Potty Training {so far}

Lilah Ann has understood the concept of using the "big girl potty" for a while now but I have been scared to take the plunge. I have NO IDEA what I am doing. I read a few articles, looked over some online tips, & stopped by half priced books in search of the perfect 'How-To' guide. I have since come to realize that I know my kid the best and we are just going to have to figure this thing out together! Our potty training journey actually began about 6 months ago when Lilah was 18 months old. I had a long weekend off of teaching and thought that we could just knock it out and get it over with. As a few of my Facebook status readers may recall it was a complete disaster. Lilah would joyfully sit on the potty and then get right up, take a few steps, and make a mess of my carpet... tile... nearby blankets... you get the point. We called it quits after two days. Lilah was frustrated and so was I, it just wasn't going to happen and there was no use trying to fight it. I realized at that point that she would be the one to decide when she was ready, not Mommy. So, this past Friday (the Friday after Christmas) I asked her if she wanted to use the big girl potty and she told me she did! I was terrified. We took the plunge together and it was a GREAT day! She loves her Dora panties and I was very cooperative when I asked her to take a break from playing to spend a couple of minutes on the potty. She only had one accident all day and lucky for me it was an easy clean up. *Side note- the best part of it for me was spending the entire day giving her my undivided attention and also, when she had her accident she let me know by saying "Ewwww! Gross Mommy, Gross!"* The most difficult part has been the inconsistency due to our foster children. Lilah does best when I let her run around with no bottoms on at all (just a long shirt or nightgown) and I am very uncomfortable doing that with a little boy in the house. Since "Doug" and "Kate" have been home a lot during the holidays we have had to take long breaks but she is still showing an interest and talks about it all the time. Any time she asks, we take a trip to the potty and whether she goes or not we let her know how proud we are that she used her words to tell us. I would love to have her exclusively using the potty by the time Violet Joy is born (due date March 18th) and I feel like that it totally doable if we continue on the path we are currently on. Any other mommas have a skiddish toddler when it came to going "poo-poo" in the potty?? It seems to terrify her so we aren't pushing it. I am so very proud of my big girl! She's just growing up too fast :)

Two months have passed...

Part of me can't believe that we have been raising three children for over two months and then the other part of me completely believes it and feels like it's been two years! "Kate" & "Doug" came to our home on October 14th, it was an early and adrenaline filled Sunday morning at the Collins home. We had no idea what was in store for us as parents... or as people. Both children, who are now 19 and 7 months old, have been a challenge at times but "Doug" wins by a landslide in the difficult child category. Phil and I spent a good majority of the first month tag teaming him because he would push one of us too far and the other would need to step in. After the first month Phil really took over with "Doug" and I became "Kate"'s primary caregiver. I had (and have had) a much easier time with "Kate". Both kids have some delays because of the atmosphere that they came to us from. "Doug" is right on track with his motor skills and plays like little boys do but is about a year behind in his cognitive development. "Kate" has made the biggest improvements since coming to us and is hardly behind at all anymore, both with her motor skills and her cognitive skills. Our hearts hurt for both children because we know that none of this is their fault. Phil and I have come to learn a lot more about ourselves, about our marriage, our relationships with the Lord (both as individuals and as a couple) since becoming foster parents to these two babies. We have been pushed to our limits, grown together into an unbreakable team, sought out the Lord and fallen on our faces before Him begging for mercy and grace, and our perspective on life has radically changed. I am so thankful that after days of questioning God and asking Him to reveal Himself to us through this journey, He has. His plan was perfect from the beginning. There are still plenty of tag team moments and night where we just look at each other with defeat in our eyes but the Lords grace is new EVERY morning and we are more aware of that now than we ever could have been before. I am so grateful for my own daughter and her sweet little sister on the way. I would not have been capable of this kind of gratefulness had we not been through this process. God is good all the time and all the time God is so good.

Answered Prayer!

