Category Archives: Parenting

So much for my identity protection – meeting bio dad

With our particular situation as foster parents, our identity is protected from the bio parents for our safety. This is not always the case for foster parents but that’s how it was set up for us. As such, there are procedures in place when I take the kids to the visitation with their parents at the visitation center each week to preserve our anonymity – the parent goes in, then the supervisor calls to tell me the parent is there and that it’s okay for me to bring the kids in. We leave in reverse order, with enough time given for us to leave the parking lot before they tell the parent it’s okay to go out.

This has worked effectively for many months. Six weeks ago we switched to a new mediation center, and the social worker told me they would do something similar. That’s what they said, but that’s not what they’re doing.

The first week she confirmed it was okay to go in, but the second week when I called to confirm it was okay for us to get out of the car – I arrived ten minutes early and it’s hard for the kids to wait inside the car after a drive of almost an hour – the social worker chastised me for calling and told me of course I’m not allowed to come inside during someone else’s turn.

I reminded her that my identity is protected and I didn’t want to start the visit early, I just wanted to be able to get out of the car with the kids.

The next week they switched to a different supervising social worker but didn’t give me his number, so I wasn’t able to call to ascertain the parent was inside and they didn’t remember to give him my number with instructions to call me, so I waited until the last minute I could without being late for visitation. It’s been six weeks now and they haven’t called me except that first week.

At the last visit as I pulled up to the traffic circle next to the mediation center, I saw the twins’ father walking towards the building. I felt uneasy because dd7 was sitting in the front passenger seat and there were no other cars in the area so it would be a reasonable thing for him to look up. If he did, he would immediately know who I was. Fortunately he didn’t look up and the windows were closed so he didn’t hear the children calling his name.

Since I had seen him, I didn’t have to call to ascertain his arrival. The kids were very hyped up because they had seen him and it was hard for them to wait but I waited about eight minutes to be sure he was inside – it takes a maximum of two minutes to go in. There were still a few minutes until our appointment but knowing the coast was clear, I took the kids to wait outside of the building entrance so they could get some of their energy out.

There is a path leading to the building entrance and there are high walls on each side, so you can’t see the entrance unless you are directly opposite it. The parking lots are on the sides of the building so as you approach after getting out of your vehicle, there’s no way to see anyone until you turn into the path.

I was holding dd’s hand and ds ran a little bit ahead of me. As he turned the corner into the path, I heard him exclaim, “Abba!” For some reason, his father had come back outside, which has never happened before.

I thought, “Oh, no, what am I supposed to do now?” I couldn’t stay on the other side of the wall since I couldn’t leave ds7 unattended, but if I turned the corner to get him, his father would see me.

Well, there was no choice but to turn the corner and get ds7. I accepted that this has to happen and there’s no reason for it to be a big deal.

As I turned into the pathway, ds had just asked his father something and his father tensely responded, “I’m not allowed to be here.” He faced the building and kept his back towards me with his gaze averted. I saw the cigarette he had just thrown down and realized he had gone outside to smoke.

Feeling conscious of his proximity just a few feet away, I told dd that we needed to go wait to the side of the building and give her father his turn to go in, and then it would be our turn. Ds7 was confused why we couldn’t wait there and didn’t want to go, so I had to take his hand to lead him away. Their father didn’t turn his head at all to look at me – I thought it was very disciplined of him. The angle he had his head turned slightly to the right was a little unusual, though; he wasn’t looking directly ahead of him, which is what would be expected.

When I came to pick the children up, I stood in front of the frosted glass doors and held my head at the exact angle I had seen their father looking, and then it was obvious why he chose that angle. The glass doors provided a perfect mirror and at that angle he could watch me closely, with his sunglasses concealing his eyes so it wouldn’t be obvious if I were to look at him.

How do I feel about this? Well, less bothered than I did the week that his girlfriend waiting in the car videoed me walking with the two kids into the mediation center. Part of me would rather have had some verbal contact acknowledging one another because it’s an awkward and artificial situation. I suppose it was inevitable at some point that he would see us and while I don’t feel endangered, I do feel uncomfortable.

Avivah

Our first visitor after our renovations – the guardian ad litem

Today was my son’s 19th birthday! I started this blog when he was just three and a half months old. Time flies….


I got a call at 8:15 this morning from our social worker, letting me know that the guardian ad litem (GAL) wanted to know if the twins are home today, and if so, she’s coming this morning. Of course the week before Pesach when there’s nothing else to do is a perfect time for a visit with minimal notice!

We had a lot of building materials still around the patio and yard that I wanted to clear away, so I asked that she come at noon.

It was good to get the materials cleaned up early in the day, and afterwards the teens cleaned upstairs for Pesach.

There’s been so much negativity and pressure associated with her visits, and the good thing about that is I’ve kind of run out of emotional energy to care much more about what she may complain about.

What I focused on instead was to presume good intention on her part. The social worker’s supervisor also came, and I noticed that the GAL also spoke with her in a critical way that sounds attacking. That was helpful for me to see, to realize that a lot of what has been said to me isn’t necessarily personal. By not taking taking her comments personally and with my looking for the good, I was able to view her in a more appreciative way than I’ve been able to in the past.

I don’t know what complaints may come out about this visit afterwards, but I felt it was a good visit. It felt fitting that she was the first visitor to see our new space, since it was when she came last time that it was clear to me how much I disliked people entering the house directly into the kitchen, no matter how neat it was. That was the final impetus I needed to make these changes.

