Baby A

We got a call last night at 10:30 about a year old baby boy who was in need of immediate placement in a foster home. We had been getting a number of calls since losing Baby J in February, but none of them seemed right. There’s always the possibility of losing a child when you foster-adopt, but some possibilities are stronger than others, and if your goal is to be an adoptive parent and not a babysitter, you have to keep that in mind.

Earlier yesterday, we got a call about a 2 day old baby girl, born positive for crystal meth. We said yes, and in the minutes it took to pass the word to the county social worker, another family had already beaten us to the front of the line. Last week, we turned down a match with another little girl born positive for crack and syphilis, but whose mother was fighting to keep her.

Fifteen minutes after we said yes last night, he arrived. Baby “A” is actually more of a toddler than a baby, not twelve but eighteen months old, and doesn’t fit in any of Baby J’s old clothes. He was asleep, but woke up in my arms as I carried to the crib. He cried when I tried to put him in the crib, so we brought him to bed with us. He was exhausted but so resistant to sleeping, he stood on the bed as his strength left him and he began to do the drunken splits. Finally, he snuggled in with us and slept until 7 this morning.

He’s very vocal and babbley, saying favorite words like “Ball!” “Spiderman!” and “Mine!” He refused to eat his breakfast of bananas and cereal, and it was such an anathema to him that we discovered we could use the bowl to chase him away from anything we didn’t want him to get into. Finally, when the hunger got him, he showed that he would eat bananas (on their own), crackers, and drink milk and water.
When I was at Target with him buying him a high chair today, I made a classic rookie dad mistake. He pointed out a big ball, and he had been so good, I grabbed it and gave it to him. I don’t know what I was thinking: that he would be happy with the ball in the basket, to be played with when we got home? No, obviously, as we were the store, we were playing the game where he throws the ball down the aisles, crying until I retrieve it for him. And then he gives the “I got you!” grin, because he knows he has.

Have no idea whether we’re going to be able to keep him for a while or forever or not.