Samantha: 114 Months, Week 5
Aedan: 82 Months, Week 3
Owen:38 Months, Week 5
As we were getting closer to Christmas, it felt strange thinking that we were not going to go to Chicago for Christmas, but instead, we asked for them to come visit us. My mom said they couldn't come because of Covid restrictions with traveling, but that we could definitely talk about planning on people coming to our house for Christmas next year. Nevertheless, my sister and her kids planned on coming out to visit around New Year's so we could still see each other and exchange presents. To be honest, I was still feeling nervous about seeing a lot of people at Christmas with Covid cases on the rise, and then risk having someone get Covid somehow. I decided I was going to stop subbing for the next 2 weeks, just to be safe and not expose myself unnecessarily. All we have been doing is school for the kids, and AWANA, but they all wear masks and it's a small group. I sub so I am around different classes, but everyone is masked I try to keep my distance when possible, and then we are around our little peanut's parents when we drop her of for visits, and I go grocery shopping, of course.. Other than those things, we don't do much of anything else, and we are just praying we can get through this whole pandemic with no one in our family getting Covid. We want to see family, but we also want to be careful.
Our little peanut's mom told us on Saturday when we picked her up that the court hearing for Wednesday was cancelled, and that they were just going to go with the court hearing on the 22nd, which is when they will ask for reunification. But it doesn't make any sense, and the caseworker hadn't said anything to us about it being cancelled. Foster care can be frustrating sometimes. We shouldn't be hearing things like this from bio mom before we hear it from the caseworker. If it was in fact true, it just made things complicated because we were told last week that it was a pretty sure thing that our little peanut would be leaving our home on Wednesday, either to go to grandma or to her mom. Ben and I have our trip planned next weekend, so if we still have her, it makes everything complicated and frustrating. I have no idea where we are going as it's a total surprise that Ben has planned all on his own, but I am so excited about this getaway together, and I was feeling worried that now our trip would be negatively impacted by the last minute change of plans.
In preparation for our surprise trip out of town, Ben's parents planned on coming out to our house to watch our kids for us so we could leave for the weekend. However, we are supposed to get a big snowstorm of around 10-15 inches Wednesday into Thursday, so because of that, they planned to come early on Tuesday to beat the snow.
I will talk more about this later on in this post, but here is Samantha's letter to Santa (even though we don't believe in Santa in our home). I think it was used as a required persuasive writing assignment using an introduction, three supporting reasons, and a conclusion. Her arguments are pretty convincing and have a lot of character mixed in! It's amusing to read this.
One of our yearly Christmas traditions is to make "Grinch punch" for the kids to enjoy while watching "The Grinch" movie. We started this tradition a few years ago, and the kids love it. We put in the sherbet (rainbow this time because we couldn't find green), add Sprite, and then top it with green sprinkles. Here we are getting them ready. We even use fancy, twisty straws!
We moved the coffee table in from the play room for them to set their cups on, put towels on the floor just in case someone's dumped over, and we all enjoyed watching the movie while enjoying our yummy dessert. I love these three kiddos and am so glad that they enjoy these family traditions. I hope we can keep them up for years to come.
After watching the movie for a little while, our little peanut woke up from her evening nap, so we brought her high chair out in the living room so she could join the family fun as well. Ben fed her her baby cereal while we continued to watch "The Grinch."
Aedan had an issue with a friend at school on Friday that we got more information about from his teacher on Monday. Just like Samantha's class did, the first graders were making Santa letters, and at the top of his letter Aedan wrote, "I hate Santa," so the other little boy was upset with that and told Aedan he was on the naughty list. That made Aedan upset, so then he told the class that Santa wasn't real. His teacher asked him to come talk with her at her desk, and he explained to her that his family doesn't do Santa. She said that was no problem because that's why they have been talking about holidays around the world and how everyone celebrates Christmas differently. She told him that instead of saying that he hated Santa, he could have explained how we do things differently and talk about his traditions. But Aedan came home very upset on Friday afternoon, saying he doesn't have friends or anyone to play with at recess. Aedan did not tell us what really happened on Friday, but I also felt kind of frustrated that the school made the kids write letters to Santa when they don't believe in him. If they really were talking about how people celebrate Christmas in lots of different ways, and then you expect everyone to write a letter to Santa, that doesn't really make sense. He would have never written "I hate Santa" on the top of something unless he was expected to write to a person he knows isn't real. Samantha can just play along with it and pretend, but Aedan doesn't really have that ability. He's a "tell it as it is" type of person. So his teacher kind of made it be an issue with him, and he just didn't know what to do, I think, since he doesn't believe in Santa. Plus, the other boy shouldn't have told Aedan he was going to be on the naughty list because of what he wrote. I usually try to warn our kids' teachers ahead of time that we don't believe in Santa because I know we are in the minority with that, and we always remind our kids that it's okay if others believe and that we shouldn't ruin it for them if that's how they choose to celebrate in their family. However, we dropped the ball with Aedan a little bit this year.