I showed you pictures of the new kitchen setup; now here’s a picture of the new living room/dining room. It’s spackled but not yet painted (the hooks with the aprons hanging on it will be moved). I’ve taken pictures from a couple of angles to give you an idea of how the room looks overall.

This is where the main part of the kitchen with the sink was previously, before the wall behind it as well as the wall next to the stairs taken down. (Remember this was when we had started dissembling the kitchen and the overflowing counters weren’t reflective of how the kitchen usually looked.)

After the renovation, before painting. (The hooks and aprons will be taken down.)

Below is a picture taken from the kitchen – I included a corner of the fridge on the right so you can get an idea of the proximity of the two rooms to one another. The walls are somewhat staggered so the floor plan isn’t completely open, but it’s mostly open.

You can also see the area under the stairs has been closed in and has an access door. It needs a little more drywall work before being painted, but it’s very functional. The kids LOVE this little nook with the mini door – they haven’t gotten tired of playing in it yet.

We have exactly the same items in both the old and new kitchen and living room, but even though the floor space and furnishings are the same, both the kitchen and living room feel more spacious.

The below picture shows one benefit from changing things around. We have a large hallway that housed just the bookcases and isn’t a good use of space – too small to make another bedroom, too big for just a bookcase. By moving the living room to where it is now, the hallway is no longer wasted space and has become an extension of the living room.

I’m really, really pleased with the changes we’ve made. It feels like a new house to me! I am so happy with the increased feeling of space. When I was picturing what I wanted, I hoped it was going to be worth all of the effort, but I realized when I described what I wanted to do to the the plumber and electrician, and even my family members, none of them could visualize what we would gain by doing these renovations. I appreciate that my sons trusted my judgment and agreed to make the changes I asked them to make, even without being able to picture the improvement it would make to our home.

I’m sorry I didn’t think of taking a picture of the living room/dining room area before we moved the furniture out of the area and had and table out of that area and put some of the kitchen wall unit pieces there – it would be nice to show the difference.

But the supervisor (who was here for the last home visit less than four weeks ago) and the GAL were both visibly taken aback at how different everything looked from when they were last here. In a good way. 🙂

Avivah

The old kitchen is fully taken apart and beginning to come together

The electrician came back and put in the new outlets, and though there’s still more work for him to do, it no longer requires us to wait on installing the new kitchen.

New outlets in, the island before it was dismantled

Having the go ahead to get busy taking apart the kitchen unleashed my sons’ energy and they all got to work. While I cleaned up the kitchen so the boys could dissemble it all, they took the countertop off of the island. This wasn’t easy because it was securely glued down on all sides, but perserverance is a good quality to have and they got it off.

Ds17 – left; ds15 – center, ds18 – right

Once that was done, they took the countertop outside – it’s a huge and heavy piece of stone – and then turned to dissembling the final part of the kitchen. The hardest part of a kitchen renovation is when the sink is taken out because that’s the heart of food preparation and cleanup. Here they are soon after they began.

The kitchen countertop was much easier to remove than the island countertop – it’s always nice when it happens that you’ve done the harder thing first and the second time around it’s easier. They removed it from the base cabinets while separating the two sections that had been seamed together.

The kitchen is almost completely taken apart! All that’s left to move are the top hanging cabinets.

I had to change my original (exhaustively thought out) floor plans after finding out how expensive it would be to have a professional refabricate our existing countertops. We decided we would try to cut the countertop ourselves, and to keep the current double sink that is already installed in the countertop rather than have two separate sinks along two different walls. (Cutting the sink spaces would require specialty equipment that we don’t have.)

That meant big changes to the intended layout. It was a little stressful to make changes at this point since the gas installation had already been done, the plumbing already begun, and I had detailed my plans to the electrician. It’s not comfortable when your plans suddenly need to be changed but I feel good about the changes and it’s going to be great.

Here are the cabinets reassembled in their new location.

The countertop to the left is what used to be on the island, but now is cut down to fit these cabinets

Ds17 enjoys working with the router (remember my last post when he was the one to take apart the metal pergola?), so the other boys said he should be the one to cut down the countertop from the island. Working with big pieces of stone isn’t a one person job, though – they were all involved even though he’s the one who did the cutting.

After they took apart and rebuilt the cabinets, ds17 cut down the large piece that topped the island so it’s the right depth. He told me after doing it that it made him feel like there was nothing about renovating a kitchen that was hard.

You can’t give a child confidence, but you can give them opportunities to stretch and learn new skills, and the resulting competence builds confidence.

The plumber was supposed to come later in the afternoon to connect the water pipes, but then called to say he forgot he had a dentist appointment so he couldn’t make it. I told him it was fine, but if he had even a little time to stop over after his appointment, we’d be glad to be able to use the water. I didn’t expect him to come until the next day, but he showed up and our water is now connected!

I’m so grateful and delighted that the hardest part of the renovation, not having a sink, lasted just a few hours. It’s been uncomfortable living with things in disorder for the last two and I’ve felt some discomfort about having to continually remind workmen about coming, but having the sink back in use so quickly makes the entire renovation feel so much easier. I’m not yet using the sink because the counters aren’t in and it’s not sealed for water, so I don’t want to damage anything with water leaking through. But just being able to get a drink of water is helpful.

