megan+laraine

I am sure everyone who is reading this (mainly, my Mom) knows me and therefore understands my strong desire for Control. I really love predictability and thrive on a schedule. Don’t even get me started on my beloved filofax.

I really enjoy spontaneity, when I have planned for it. From meal plans to budgets to religious practices (like church and weekend Costco trips) there is a plan. If you have ever visited us here in Atlanna you can count on a full itinerary with all the best spots. Ask Meg about the trauma of planning a surprise birthday party for me; I really am not sure how she did seeing as I also planned my own birthday party that year.

Lets go deep, I am a therapist after all. My strong need for control is to counteract my Anxiety. I can “What if” the shit of every situation and plan accordingly. No one around me needs to worry about a thing; I got this worrying stuff down. Similar to control, I would prefer you not worry and just LET ME DO IT. The Hakuna Matata spirit that my sweet wife possesses must be a Canadian thing.

Foster parenting is wrecking my Control. Even when I think I have worried and planned the worry away things are not going how I have planned. I can hear the comments now. Whoa, crazy take a chill pill. I know. I do. I am self aware that this is not ideal. I am working on that with my brilliant therapist. That hour is never long enough.

In the middle of a fabulous dinner tonight the baby cries for Mama, Wait! wait wait one minute….we planned for crying at bedtime and then again every 90 minutes in between which I blog, “sleep”, and crochet Christmas presents. I have NOOO CLUE what is coming next. E V E R. Danielle (needs no introduction) told me that parenting is just crisis intervention. And to quote “At least until they are 5; I’m sure thats when things calm down.” (Zephyr age 4 and 10/12ths).Good thing I am a crisis interventionist is basically the theme of my resume.

I can put out fires, calm crisis, and direct chaos. I am bossy  have strong leadership skills. I am the first born and I was a catcher, these skills are in my DNA. Sleep deprivation, however is making this part hard. When I am tired, I am super cranky catcher; when the pitcher throws the ball in the dirt (Lexi) I throw it back in the dirt. On that note, I should apologize to all my co-workers for any crass attitude or for my random meltdowns.

A small word on being a parent who works outside of the home: I am not sure how you do it. I mean I am “doing” it but if I am not with a client all I can think about is the kids and what they are doing and if they are eating or crying. Does that get better? Todays main question is can I kick ass at reducing trauma symptoms all while keeping three children alive and well? Time will tell.

All right, enough about me. Let’s give the daily baby update (thats what you are here for). Highs: The littles did better at daycare (allegedly). My sister, the preschool teacher goddess told me to expect tears for 2 weeks and then they should get their life together. Cool. Thanks Allie. They smile when we pick them up and give us hugs. Those are the moments that lead to the warm ooey-gooey feelings that grows my heart 3 sizes. 3rd grader went to after care and reported having fun. She seemed okay with attending every day. We ate dinner together and for the most part consumed food. I am less worried about their caloric intake. They eat their weight in goldfish everyday on the drive home. Our wacky 3 year old is so chatty….mostly in espanol (I have been holding that one out on you for a little bit) Lows: The baby boy is struggling. He misses his mama and cries for her with no clear trigger. Sleep is not solid. Last night we cried with baby boy for 45 minutes. It takes F O R E V E R to get the them to sleep, We naively helicoptered our daycare drop off (we are those people)…this freshman error lead to everyone crying.

Last note (I swear I am winding down) our favorite song to sing at bedtime is The Fruit of the Spirt (see lyrics below)…I will sing it to you if you call me. You can sing it a million times and continue with a new fruit each time. This is Gods message to my life tonight. The fruit of the spirit is not control, anxiety, stress… I gotta run I am watching the monitor as Meg takes a turn soothing baby boy. She is truly embodying the fruit of the spirit right now; I can learn a lot from her.

The fruit of the spirit is not a coconut, the fruit of the spirit is not a coconut. If you want to be a coconut you might as well hear it, you can’t be a fruit of the spirit. Cause the fruit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. 

I have been dying to tell about this morning. The first day. Regardless of if you have 6 weeks of maternity leave, 18 years before college drop off, or 34 hours to the first day of school — you are never fully prepared to leave your kids.

High five to the littles, their teachers basically kicked us out the door with as little as a hug. I really appreciate the “rip the bandaid off quick” approach. It happened so fast walking to the car, I was still trying to figure out what just happened. But before there was too much processing we headed to the elementary school. I was pretty anxious, the day before I wasn’t greeted with warm hugs or even a smile. I get it, school employees are counting down the days to Christmas break and so are the kids which equals a pretty tense environment. I was afraid for our 3rd grader. She was really nervous and she needed warmth, she needed blankets of overt love. Meg and I walked her in holding her hands and our breath. The above mentioned staff presented as Dr. Jekyll. “Hello baby, you look so pretty today”.

Whew. They must of saved all their warmth for the most deserving. I will cope.

We waited for the classroom ambassador to take us to her class. We listened to Belly Breathe — we all needed some deep breaths. We walked the long hall to the classroom where we were greeted by a SUPER COOL teacher. Like so cool, I want to be friends with this girl, except she is probably way to cool to hang out with me. Tears streamed down our sweet baby’s face as the cool teacher attempted to warmly greet and welcome her. With a little nudge the sweetest, kindest kid baby stepped into the classroom. Meanwhile, Meg and I are sobbing in the hallway. Cool teacher gave us a reassuring nod and we took the long walk to the parking lot; silent tears.