Ben and I then had a frustrating back and forth conversation with our caseworker's supervisor over not being told about court being cancelled on Wednesday. Our little peanut's caseworker just acted like it was no big deal that she didn't tell us at the same time as bio mom on Friday. Ben sent a message to the supervisor asking why the court hearing was cancelled and also why we weren't told about it even though bio mom was told on Friday, and we had to ask about it on Monday morning in order to be told. We felt like we have had to fight a lot to get information that we have the right to know and be privy to. It felt like she saw us as the enemy or had something against us. But we end up hearing more information from bio mom than from caseworkers. After that message, the supervisor came back with a message saying that she thought our communication with bio mom has been too much. She stated that what she tells us is not always true information (which we knew, and which is why we always ask a caseworker before assuming what she said is true). Apparently bio mom's attorney petitioned for a continuance as a way to get our little peanut not to move to her grandma at all. She learned of this after 4:00 p.m. on Friday, and it just so happened that the caseworker was going for an after hours visit on Friday since bio mom was having another overnight visit. The supervisor also asked if we could push back our little peanut being moved to Friday morning then, so that way our weekend trip wasn't impacted.
We were not a fan of her response and were getting increasingly frustrated. Ben again expressed how we feel like we have to fight the caseworker to get information and that she only tells us things after we ask her directly. We do not ask bio mom to share all this information with us. When we pick up and drop off our little peanut, we only ask about how she did, but bio mom is a verbal processor and will talk and talk about anything that is on her mind. We were also offended that she thought our communication with her was too much. The supervisor responded by saying the caseworker works hard to be ethical and keep clients information confidential. As far as why we weren't told about the hearing being cancelled, she said the caseworker didn't find out until after hours on Friday, and she does not have an expectation that her workers will continue to work after hours unless it's preapproved and absolutely necessary. She gave direction to her to wait until Monday to tell us the information since she didn't deem it an emergency. Regarding our communication with bio mom, she didn't want to answer that question and thought our caseworker should also be a part of the conversation. This was the first we ever heard someone say that they thought we were communicating too much with bio mom. However, we knew this case was moving toward reunification the whole time, so we like to keep positive relationships between us and bio parents, and we thought that was a good thing for bio mom because we could be a support to her and help her feel more connected to her baby. I asked what communication they would like us to have, if they feel like this has been too much. Ben then replied that he understood about confidentiality, but also mentioned that one of their responsibilities as the agency is to let us know when changes happen as soon as they hear. It would have taken one extra minute for the caseworker to text us on Friday, especially since she decided that it was important enough to tell bio mom after hours, even though the cancelling of that hearing really didn't impact her at all. Even just simply saying, "The hearing has been cancelled and we are working on respite care for you and will let you know more details on Monday" would have made us feel more included and less blindsided when we heard the new on Saturday when we picked up our little peanut.
The supervisor replied and said that she felt like the communication with bio mom about her services and progress is too much and that we should only have communication about our little peanut; not about what she believes will happen at court, not about hearings in general, not how her appointments for services are going, or when she believes reunification will occur. Ben replied saying that we have never asked her about services (or even any of the situations she described). We don't even know what services she has. What are we supposed to do when bio mom just talks, offering up all the information voluntarily? Are we supposed to cut her off and tell her we only want to talk about our little peanut? How is that being supportive and encouraging to her, and allowing her to feel like she can trust us to care for her baby? These comments from the supervisor made us wonder what she was hearing about us from the caseworker. The only reason we asked about hearings was because the caseworker never told us about them and even actively tried to keep us away from them, saying that foster parents aren't usually a part of them. At this point the supervisor disagreed with us about feeling like we should have been told on Friday at the same time bio mom was told after hours, and Ben asked if she could please call us because we felt like she was hearing inaccurate information. We were feeling unvalued and more frustrated than we were on Saturday when we were trying to decide whether or not bio mom lied to us about the hearing.