And of course, one more important piece that needed to be finished is off my mental list.

Tomorrow I’m going to make a trip with ds18 to Beit Shemesh. He’s going to meet with someone there, while I go to the carpentry shop and buy toekicks (the covering for the area under the cabinets). If you’re wondering why I’m not buying closer to home, I went to a carpentry shop locally and he didn’t have the size I needed, and the Beit Shemesh store has what I need and will cut it to size while I wait. I know from experience that when you delay finishing touches while using your kitchen, you may never get to them – we never put toekicks on the part of the old kitchen where the sink was – and I didn’t want to make that mistake again. Hence a long trip at a busy time when there are many other things requiring my attention.

From there, I intend to look for wall tiles at an outlet store in Petach Tikva, as well as another large item for another project that we definitely won’t begin until after Pesach. I’m going to leave right after the kids go to school, with the hope I’ll be back before they get home. With Pesach so close, I want to get this done now because otherwise I’ll have to wait until after Pesach to make the trip.

I’m not planning to do the tiling before Pesach – my focus will be on taking down the tiling in the old kitchen area and getting the area spackled and ready for painting before Pesach. It may get painted before then, I’m not sure. It would be nice but I want to be realistic about what is doable – it’s important to go into the holiday feeling calm and rested, not worn out and stressed.

For tomorrow the focus will be to continue working on the countertop – the sides of this large piece that was cut needs to be trimmed flat on each end side – they’re currently rounded slightly since they were the edges of the island and it needs to fit snugly against the next piece. Then there are two more pieces to cut. One is for the area to the right of the sink, which has a curved wall next to it. The second piece will be to cover the 20 cm gap between the end of the counter and the appliance garage on the left.

Avivah

I feel so angry when he destroys my things and I hate feeling like this

Sometimes I watch ds7 and think it would be fascinating to document what he does and the time he does each thing – he moves incessantly from one thing to another, never stopping. Often I can detach emotionally and find it interesting and even laugh about the endless damages, but sometimes I feel frustrated and even furious. Over a year ago I stopped counting when he reached 12,000 shekels of damage. I may have stopped counting but the damages continue.

Within a day of the foster care agency representatives coming, the wall that was scrubbed was rescribbled on. A couple of days later, he colored on a different wall with a marker.

He climbed up to the pergola and unscrewed and took down some of the cross boards. He picked up a permanent marker and began coloring on a wall painting – fortunately the marker was a bit dried and I stopped him before there was damage.

He regularly throws his nighttime pullup in the toilet; sometimes I see it before anything else happens but a couple of mornings ago someone else did their business on top of it and by 6:30 am I was unblocking a nasty mess. He tugs and pulls and rips and dissassembles everything he touches, unremittingly.

After three months of no visitation with the children’s bio parents, visitation resumed three weeks ago in a mediation center an hour away. Our time slot is 5:30, so we leave at 4:30 and get back at 7:30.

On the way there dd7 began playing with a card game I keep in the car. When I heard ds7 in the seat behind me laughing over it together with her, I took a moment to ask myself if I was okay with that, since the likelihood it would be ripped into small pieces was about one hundred percent. I decided it was okay, that if he ripped a few of the cards it wouldn’t ruin the game.

What I wasn’t prepared for was for him to find a decorative pin in a storage compartment of the car (that he isn’t allowed to go into and that he can’t access with a seat belt on) and use it to gouge deep scratches on the inside of the car window while we were driving. When I realized what he did (thanks to dd7 alerting me – “Mommy, ds is breaking the window and making lines on it!”) – I felt angry, really angry. I pulled over, looked at the window, and asked what he used to make the scratches – he claimed he didn’t do anything after quickly dropping the pin between the seats to conceal the evidence.

As soon as I asked him what happened, his jaw went slack and his mouth hung open with his tongue partially hanging out while his eyes glazed over at half mast. I realize he’s emotionally shutting down because he feels scared – I’m sure there’s a trauma term for this – but it’s not endearing. He regularly responds as if I’m terrorizing him and while I know he has deep fears that are triggered by what seems like minimal stimulus to an outsider, his response doesn’t inspire compassion.

I looked at him very steadily for what felt like a long minute. Then I told him when I see him break things on purpose it’s not a good feeling for me and that I felt angry. I asked him what do we do when we’re angry? Do we hit someone? No, he shook his head. Do we yell at someone? No, he shook his head.

“Right, I’m not going to hit you and I’m not going to yell at you, but right now I feel really angry about what you did.” I took the pin he used, put it away and we continued driving.

Often I’ll catch him doing something, and calmly help him get conscious about what he’s doing: “What are you doing? Do you think coloring on the wall is a good idea? Let’s think, where would be a good place to color?” And then I redirect him to a piece of paper. And that’s fine until ten minutes later when he’s doing something else like using a screwdriver or knife to gauge a hole in a wall or the couch. Or Shabbos morning using scissors to cut the window screen and then ripping it wide open. (We’ve already replaced the screen on the screen door twice due to his gouging.) Or Shabbos afternoon pouring cement powder down into the new sewage lines.

