HIGHS AND LOWS

Wow! What a process this all is becoming.

Today was the first day of our developmental assessment with the psychiatrist. Both my husband and I had to do the written assessment, which was pretty thorough. Since we just got it in the mail today, I had to call him for his and do it over the phone. I had already completed mine, and was pleasantly surprised to find that we had VERY similar answers. So I take the LG in for his first part of this on Wednesday. Also, the doctor will be going into school to observe him. She may or may not come to the house to observe him here.

A couple interesting things have happened in this whole scenario. One is that when I was looking up the address of the office today, I ran across a Superior Court case that kind of is what I had been looking for before: a case in which the courts ruled IN FAVOR of the foster parents OVER a biological family member. What's more: the case has several similarities to ours (though it does have several differences) AND it just happened to be from OUR county. So...we may be able to use that in our case.

When I spoke with the caseworker this afternoon, she did ask if we still were considering being a long-term placement option for this little guy. I had expressed to her some of the frustrations that come about in our day to day life. Most of these stem from moments when I feel like he's going to leave us, and therefore I think they're a defense mechanism to protect myself against that loss. Oddly enough, my husband feels more frustrated when he thinks of taking care of the LG over the long term. However, when push comes to shove we both think we'd be fine with a decision to keep him here, should that be what the judge rules. Of course, we have our moments of thinking what it would be like with "typically developing" children. But then again, I've seen enough of them to know that they're not always a barrel of fun, either. At least with the LG, we have no real severe defiance or anything. He's eager to please and is a cutie. Mostly, it just gets annoying to hear him repeat the same phrases or thoughts over and over and over and ... well you get the idea.

Time will tell where this ends up. All I know is that I'm glad my husband is back in town. It's so much easier with him around to help out.