To those who read this... thank you in advance for your willingness to open your hearts to what we are going through and thank you also for your understanding and shared joy! To begin, we found out that we were pregnant with our second little miracle in early July. At that time we were still in the stages of completing our foster parent training. We let Buckner know that we were pregnant during our home study interviews and that the baby was due to arrive around the beginning of March. They were very supportive just as they had been when we told them in our initial interviews that we planned on continuing to grow our family as well as foster. They assured us that we could say "no" at any time and that we could also give a 30 day notice (which is typical of 99% of foster care agencies) if the placement was needing a change. When Phil and I said "yes" to two foster babies, a month ago yesterday, we were under the impression that the same assurance we were given initially was going to hold strong and that we would have the freedom and understanding to take whatever steps necessary for our family in regards to the foster children. We had no preconceived ideas about how long we would have the kids and at the time we knew that there was a good chance that the kids would be reunited with their mother before our Violet was due. That does not look to be the case anymore and although they have family in the area that they are from, those family members are not fit to care for the children based on state standards. After a not so successful case study in our home this past Friday (thats a whole other story...) I was extremely disheartened to tell Phil that it was looking like we would not be able to enjoy being just a family of 4 for a while and that we were not going to be granted our request for displacement by late February (just before Violet is due to arrive). We spent a very long 5 days praying harder than we ever have, and asking our close friends and family to be praying with us, that these two babies be placed with a family (if not their own) that would love them and have the time to devote to them once our second little girl gets here. **The thought of having a 2 year old, a 22 month old, a 10 month old and a newborn is more than this momma can handle. I never pretended to be superwoman/supermom** ON WEDNESDAY WE GOT AN INCREDIBLE PHONE CALL from our Buckner case worker assuring us that the situation had been discussed and that the supervisor agreed that the children should be displaced before our daughter is born!!!! I was sitting in the middle of an Early Childhood Intervention assessment with "Doug & Kate" when I listened to the voicemail and I had no shame when I started to cry. Phil and I have gone through some severe guilt in deciding that this is what is best for our family but at the end of the day it truly IS what is best for our family. We want to enjoy our sweet second baby and we want Lilah to enjoy her new baby sister. Violet will only be tiny for such a very short time, as we well know, and we don't feel that "Doug & Kate" would benefit from being a part of our family during that time. Our attention is going to be focused on our girls, as it should be. We are so thankful for Gods perfect plan and we are also thankful to see a light at the end of the tunnel. This has been the most difficult thing that we have ever done in our lives and we are grateful for all we have learned. Again, thank you for your open heart when you read this and thank you for supporting our family :)

Two Weeks Later

Well, it has been nearly two weeks since we received our first foster care placement. These have been the most difficult, joyful, painful, surprising weeks of our lives as parents. Both "Doug" and "Kate" are adjusting to our lifestyle but there is still a long way to go and we don't know when our time with them will come to an end. Kate has been the easiest. At 5 months old she is a happy little girl that loves to smile and eat. We are still working on getting her to eat solid, baby food but she eats a bottle like a champ. We had one successful night where she slept until 5:30am but that hasn't happened a second time. Doug has been quite a testament to the level of our patience. He is a very emotional little boy and cries at the drop of a hat. Phil and I are not used to this kind of temperament as Lilah will whine but she has been telling us what is wrong since she was a year old. Doug did not speak any 'real words' when he was placed with us two weeks ago. Since then he has learned "cracker" & "DaDa" which he calls Phil :) He has made a lot of progress the last two weeks and is able to mimic a lot of what Lilah does. If I am going to be completely honest though, there have been multiple times that I have wanted to throw up my hands and quit. The constant refereeing between Doug and Lilah is tiring, the amount of energy used to keep Doug from melting down is astronomical, and my limit of patience is reached by about 6pm everyday. I thought, as we were going through all of our training, that if a child was placed with us that loving them was going to be the easy part. How could I not love and embrace a child that was depending on me to stand in as their mom? How could anyone be angry or short tempered with a little child coming from such terrible circumstances?? Certainly not ME?! Wrong. So wrong. I wake up every morning praying for God to give me compassion and to pour into me the right kind of love to pour out on these children. I say the same prayer about 50 times a day. I have lost my temper more times that I care to count and I have to walk away for a few minutes. I was not prepared for the emotional struggle that I would face. They prepare you for so many aspects of becoming a foster parent but they neglected to mention how hard it may be to love them without condition. I am willing to be completely honest with anyone that asks "how is it going?" and I have gotten a few shocked faces when I admit that it is difficult and that I am struggling to like one of my foster babies. I see no need to lie and pretend like this path that the Lord has put us on is blissful and rewarding in the moment. We are doing the very best we can as God's children to plant seeds in these tiny kiddos. We are loving them the best we know how and we learn something new about them and ourselves every single day... every single hour. We do NOT regret becoming foster parents. Not for a single second have we questioned that Gods plan is perfect for us. Have we questioned our own abilities?? Only about a million times, but Gods grace is sufficient for us and we are His hands and feet. Thank you so much for your prayers, please don't stop praying for us. We love you all.