As we drove I asked myself why I felt so upset in the moment about the scratches to the car window. I have patience most of the time, but sometimes the constant breakage and damage is so frustrating and I don’t feel a shred of tolerance left in that moment. I don’t expect a home with children to look perfect and mine certainly doesn’t! – but I’ve never experienced anything like this. The therapist said he’s like an infant in a big body, but I told her she’s wrong – an infant learns after a few reminders not to do it again. Even with all of the oversight and reminders, after almost two years he continues to do these things. It’s not as bad as it was in the early months but it’s still quite a lot.

He regularly smuggles house tools and knives out of the house and if I come upon him in the process I can tell just from the look on his face that he’s trying to conceal something from me.

At the meeting a couple of weeks ago one of the supervisors mentioned he has a disorganized attachment style. The moment she said that, it made perfect sense to me and it reminded me that I suspected it from the first time I heard his description, but I also had a feeling of, ‘Oh, no, not that!’ to have it be official. The disorganized attachment style is the most difficult to live with and is associated with the worst outcomes. The bigger surprise was that that despite knowing about the different unhealthy attachment styles, I never consciously identified the attachment styles of the twins.

I’ve always assumed ds does these actions without thinking, having almost no impulse control, but I’m increasingly wondering if it’s an unconscious self-sabotaging strategy to keep people from getting too close to him or liking him. I’m going to be meeting with someone to discuss it, because I feel like there’s more to what is going on than what I’m seeing. I wonder if maybe I have to do some deep healing of my inner child or something like that to move beyond my current emotional capacity because I’m not used to feeling this kind of anger and it really bothers me.

At the same time, I don’t want to shame myself for getting upset, because it’s challenging (I didn’t mention all of his other behaviors that are going on at the same time) and sometimes I wonder how anyone can be expected to stay calm all the time in the face of all that.

Avivah

She can’t handle when I’m not there

At the end of the week I attended my oldest granddaughter’s siddur party in Beit Shemesh. It was an impressive production. I had attended my daughter’s siddur party here in the north just two weeks earlier and I expected something similar, and it was interesting to notice the differences. I wonder if there’s more of a need to ‘wow’ people near the center of the country.

I’ve traveled a couple of times in the last year to the center of the country for the day – each time I got the kids ready for school and put them on their school bus. To prepare them I told them in advance that I’d be going to Jerusalem/Beit Shemesh, that I’d be home at night, and that my husband would put them to bed. He almost always put the boys to bed, and sometimes dd7 requests he put her to bed instead of me, so that’s not uncommon. He works from home most days of the week so he’s actively involved in their day to day lives.

The first time I made this trip, I got home around 8 pm and found my daughter crying that her ears hurt. My husband told me she had been crying and inconsolable for almost two hours. He had given her ear drops and a hot water bottle, but nothing was helping.

I asked her if she wanted to lay on the bed while I sat next to her doing some computer work, and she agreed. She stopped crying, fell asleep almost instantly and stayed asleep the entire night. She had no ear pain when she woke up in the morning.

After she went to school, I commented to my husband that she must have been worn out by the pain and crying to have stopped crying so quickly. He said he had a strong suspicion that her ear wasn’t hurting, that what was really happening is she was having a hard time coping emotionally with my absence.

The next time I came back from my long day, I found out she had been complaining nonstop at bedtime about some other pain.

Last week we had a meeting with her play therapist, and I mentioned that every single night since the twins came twenty two months ago, she wakes up and opens the door to our bedroom to check that we’re there, usually around 4 – 5 am. If it’s closer to 4, she looks in for a long moment, then closes the door and goes back to bed. If it’s about 5, she comes to me to get a hug and kiss and with some reluctance goes back to bed. (In the earlier months she came more than once a night and needed physical reassurance each time. The door had to be constantly open or she got hysterical, but for many months now she’s been able to close the door behind herself so there’s been tremendous progress.)

Ds7 comes to check in the night as well, but not every single night and he never comes in, just looks to make sure we’re there.

I shared with the therapist about what happened the last two times I wasn’t there for bedtime, and told her our speculation that she can’t handle me not physically being in the house when she goes to sleep, and was wondering about what to do when I traveled for the party. She agreed that was the likely cause and suggested that I call dd before bedtime. That’s what I did, and she went to sleep fine.

Going back to the party – I turned off my phone before I went into the building, and didn’t look at it until I came out two and a half hours later. When I did, I saw two missed calls from my daughter’s teacher and another missed call from the school advisor. They never call me during the school day. I called the teacher back but by then it was after the school day was over, and the teacher didn’t answer. I wondered about why I had gotten all of those calls, and I found out the next morning.

When dd was getting dressed, she talked about having spoken with me the night before on the phone. Then she told me she had asked her teacher to call me from school the day before, but I didn’t answer. I didn’t speak to the teacher so I don’t know what happened exactly, but I suspect dd didn’t just want to talk to me. I think it’s likely she was complaining something was intensely hurting her.

All of this is a reminder to us that as much as the twins have had significant progress, dd’s emotional security is heavily dependent on my presence and she can’t yet cope if she thinks I won’t be here, even if I’ve prepared her in advance. It’s important for us to remember and respect that there are deep traumas and fears that don’t go away even after a long time in a safe environment.

From when I first heard of the engagement of my daughter-in-law’s brother, I’ve been planning to attend the wedding in Jerusalem. The wedding was last night, but coming on the heels of being away for the siddur party, we realized my absence at the wedding last night would be too much for dd to handle. I thought about leaving after putting her to bed but wouldn’t get to the wedding until 9 pm and then would still have the long drive home. In the end, I didn’t go.