Ben and I were able to both be on the call with the supervisor, and we were able to explain more where we were coming from, how we were not asking for any of this information that bio mom would give us, and just how frustrated we were from the caseworker not telling us things that we needed to know, being very cagey, and making us feel like she didn't trust us. Talking to the supervisor was a lot better, and we cleared up a lot of misunderstandings by talking directly to her, rather than her hearing things about us from the caseworker and us hearing things from the supervisor through the mouth of the caseworker. We were able to explain our hearts in why we do foster care, how we are in support of reunification and want families to stay together, how we want be supportive of birth parents as much as we can. She also explained how she is working with the caseworker on being more honest and open about what is going on with foster parents because she has heard this complaint about her from more than just us. We appreciated clearing the air, and the supervisor expressed how she hoped this situation and miscommunication would not deter us from continuing to be a resource family because we are a good home and our caseworker speaks highly of us, and they want us to continue on with taking placements. We felt much better after the conversation, and we know this can be the frustrating thing about foster care. We are taking care of a little baby, and we know more about her than anyone does, but really we have very little control of anything that goes on surrounding her and her care. We are pretty powerless and sometimes that is discouraging when you feel like you have the best interest of the child in mind, but it really is just about the plan that the courts come up with at the time of removal.
Later that afternoon, I sent Ben this picture saying, "Look what I get to clean up." And it was the second time that day. Owen has been pooping in his underwear and not telling me when he has to go. Then, he already has some in his underwear, and he tries to take them off and sit on the toilet, and that's when what you see in this picture happens. I know it's gross, and I thought about not including it, but it showed my frustration with him, the reality of potty training a 3 year old, and how I just didn't understand why he was doing so well for awhile, and now he has reverted and will only tell us he needs to go and go willingly if he gets a reward, like fruit snacks. Ben and I were both tired of cleaning up poopy underwear, and I really did not know what to do anymore to prevent this from continuing.
I was also trying to get some cleaning done around the house that day, and it just wasn't working. I didn't know why I expected to be able to get much of anything done with kids home. Our little peanut needed to be fed a bottle, have her diapers changed, and be put down for naps. Owen was also not very helpful that day, especially with his bathroom accidents. I wondered if maybe sometimes he has more accidents because he's mad and feels like he's not getting enough attention from me. I also wanted to actually be able to spend time working on my blog because I felt like I always push everything else to do around the house before my blog, which is why I never get anything done on it. But if I don't start making it a priority and just doing it, I feel like I'm never going to get caught up, and then I might as well just quit doing it because I won't remember enough to actually write about.
Here is some of the work the kids brought home from school that day. Aedan has a reading test he got 100% on, math practice with using addition and subtraction to solve word problems, making numbers in different ways, practice with the long o sound, as well as practice with writing his spelling words with the long o sound.
Samantha has work practicing her spelling words with the long e sound and matching examples of similes, personification, and onomatopoeia.
Tuesday, December 15th was shopping day for Owen and me. Our little peanut had a visit, so I just had Owen with me. I had errands to run like picking up an exersaucer that we were buying for our little peanut for Christmas, as well as getting coal for our coal stove since Ben's parents were going to be sleeping in our basement, and we wanted it to be warm for them down there. Then, it was time for me to do my weekly grocery shopping. It was a busy morning, but other than that it was an uneventful day just getting ready for our visitors to arrive at our house that evening. As always, the kids were ecstatic and couldn't wait for them to spend almost a week with us. They arrived just after dinnertime that night.
After putting the exercaucer together on Tuesday night, we were excited to let our little peanut try it out on Wednesday. She wouldn't know the difference in letting her try it out at our house before actually "getting it" for Christmas. She loved it! It was so fun to see her sitting up, looking around, and playing with the toys in front of her as she had a much better view of the world. This toy will grow with her so well as she learns how to move her feet and spin herself around, and it can also come apart and become and S-shape so she can use it when she begins pulling herself up and learning to stand and walk along things. We won't see her in that stage, but we were glad we could get her a gift that will grow with her and be useful to her for many months to come.
I just love her big smile! It lights up her whole face. She loved playing in the exersaucer!