This post is totally dedicated to the real warriors a.k.a. the teachers. For real, I bow in admiration. I can’t begin to explain the gratitude I have for all the babies teachers today. Their thank you card would be longer than this post. I am so weak, they are so strong. They took care of those sweet children today. For better or worse they loved on them when I couldn’t. More on that guilt at another time. Similar to the brevity of the relationship we have with these kids; trust can be built quickly when there is a need for that relationship. In those brief moments I connected to those other caretakers and I trusted them to wipe the tears and hold the hands of babies we were entrusted.

School and daycare were big mountains and lets just say there is a lot of room for improvement.

I intended to say more about these hard choices that came tonight but I am feeling so tired and I should sleep. I think for the hard choices moving forward we will just rely on a magic eight ball. What is right and what is wrong is absolutely not black and white; its a spectrum. I pray the choices we make in the toughest moments are more right than wrong. We are doing the best we can with what we ahve.

Lastly, I would like to congratulate Meg and myself, we have been foster parents for 48 hours. Thank you village people (y’all and the band). Lets do it another day!

Well I should of written this an hour ago when I was leaving target. Let me start from where we are. Nights are hard. No easy way around it. We play musical beds, musical back rubs, musical “who’s crying”, I think you get it. When this post is done and published (unedited of course) there will be more rounds.

But that aside. I feel inclined to do some instillation of hope; mostly because I need the pep talk and I feel like I should titrate my exhausted emotions for the world.

Today had ups. Man, there were people who SHOWED up today. And because of that we were able to focus on the babies. We moved so slow today. Ate all day because food, breaking bread (or smashing goldfish) is how you build community. We laughed, the kids laughed. We all played inside and outside (Thank you God for a ridiculously beautiful day). We hugged, we read books, we broke up some toy debacles. For a few seconds I paused to embrace what seemed calm. I was like, “We got this.” I caught Megs eye a few times as if to silently agree that we were badass today. We are enrolled in daycare and school and got to the doctor. We almost nailed the “Solomon nighttime routine.”And before I get to the top of the cloud there was the reminders of babies who miss there mommy.

And those damn carseats. Another time we will discuss what effort it took to get those in the car. Jesus, be a fence.

There was sunshine. No kittens and rainbows but there was dessert. When you get a flu shot, you get dessert with “Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate…cookiecookiecookiecookie”. Yep the 3 year old made up a real cute song, you had to be there.

I want to remember the things that went right today because the nights are long and make me feel so out of control and helpless. For real the encouragement is really motivating; we can only do this because we are surrounded by people who love us with strong words and bold actions.

Babies please sleep, you need it and so do we.

i know it will be impossible to keep this updated. I am pretty sure it will be impossible to keep up with many things. 

Sorry ahead of time. 

Kids getting removed from their families, getting stripped from their siblings regardless of the shit storm they may be living in is a tragedy. 

Tonight we go to bed with heavy hearts. I pray sleep will come but for now we can breathe and let a few tears come. We’ve been holding them back all night. 

Hearing babies cry for their mommy….that shit is hard. So we make pancakes and watch tv way past anyone’s bed time. We watch as they cling to each other terrified of us. We are kind, they can tell but they are so scared. 

Tomorrow the sun will come up and their will be opportunities to make relationships, hell to make more pancakes and try some more. 

For now I pray peace and rest.  And that parents will find support to raise kids in the safest way. And that communities would surround families in the tough times to help them stay together. 

Pray for these babies and their mommy and dada. And for me and meg. 

Thank you everyone. The support is what we needed tonight. 

So this is really happening. 
We are about to be instant parents of multiples. 
This woman at the daycare just referred to me as mom and I almost burst into tears. I really need to take a second to do a “heartfelt feelings” worksheet about becoming foster parents today but there is no time. I don’t think I will ever have a second to do anything ever again. Meg is at home frantically sorting clothes and cleaning out the “in case” foster room. Because when the call came we couldn’t say no to 3 children. Even though we initially (read sensibly) said 2 is our capacity. Our hearts have too much to give, even if we might be novices. So 3, 3 precious babies that we will attempt to love and provide for until the best scenario is worked out for them. 
As always We pray God bless us so that we might bless others. 
Thanks for all the support so far. We have seen Gods love in so many people. It’s very cool to see Him in such real ways. 
Pray for us. 

Pray for the sweet kids who still need homes. 

And for the parents who want best for their kids and are also heart broken tonight. 

“Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me”  Matt 18:5

When purchasing the domain meganpluslaraine.com (and then renewing the domain the next year) I should of considered buying the book WordPress for Dummies. Maybe then I would of blogged more? Its kind of like buying that size 10 dress (you know that really adorable LBD that was on sale at The Limited a size too small).  The one that hangs in the closet because you are sure to drop 10 (okay like 20) pounds by fall 2014. And if I just would stop eating processed sugar and start going to the gym more than 3 times a week month, I could really rock that.

This blog is like that.

Maybe I will do better. Maybe I won’t. Today I seem to be on a roll. I even successfully embedded some pictures and reorganized pages. Big time.

April closes out a chaotic month. I officially resigned from Child Enrichment and accepted a therapist position at the Georgia Center for Child Advocacy in Atlanta, GA.

In short we are moving. It is sad and exciting and stressful. And to answer the most commonly asked question….no Megan does not have a job yet. Heck, she doesn’t even have a green card (no worries, that is in process). We trust this is the right opportunity and the right time to make a move.

Atlanta, watch out.