Avivah

My new project – kitchen renovation

Over five years ago we were house hunting, and one thing that struck me as not making sense about the house we ended up buying when we saw it was the location of the kitchen. I couldn’t figure out why in the world the builder had made it the room you entered into when you open the front door.

I decided we would swap the kitchen and living room locations. (I later saw the floor plans and it was supposed to built in the area we wanted to move it to – apparently the contractor took a shortcut and placed it where he did because it was easier.) We intended to do these renovations before we moved in.

But then covid happened, and that changed all of my plans. We moved from Ramat Beit Shemesh extremely abruptly, arriving on the first day of the most draconian lockdown that Israel was to experience. Instead of the freshly renovated home we had planned to move into, we moved into a home in need of a lot of work. We got busy working on that as soon as we got here. However, it then became complicated to do a kitchen renovation of the scale that I previously planned while we were living there.

Additionally, it was a time of extreme physical isolation and getting workers to do the work we weren’t qualified to do was difficult. When I had the gas line moved, we all had to vacate the house so the worker could do the work – he said that was the covid guideline that he had to work under.

That was work that took less than an hour, but we couldn’t stand outside for hours a day, for days on end, in order to have new plumbing laid and new flooring put down. Additionally, one wall in the adjoining room where I wanted to move it to is asymetrically curved, and I was having a hard time figuring out how to use it well. Taking into account the reality and constraints of the world at the time, we decided to keep it simple, and put in and extend the kitchen in the area where it was already located.

This was the fifth of the kitchens that we’ve renovated and it was the hardest to figure out the design for because of the awkward space we had to work with, but it’s been a very functional kitchen and served us well. But I’ve never been able to make my peace with people entering our home directly into the kitchen, especially since our kitchen is very heavily used. There’s always some kind of cooking or eating or project going on, so there’s always some kind of activity in progress. It never looks like a still life photo for more than ten minutes at the very most, and you know the likelihood of visitors coming in during those ten minutes, right?

I’ve finally decided to do something about the ongoing discomfort I feel about this set up. I’ve gone back and forth about how to renovate – once we’re doing the work, it would be nice to change the cabinet color and style (what we got was also a covid decision) to something that is more my preference. But I have a financial goal of paying down my mortgage and a major renovation would definitely set that back.

My reasons for doing this renovation are two fold: having a more private kitchen and opening up the floor space so there’s more room for hosting. When I reminded myself what my priorities were, I realized I can achieve what is most important to me and keep my costs reined in pretty tightly.

The way I’m going to make the numbers work is to use the existing kitchen cabinets and countertops. Everything will have to be reconfigured to fit a very different space. Right now I have one double sink; the new kitchen will have two separate sinks on opposite walls. I’ll use the current double sink and attached countertop on one wall, and I’ll have the large island countertop refabricated with a sink installed in it for the opposite wall. There will be costs for plumbing, electricity and having the existing counters custom cut, but that will be much less than a new kitchen.

A week ago I spent a morning doing renovation preliminary work: arranging for the electrician, plumber and gas installer to come. Then I moved the fridge, freezer, island and couches. It was gratifying to see some movement in the direction I want to go.

A few hours later, I got the call from the social worker letting me know they were having the meeting at our home a couple of days later, and with some frustration about all the time and effort I had wasted, moved everything back in place and cancelled all of the workmen. I didn’t want the foster care agency representatives to come for a visit in the middle of a big renovation.

Fortunately with another week comes another beginning….:)

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This morning my seventeen year old son and I moved the appliances, island and couches. He’s rarely around and it was nice to work with him.

By the time I thought of taking a ‘before’ picture, the counters were covered with things that we had pulled out, the fridge and freezer had been moved to their new location, and the cabinets were beginning to be dissembled – and there was no way I was going to undo all that we did just to take a neat picture even though it pains me to show my kitchen looking like this. Mess happens when you take a kitchen apart, and I really wanted to share our starting place as I document what we’re doing.

The fridge and freezer were against the wall on the far side of the island, where the couch is now

Once we got started, it changed very fast!

Since it was Shushan Purim, all of the younger kids were home from school. It’s really not ideal to start a project like this with young children who get into everything, but my seventeen year old is rarely home with time to help out with something like this and I wanted to make the most of the opportunity.

Ds17 put ds12 to work as his assistant and he was helpful doing real work, not the kind of fake jobs you give to kids to make them feel like they’re helping.

The island was moved, next job was to take apart the wall units

My fifteen year son came home while the wall units were being dissembled, and he got to work with us, taking down the tile backsplash behind the stove. It’s so enjoyable to work together as a team – there’s an energy that’s really different from each person doing their jobs separately.

Ds15 told me it was a little sad for him to remove all of the tile, remembering all the work they put into tiling the kitchen.

Backsplash and wall units are gone

Once that was done, the teens both wanted to take down the small wall behind the section of the kitchen that has the sink. It’s an annoying little wall but necessary to have a private side entrance to our home that leads directly to our second floor, which used to be a vacation rental apartment. We decided to get rid of the private entrance so we could open up the space more, so ds15 took down that door, door frame and wall.

Ds15 taking down door frame

The wall is down!

I mentioned that the younger kids were home, didn’t I? They were very interested in all the changes being made.

They continually found ways to actively participate!