Because of the anticipated snow starting that afternoon and into the next day, school was cancelled both Wednesday and Thursday. That afternoon the kids wanted to watch a movie, but Samantha wanted to watch "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," since we had just finished reading the book with her, and we aren't letting Aedan watch the movies with Samantha, so Aedan decided to watch "The Empire Strikes Back" because he loves Star Wars right now. They were both happily occupied for the afternoon.
The snow started to come down that afternoon and evening. Here's what it looked like while we still had light outside to see. I love the look of Christmas lights shining on freshly fallen snow.
That night before bed we had 10 inches of snow already, and it was supposed to snow and blow most of the night. Since no one had to leave to go anywhere, we knew it wasn't going to be a big deal to clear our driveway too quickly, but we had no idea how much snow we were actually going to get. When we woke up, we were shocked at how much snow we had gotten overnight, and it was going to keep coming down for most of the morning. In fact, it was too snowy for us to get out of our driveway, so we had to cancel our little peanut's visit with her dad and grandma. Here are pictures of how much snow we had on Thursday morning. It's beautiful, but it was was getting so deep!
Izzy didn't know what to do with the deep snow, so Ben had to shovel a path for her to get down to some grass in order to go to the bathroom.
Samantha and Aedan went out to play in the snow that morning, but it was almost too deep to even enjoy. It was so deep and hard to walk around that they ended up just playing in the little paths that Izzy had already made.
Ben had online meetings he had to do all day long, and our driveway was piled with snow, so about mid-morning, Ema, Papa, and I went out to start shoveling. It took so long because the snow was so deep and heavy. If only our snow blower was actually working, that would have been really convenient at that point in time! Our neighbor was using his snow blower, and I remember looking at him so enviously as he cleaned the snow off so much faster and with less effort than the three of us were using to clear the snow with shovels.
This gives a good representation for how deep it was. I think it was somewhere around 18 inches, and some areas where it drifted were even deeper.
It had been awhile since I made my family's traditional Christmas treats of fudge and cookies, so I decided to make this on Wednesday night, and we started enjoying eating it on Thursday. The kids love the fudge, and they enjoy having the walnuts in it as well.
We also had finally figured out plans for our little peanut. She was going to go with her mom starting Friday afternoon for while Ben and I go on our trip out of town, and she will just stay with her until Monday morning, basically with bio mom providing respite care, until the permanency hearing on Monday morning, which is when they expect the judge to approve of her staying with her mom. So we most likely will not be getting her back after Friday. Hearing those plans made sense given the circumstances, but it made us sad to know that our little peanut, who we have had since she was able to leave the hospital, was no longer going to be a part of our home. We were going to have to say good-bye, and that was a hard reality to be having to face, even though we all knew it was coming.
Samantha was especially sad about our little peanut having to go back home. She had grown super attached to her, loved her like a little sister, and really did not want her to leave. Knowing she was going to leave our home the next day, Samantha wanted to hold her as much as possible on Thursday. Whenever I offered to take her, she said no, and these pictures just melt my heart. I was so glad that Samantha could offer so much of her heart to this little baby because that's exactly what she needed in these first 6 months of her life, but I was also so sad that Samantha was going to mourn the loss of our little peanut so deeply. Samantha was so good with her and really is just so good with babies in general. She held her all the time, fed her, helped change her diapers, picked out clothes for her, entertained her when she was fussy, and pretty much any other way she could be helpful. Samantha is a wonderful, caring, kind big sister, and she loved experiencing having a little sister. I found myself tearing up many times this day as I thought about all our "lasts" with this little baby that we have all treated like she is part of our family, not knowing if we will ever see her or hold her again.
So we could remember these last 24 hours with our little peanut, we took many pictures of her. Here she is asleep in her crib for her Thursday afternoon nap. It doesn't take long after zipping her up in her sleep sack, giving her her pacifier, and rocking her for a little while, for her to fall right asleep. She's such a little sweetheart.
That afternoon I convinced Samantha to go outside in the snow with me, and we attempted to make a sledding path, but as you can tell from these pictures, the snow was just so deep that it was hard to even walk through it, let alone sled in it.
Here are some pictures of our winter wonderland from in the top back corner of our yard. You can see Harvey's Lake in the background on the right side. The mountains all around us are beautiful covered in white, fluffy snow.
Once we came back inside, I started making my dad's traditional Christmas cookies, and Samantha was gladly willing to help me out. We made Italian Nut Balls and Pecan Balls. She was really helpful, but best of all, I got to spend time with my little girl, talking with her as we baked together.
