basically my thought was if he's fighting to breath then maybe you should take him to the ER because by the time I get an appointment, he'll be dead. Needless to say, I'm a rule follower and I took baby boy to the doctor that same day. Birth mom never showed even though she had the same amount of notice I did. The doctor confirmed baby boy had a head cold and there wasn't much we could do for him as long as he was still eating.

MILESTONES:

• The very exciting milestone of this month is we are getting smiles from both babies and not just gas smiles, real smiles in response to our smiles! 
• They are both able to hold their heads on their own now (most of the time)
• Baby girl likes when Jon plays with her bottom lip
• We've also hit some milestones with Miss Maggie as she has started giving the babies lot's of kisses. Baby girl has decided she likes Miss Maggie's kisses and proceeds to open her mouth for some french kisses! Baby boy does not like Miss Maggie's kisses and turns his head away which only makes Maggie try harder!
• First 5k
• First time at the zoo
• First sleepover at Grandma Shantz's house
• First Halloween

For their first Halloween we dressed them up as Thing 1 and Thing 2 as would only be appropriate given our baby room theme and the fact that we have twins. Sorry I can't share all the adorable pictures but here's what their outfits looked like!

Month 2 is behind us....let's see what month 3 has in store for us!