Can you see below how removing that wall made it feel more spacious? It also lets in so much light and air, and makes access to the side patio from the house more convenient.

After taking apart the little wall and looking at how damaged the wall was where the tile backsplash was, we were inspired to go even further in opening up our space. I’ll share more about that in my next post.

We’ve made wonderful progress today. The electrician will come tomorrow morning to see what needs to be done, and then I’ll schedule with him when to come. The plumber will start the work on Tuesday, and once the plumbing is done, I can put all the base cabinets in place, which has to be done before the countertop fabricators can come to measure for the recuts for the countertop.

My last kitchen renovation took just five days, which was super fast, but I don’t anticipate that this time around. Just the plumbing alone will take four days. My hope is to be finished by the end of next week, so that there will be time to get ready for Pesach without having renovations going on at the same time.

Avivah

A great meeting and update!

I’ve been a foster parent for over eight years and had monthly home visits by a social worker for all of these years. I’ve had additional walkthroughs with various social workers and officials since the twins came almost two years ago, and every single person has been very favorable – except the GAL.

There’s a tendency to say, ‘Where there’s smoke, there’s fire’, ie, if there’s a complaint, there must be a reason for that. I don’t want to defend myself from baseless claims from the GAL and when I mentioned the accusations against us in my post earlier this week, perhaps didn’t give a perspective and the might leave readers to think, ‘Maybe you think your house is clean and the kids are dressed appropriately but you don’t have a good sense of that, and these complaints are an indication of that’.

Yesterday we had three agency representatives come to visit. First they wanted to see our garden, and oohed and ahhed over how nice it is, while appreciating the goats and chickens. Then they went inside to see the bedrooms; they exclaimed over what a warm and appealing room our seven year daughter has. (This room has been the focus of the complaints; the last time the complaint was that she doesn’t have a desk to do her work at.)

I told them I’m going to show them everything because I don’t want to later have someone claim that they didn’t see something. I started by opening dd7’s drawer, and showed all of her folded clothes. Then I opened the closet door to show her dresses hanging there, then opened another closet door to show her seasonal clothing, and pulled out the large wheeled box under the bed that has all of the younger kids shoes, then the box next to it that has their boots.

I showed them where the toys are, then pointed out the boxes on top of the closet are the clothing and shoes for the upcoming season.

Then we went into the boys room and I did the same, showing the toys in storage boxes under the beds, the hanging clothing and toys in the cabinet, and even where the sheets and towels are stacked.

They were very pleased with everything, and told me my house already looks ready for Pesach. When their supervisor Zoomed in with us, the other supervisor told her that they had seen everything and everything is extremely orderly and pleasant. They even commented on how delicious the house smells. 🙂 (My son had finished baking muffins for his mishloach manos an hour before.)

This is how my house has looked every single time anyone has come. There’s nothing different I did that I hadn’t done before. Actually, this time I didn’t clean the walls the night before (last time they came when they had been freshly painted), because I really wanted to prepare mishloach manos to give to all of the teachers, school bus drivers and attendants, and school guard. The tradeoff of having cleaner walls but not being able to give to these people wasn’t something I was willing to do. It would have been compromising Purim preparations for the sake of this meeting.

I felt very calm and at peace in the two days before the meeting. Prior to that I was preoccupied thinking about the kids possibly being moved and the ramifications of that on ds8, but once I mentally accepted it might happen, I didn’t feel worried anymore.

My husband also spoke to a lawyer the morning before, and one of my married sons spoke to an advocate, so I felt we had people to help us if it came to that.

After the tour of our home, we sat down outside to talk. The head supervisor told me that they think we are the ideal family for the children. Their reason for coming is to first of all, be able to tell the court they were there, and secondly, to sit down with us and tell us they want us to know we have their full support.

They are concerned that all of these complaints are causing us stress and taking away the energy we need to parent the children (she’s right about that!). While they’ve told us what’s happening behind the scenes to be transparent with us, they don’t want us to be pressured and they will take care of everything in court. The judge may want to meet us at a later point, and they would be very glad for her to do so, since “in one minute she’ll see what kind of amazing parents you are”.

They said there’s absolutely no concern about the kids being removed or us being charged with anything, and all of them understand the claims against us are baseless. They want us to mentally put the GAL and all of her claims to the side, and keep our headspace for the kids.

It was really nice feedback for my husband and I, and very reassuring. It really took a load off of our minds and we are so grateful. Just in time to celebrate Purim!

Avivah

A disturbing phone call

I got a call from our social worker notifying me that she wants to set up a meeting with me and some other professionals. I was expecting her to call since I had a meeting with the therapist for help with the school situation with our seven year old son (that’s a topic for another post), and we agreed we’d set up a meeting with his principal, play therapist, social worker, this therapist and me, to jointly figure out a plan how to get him the support he needs.

But the social worker’s tone felt a bit urgent, so I asked her who was initiating this meeting. She clarified that it has nothing to do with school, that it’s going to be meeting with the head of the foster care agency along with her, her supervisor and maybe a couple of other people. This is not at all what I was expecting. Okay, I’ll come but why do you want to have a meeting?

Remember the guardian ad litem for the twins? I’ve never shared with you what has transpired and I still can’t. She hasn’t been pleasant to us, to put it mildly. The hope of the foster agency was that with time the GAL would see all the positive reports, see the dramatic improvement in the emotional state of the children and be appeased. We haven’t heard much since she was here for the home visit months ago and everyone assumed she was relaxing a bit.