Here are our finished products. The Pecan Balls are covered in powdered sugar, and the Italian Nut Balls needed to cool fully before putting either raspberry or cherry jelly in the middle of each one. Mmm, these cookies remind me so much of Christmastime growing up.
I took these pictures as a remembrance of how much my husband loves me. We got so much snow that the plugs for my Christmas lights around the front of the house were covered in snow, and I couldn't reach them to plug them in. So Ben lovingly climbed up onto our front patio with a shovel so he could scoop the snow away from the cords so that I could still plug them in. (We couldn't open the screen door either because of the snow piled up in front of it.) It made me smile, and it made me feel loved. I have such a wonderful, caring husband who does so many things just to make me happy.
Here are more pictures of our little peanut eating her last baby cereal at our house that Thursday evening after her evening nap. I wish I could show her eyes, too, but you can tell that she is all smiles in the last picture. I'm glad she is so happy, and we will miss taking care of this little girl, watching her grow up, and seeing her personality develop.
\Friday was another day of no school, but this one was already planned. Ben and I planned to drop our little peanut off a little after 1:00, so we had one more morning with her.
Samantha found these aprons and fabric markers and decided to decorate her apron with all the things she loves: drawing, writing, books, Christmas, Harry Potter, and of course, our little peanut on the left side. It was so sweet, and I could tell she was trying to process her leaving our home.
These following pictures were the last time I put our little peanut down for a nap in her crib in her room in our house. I changed her diaper, zipped her up in her sleep sack, gave her her pacifier, and held her until she fell asleep. Her sweet little head was resting on my arm, her left hand was grabbing on to my sweater, and she was completely comfortable and totally relaxed in my arms. I sat there with her sleeping on my lap for a long time that morning, listening to her breathe, and trying to lock away these memories of her. She was going to be leaving out home that afternoon, and I had no idea if I would ever be able to see her and hold her again. This little girl had become such a part of our family, and we knew this day was coming, but you can never quite prepare yourself for this.
Here is our little peanut once I laid her down in her crib, taking her last nap at our house. She still sleeps with her hands up in the air or covering her face, just like when she was a newborn.
The Christmas cookies Samantha and I made turned our really yummy, and pretty! Italian Nut Balls and Pecan Balls definitely remind me of Christmastime.
Once our little peanut woke up from her morning nap, we got all the kids together to take pictures together for the last time. However, it seems like whenever we want pictures, the kids don't want to participate. As you can tell in the first picture, Owen did not want to be a part of the picture. He was not cooperating, and the more we pushed him, the grumpier he got about it. After we took some pictures of Samantha and Aedan separately with our little peanut, Owen's attitude improved some. Regardless, I love these pictures so much because it shows just how much we all loved our little peanut, how much she grew while she was in our home, and how much she would be missed. We were all feeling pretty sad that day. It was nice that Ema and Papa had come to visit us so that Ben and I could go on our surprise trip because it was a nice distraction for the kids to have something exciting going on while they were also having to say good-bye to our little peanut.
The couple of days before this I had washed and packed up all of our little peanut's clothes, toys, and anything else that belonged to her. Ben and I drove down to her mom's house to drop her off, and it felt so sad to be taking this last trip there. The infant car seat we were using belonged to us, so we planned on taking that back with us. We passed off her box of clothes and toys, the leftover diapers and formula we had for her, gave our little peanut a hug good-bye, and went on our way. It felt so strange leaving her mom's house with an empty car seat, and it brought me right back to the day I drove to the hospital with an empty car seat, thinking how strange it was going to be to come back home with a newborn baby that I did not give birth to. It was a bittersweet day for us. She was home with her mom, which is a victory in foster care, and our goal throughout this whole process. However, we were incredibly sad to see this cute and loved baby leave our home. We were happy that she was reunified with her mom, in anticipation of it being official as of the court hearing on Monday morning, but we were sad at the same time, and I definitely cried once we got back in the car and started to drive away.
Just like it was good for the kids to have the distraction of Ema and Papa being at our house, it was a good distraction for me to have this surprise trip that Ben planned for my Christmas present this year. We we going to New York City for the weekend! I have always wanted to go to New York City at Christmastime. I'm not sure why, maybe because TV and movies always make it seem so magical and romantic. I was so excited, and I loved that Ben planned this whole trip without me knowing anything about it. New York City is only about 2 1/2 hours from our house, so we will definitely be able to come here more often, especially once Covid is over. and more things open up. He booked a hotel right in Manhattan, just a few blocks from Times Square. Here are some pictures of our room and the view from our window. It was so cool to be right in the city like this.