Foster Placement #1

It's funny how smart God is. Phil and I sat back for a very brief moment last night and considered all that had taken place in the last 48 hours and we saw God's hand in every single second of it. To start, we took a short trip to Waco as a family for the TCU v. Baylor game (GO FROGS!) which isn't a typical Saturday for us. We got to spend some sweet time with family and we got to enjoy uninterrupted time with our daughter. We weren't sure if we would spend the night in Waco or make the trip home late that night but decided to go ahead with the latter. After falling into bed about midnight we slept hard until my phone started ringing about 4am. I didn't recognize the number so I clicked it off and laid back down only to have Phil's phone start ringing with the same number a few seconds later. I had to wake Phil up, of course, because that boy can sleep through just about anything. He answered and I knew immediately we were going to be asked about a placement. The first two placement calls we had received had left me feeling jumpy and nervous, a little sick to my stomach, but I felt pretty calm sitting there in bed trying to hear everything our social worker was telling Phil and I started praying. He hung up and relayed everything he could remember (he was still half asleep) to me and we considered our options. TWO babies?! But this is our first placement, why do they keep asking us to take TWO?! Both children were under the age of two and being pulled out of their home for drug use, it was going to be an immediate placement and that's all they could tell us. It took us about 5 minutes of debate to come to the conclusion that God wouldn't put us in a situation that we couldn't handle and deciding to have faith in His plan we called back to tell them that yes, we were open for the placement. During the time we were waiting for the kids to arrive we assembled a crib upstairs, dug out all of Lilah's bottles, toys, and what clothes we could find that would fit a 5 month old. The kids arrived at about 7:15 Sunday morning. The 5 month old girl, we are going to call her Kate since real names cannot be used, and 17 month old boy, we will call him Doug, were a stab to our hearts. Doug attached himself to Phil and wouldn't let go and Kate sat grinning in her carseat while we went through all the paperwork, what little background information the CPS worker had, and a walk through of the house. Our sweet Lilah woke up just after they arrived and was completely smitten with Kate from first glance, she didn't leave her side until Daddy offered breakfast :) We spent Sunday morning changing diapers, bathing kids, doing load after load of laundry to remove the foul stench that came with the babies, and praying. I did a lot of crying. I wouldn't even notice I was crying until I couldn't see through the tears. It has been the most emotional experience of either of our lives. Lilah has done AMAZINGLY well! I am so incredibly proud of our angel girl and her ability to love these kids, to accept them into her house and into our family. I can see Christ in my little girl and I cannot tell you how that fills my heart to overflowing. Our first night as a family of 5 went better than we had anticipated. Kate only woke up twice, ate well and went back to sleep. Doug only fought bedtime for a short while and slept for 10 hours. Lilah crawled in bed, read her bible, and said her "I love you's" just like she always does and slept for 10 hours as well. Day two was tougher than day one but I had some wonderful help from my Mom and my Nana :) They have been so compassionate and encouraging, helpful and selfless! I am so blessed to have the support of people that love my family and respect the calling that the Lord has put on our hearts. Day three is just beginning as I hear my girl stirring from her bed, duty calls! Thank you for your prayers and Phil and I ask that you please continue to pray for us, all 5 of us. It is likely that we will have Kate and Doug for a while and we want to pour into them throughout this time we have together. All our love, the Collins'

Teenage Dreams

Ok, random, I was driving home from school today and that Katy Perry song was on the radio (the one about living a teenage dream...) and it made me think about how much time I spent dreaming about & begging God for my "boyfriend/future husband". I mean, seriously, I constantly had daydreams about what it would be like to have a guy brush the hair out of my face or reach over and hold my hand while he was driving or .... a million other super romantic things :) I'm blessed to be older, a bit wiser, and to have all of those wonderful daydream fantasies be my reality. I am grateful that Phil and I both had the wisdom and patience to wait for each other. That is all! I told you it was random. *Side note: I do not encourage or make a habit of listening to most of todays pop music.* haha.

Officially Official

Phil and I became official foster parents on Friday, September 14th! I missed the phone call from our social worker and received the news over a voicemail but Phil had a chance to speak with her. We were both so excited, relieved, and in need of some deep breaths. We didn't hear anything over the weekend or for the next week. They told us previously that we could probably expect a placement within a month or so. I never leave my phone where I cannot hear it ring or vibrate just in case we get a call from Buckner. On Monday afternoon around 3:15 Lilah and I were playing in the living room when my phone started buzzing, it was Buckner calling to ask if we were open for the placement of a one year old from Fort Worth. I was breathless and thrilled and of course my answer was "Yes!". I called Phil and he jumped into action :) We didn't have a crib for a one year old (Lilah's crib was converted into the big girl bed she uses now) so Phil stopped and bought an inexpensive, but very sturdy, crib along with a new mattress, sheets, and a mattress pad on his way home. We waited, I had trouble being patient, for a call from Buckner. Finally, my phone rang just after 5:30 and I was told that unfortunately CPS had chosen another agency and that the child had already been placed elsewhere. I cried. Then I prayed for that child and knew that God had put him or her right where they needed to be... I had just hoped that place was in our home. So, we go back to waiting and praying :) Our hearts are light and we are thankful for the kickstart that first call gave us! Now it is real!