It turns out she hasn’t been relaxing at all. She’s filed complaints with the court and now the court has sent that report to the foster care agency. I asked what the complaints about us are because I can’t think of anything. The social worker said that it’s very possible the GAL is lying/minimizing/exaggerating whatever she is reporting, but said the neglected appearance/hygiene of the children and our living conditions is a primary issue. She said they’ll go over in detail in our meeting what she’s saying.

I can’t even muster up anger about the absurdity of these claims. I am so done with defending myself from specious claims.

I asked if there are any reports from people who actually see the children documenting a problem with their appearance? It doesn’t seem so. It’s only been the parents who have complained in the past. They did the same thing to the past foster parents and it’s a typical thing that bio parents do so it should be understood in that context.

However, the children haven’t seen their parents for the last three months due to bureaucratic inefficiencies, so their parents can’t be complaining about how they look. Where could these complaints come from?

I asked the social worker what the GAL’s intention is, because we are we are and she is who she is, so nothing is going to be better than it is now. Does she want to take the kids away?

“No, she hasn’t outright said that.”

Well, to me it seems simple. If she doesn’t want them to stay with us, then they have to be removed to a different home or institution. There are no other options.

The meeting is late Wednesday afternoon. It was supposed to be at the foster care agency’s office, but then I was notified it would be at our home and the kids need to be there. Great, another walkthrough of our home, while trying to keep the oversugared twins calm after they get back from their school Purim parties while speaking to all of these people in a focused way. (My husband will take off from work to supervise the kids, which he did for the last home visit, too, and it was still very challenging.)

I wish it was next week since my schedule is packed this week and I don’t have much discretionary time but I’ll try to find some time to do some extra organizing in case they ask to open all the drawers and cabinets, as was done in the past.

My husband and I are having a conversation if continuing fostering these children is the right thing to do. The kids are very challenging, and though they are the best behaved around me, it’s not a walk in the part. It’s constant and draining and exhausting, and it takes so much time and energy. We’re willing to put in that time and treat them with the same love and care we give all of our children, and we do, but I am so weary of all of this extra oversight and investigation. I feel unsafe about someone filing complaints in court against us, no matter what we do and regardless of how well the kids are doing. I don’t have endless emotional energy and every bit that goes in the direction of the technicalities takes energy that I need to parent all of our children.

The question isn’t about how much harassment we can tolerate, but if we’re endangering our family to continue. My biggest concern is ds8. If they make a claim that we aren’t fit foster parents, that doesn’t affect just the twins – it would affect ds8.

The safety of my other children has has been my line in the sand from the beginning – I’ll do everything I can for the twins, but I won’t put my other children at risk.

This is very hard for me to contemplate. I feel our family is the only thing standing between the twins and a system that doesn’t prioritize their best interests. There’s no guarantee that they’ll grow up to be emotionally healthy if they stay with us, but I can sadly predict the chances go down to about zero if they leave – we’re their best hope. How can I give up on them?

I’m not making any decisions yet. My heart has been very heavy contemplating all of this. I put dd7 to bed and right before I left her room she told me, “You’re a lucky mommy!” “Yes, I am a lucky mommy, because I have such wonderful children. “

“And I’m a lucky girl!”

I swallowed the lump in my throat; she has no idea how fragile her place in our home is.

I’ll see what is said at the meeting, to learn more about what has been said to the court and how the agency wants to handle this situation. Hopefully it’s not as big a deal as it sounds right now; it’s possible we’ll hear what’s going on and it won’t be much of a concern after all. In any case, in a few days we’ll have a better idea of how to move forward.

Avivah

By 7 am they were ready to go!

All of these extra school activities this month are very nice for the kids, but as a parent it’s a lot to do!

This is the first week of the Hebrew month of Adar, and in my daughter’s school there is a different theme each day to make it more fun. So one day she’s supposed to wear the class color, another day to bring something connected to clowns, babies, the yearly theme, etc.

This week she was also chosen to be Girl of the Week. I didn’t realize what it was going to add to my schedule on a very busy week! She went to school dressed in her Shabbos clothes and I made her two Dutch braids for the occasion. The braids took about fifteen minutes, which is a lot when there is so much to do for the four younger kids in the hour from when they wake up.

Yesterday before dinner we filled out the questionaire to help her prepare to talk about herself in front of the class – her favorite colors, school subjects, names of siblings, hobbies, etc. She’s supposed to take a book she enjoys, to share in the course of the week. (I assume the teacher will read it to the class.) I would have liked to have had time to spend choosing something with her, and reading it several times before she went, but I didn’t. The books we read together at this point are usually in English, and the ones we used to read regularly are no longer in good shape.

She also needs to bring a picture she drew – she made a couple and I hope there’s one in her backpack because after the school bus picked them up, I came in and saw the one I thought she was going to take on the kitchen counter.

She’s bringing prizes to distribute to the girls. Fortunately I had ordered these a week before it was announced that she would be the Girl of the Week, so that was nice to have something I didn’t have to prepare this week.

The final and most significant part of the list that I spent hours preparing for, is to bring in a photo montage of herself from the time she was born. The montage is hung in the classroom for an entire week. For months she’s been worried about the picture issue. She kept asking me when it’s her turn how she’s going to have pictures from when she was little, and I kept telling her not to worry about it, that I’ll make sure she has pictures.

