The Unconventional Mom Life

Ever have that moment where you are in someone elses shoes? And I don't mean mentally putting yourself in someone else's situation or literally putting someones shoes on. I mean you give someone so much grief (even write a blog post about it) then 6-7 months later are doing the exact thing they did and go "ah, I get it now." Well, I had that today at work and I made my boss uncomfortable when I cried because of this realization. For the last 5 months I have been the Licensing and Training Coordinator at a local private foster care agency. Until a couple months ago, I was primarily doing training of prospective foster parents and recertifications of current foster parents. At the begining of February, I got my first assessment for a new foster parent! I was so excited to make a difference to someone's life and do "such a better job then my home assessor".  I thought we would be done by the middle of February. We weren't. I was for sure I would have

Here in the State of Ohio it is important and "mandated" for the foster parents to create lifebooks. Now I am an over achiever. Per the rule, foster parents are to just make sure everything about the child's life while in foster care is written down and they receive some pictures from their time in foster care. I, on the other hand, NEED to make a scrapbook. Baby Girl has been with me for about 5 months and I am just now starting! I have had the first Halloween, first Christmas, first New Years, first birthday, first steps, first words and an array of other events that have happened. I picked up the 105 pictures from Walgreens (that were just on my phone and selected down mind you) and I am so overwhelmed about how to start! Do I include myself, my family? If so, what do I call myself? If she goes home, I don't want it to say "my mom" and have a lot of pictures of her and I all over it but if she stays and gets adopted, I want it to say "my mom" an

So baby girl arrived on October 27, 2016. From someone who travels a lot, spends time with friends every chance I get and enjoys a cold one- the last four and a half months have been rough. Not because she has been a difficult child or that the majority my friends have not been supportive, but my life has moved to work, get a babysitter so I can work some more, sleep, play with the baby in the evening and sometimes see my friends. I have felt guilty about getting a babysitter on weekends or evenings because I want to make sure she feels loved and not passed off to other people all the time. Now I know that it is better for parents to have that time away, trust me, I teach it to prospective foster parents but when you are in the throws of life and working 87 hours in 2 weeks (all during her wake hours) taking more time away from her doesnt seem fair. A male friend of mine said something to me a couple months ago on one of those rare nights I got to go out (it was cut short because she