Last year I asked the social worker at the mediation center to request pictures from her bio parents of the twins’ childhood. We never got any. It’s so important for them to have some connection to their early years. After waiting for weeks, I finally I went onto her bio parents Facebook accounts and saved the pictures I saw there. Unfortunately, someone dropped my computer and it was destroyed; all of the files were lost.

When I went back to Facebook, the accounts could only be viewed by ‘friends’. But then I found that her mother had more than one account, and hadn’t locked the older one. I saved the pictures that I found there – maybe ten total – so the kids would have them. From these I was able to put a few baby pictures on her montage.

Then I contacted her previous foster mother and asked her for pictures. She had deleted almost everything but found a few for me, which she sent.

Dd was so happy and excited when I showed her the pictures that I assembled. I printed and mounted about twenty pictures on a large plastic board and it looks really nice. I was planning to put the pictures in a photo album after she brings them home, but now I’m thinking of hanging it on her bedroom wall – I think she’ll love it.

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Also today, my twelve and eight year olds are having an early Purim party, complete with costumes and a communal meal. As far as costumes, I thought we were set a while back but then two days ago I learned my twelve year old has been telling everyone he’s going to be a policeman. I knew it was very important to him, so I took him to a store yesterday and explained that this is the only store we were going to be able to go to, and if we couldn’t find a costume he was going to have to dress up as something else. Good fortune shone upon us since there was only one men’s police costume and it was his size. Our seven year old is planning to be a policeman and I had purchased handcuffs and a gun for him to use next week, so our twelve year old was able to take them today.

Each child is supposed to bring the food item they’re assigned for the communal meal. Our twelve year old brought the hard boiled eggs, and our eight year old was tasked with bringing pitas or rolls. I took the pitas I bought out of the freezer last night so they would be defrosted when he left to school. When I got up this morning, the bag was open and two pitas were missing, so my husband made a trip at 6 am to the store to buy more.

Our eight year old also needed to bring mishloach manot for the class exchange – everyone brings one and then everyone gets one. I found out about it Wednesday afternoon and since I do errands in the morning, I only had Thursday to get something, but my morning was too full to add in another trip to the store. It felt like pulling a trick out of my hat to get it ready this morning since earlier in the week I hadn’t gone shopping with this in mind, but I made a nice one.

Every day when the kids get on the school bus dressed, ready and smiling, it feels like an accomplishment but today was on a different level.

Avivah

Our family Chanuka party

It’s customary for families to have a family party on Chanuka and since we have several married children who will be having family parties on the side of their spouse (and those families have more married children who will be having parties for their families…), it’s a logistics issue to find an evening that everyone can come to. I didn’t want to wait until the last minute and not have an evening everyone was available, so six weeks ago I connected with my daughter in Jerusalem who usually does the hosting to plan a date.

Happily, all of the other family parties coordinated with our date – one son had one on Saturday night, one son and one daughter had a party on Sunday night, we had our party Monday night, and one son has a party on Wednesday night.

When children get married, the relationship with them changes and that continues to shift with time. Every family will have their own dynamic – ours includes living far from all of our married children, and having a wide range of ages that include children who still need a lot of supervision. Our married children visit periodically for Shabbos, but as time goes on and their families grow, naturally they come less frequently.

My husband and I discussed what we want our relationship with our married children to look like, and agreed that we don’t want to rely on them coming to visit as the only time we see them. For us to visit each family individually is right now not realistic, due to distance and work/school scheduling for everyone. Sometimes our married children get together and my husband and I agreed when they do this we’d like to make the effort to attend.

Last year attending the family Chanuka party was impossible, as the twins were so much in emotional transition that being in a group of people would have been overwhelming and been stressful for all of us. This year we’re in a different place and really wanted to be there, to spend time with our grandchildren and married children.

One daughter is in the US with her family, one son stayed at yeshiva and one daughter-in-law wasn’t feeling well, but otherwise everyone was there. And it was so, so nice to be together with them all.

It was low key and pleasant. We had a shared meal and everyone contributed something (except us, unfortunately the main dish I prepared was forgotten at home).

My husband planned an activity to do with the younger children, and exclaimed to me afterwards about how engaging all of our grandchildren are, and and how much he enjoyed spending this time with them.

We were pleasantly surprised that our younger four children were calm and engaged appropriately the entire time with hardly any need for input from us. That’s a Chanuka miracle of its own – that could never have happened even six months ago.

My youngest married daughter is a career coach and coordinated in advance with my husband a Chanuka-themed guided expressive drawing activity for the adults that she did at the end of the evening. When asked about it in advance I said I didn’t think this was the best venue for an activity like this because parents would need to be busy with their children, but I was completely wrong about that. The kids were busily and constructively occupied with the craft materials we brought while we did this activity. It was interesting to see as each person shared their drawing afterwards how reflective of their inner selves and aspirations each was.

It’s a lot of driving for us to get there – three and a half hours in driving rain on the way there, over two hours on the way back; we spent four hours in Jerusalem and got home at 2:30 in the morning. Today will be a day that I anticipate a lot of tiredness in the younger children that are likely to result in behaviours they’ll need guidance managing.

But it was worth being together with all of these amazing human beings who are our family. I’m so proud of each and every one of them, and my husband and I never stop feeling amazed and humbled by them all.

Avivah