After checking in to our hotel room and dropping off our bags, I changed into my boots for walking around on the snowy, slushy sidewalks of New York, and we headed over to to Rockefeller Center to take the elevator up to the "Top of the Rock" and see the great views of the city all around us. Going up and down the elevator was cool because the you could see through the ceiling to the elevator shaft above, while videos and pictures were projected on to the ceiling of the history of the building and famous people that have visited Rockefeller Center.
Here are the pictures and videos I took at the top of Rockefeller Center, and we got great views of the city. I think it was cool to do it at night because you could see all the lights and buildings for miles around in every direction. The really bright lights you can see in the middle of this first picture is Times Square with all the huge, bright billboards on almost every building.
Ben and I remembered to take pictures of ourselves, too! We were having such a good time together, and it was wonderful to get away together without kids. We could be out late at night, eat whenever and whatever we want, and not have to worry about a certain timetable. It was cold because it was December in New York City, but it was tolerable with a coat, gloves, and hat.
After getting our fill of looking around the "Top of the Rock," we made our way back down with plans to just walk around the city for a little while.
Here is a church that is right across the street from Rockefeller Center. I thought the architecture was beautiful.
Although we didn't go ice skating because the line was incredibly long, and we didn't think it would be something we would enjoy doing anyways, it was cool to see these iconic places in real life that you hear about and see on TV or in movies.
Ben is so sweet and thoughtful, and I felt so special that he planned this trip for me, knowing that I had never been to New York City before and always wanted to go. Plus, everything about the trip was a surprise. I didn't know where we were going until we were in the car driving to New York City. Ben and I both love to travel and experience places together, so it was so fun doing this with him.
At this point it was already almost 7:00, and we hadn't eaten dinner yet. New York City restaurants were all still closed for indoor dining, so we knew we would have to just pick food up and bring it back to our hotel to eat, so we walked slowly around, seeing Radio City Music Hall, more Christmas light displays, and Times Square more close up.
Times Square was so crazy! The commotion and lights were almost overwhelming, and this was with way less people than would normally be here due to Covid. The electronic billboards were so bright and huge. I tried to take pictures of the New Year's Eve ball, but it was hard to see it in pictures due to the bright lights of the billboards and, really, how small the ball actually is.
To round off our first night in New York City, we picked up hamburgers, fries, and shakes from Shake Shack, ate in our hotel room while overlooking Manhattan, and then watched "Home Alone: Lost in New York," which was Ben's plan all along. The planning he put into this trip was so touching, and I was loving it. I couldn't wait to explore more the next day.
Here are a couple pictures that I found on ClassDojo of the kids. You can't really see Aedan in the back row, but it shows how his teacher has all the kids spread out for social distancing. I'm so glad that our kids are back in school in person, but seeing pictures like this makes me sad for the strange experience they are having this year.
Here is a picture of Samantha and her friend, Cadence, working on their cell projects in class. I forget when this picture was taken, but I wanted to make sure I included it.
On Saturday morning, I touched base with our little peanut's mom to see how she did overnight, hoping that it went better than the rough overnight visit they had last weekend. She said she was good besides the fact that our little peanut didn't like the pacifier and bottles that she had, and she said she couldn't afford Dr. Brown's, which is what we used simply because we had those bottles from when Samantha was a baby and my friend, Amy, gave me extras she had. I felt bad that she was probably having a hard time feeding her, so I spent time on our weekend trip searching around online for a place where we could order bottles and nipples for her to just go pick up and be able to use right away. We spent about $50 on things for her to use, doing Target pick-up, so it would be easy for her. I found out later from the foster mom of the other two girls that apparently bio mom was saying all these negative things about me for using "the most expensive kind of bottle" and then expecting her to be able to afford those, too, and she was mad that we didn't leave any behind for her when we dropped off our little peanut. Normally, we send everything with our little peanut as far as extra clothes, bottles, formula, pacifiers, everything that she would need, but since we were told that our little peanut would probably not be coming back to our home, we didn't want to give her any of our personal belongings that we will be using with future foster babies. We told bio mom this ahead of time so she could be prepared, but apparently she wasn't, and this was the first time she had to take care of her without all the stuff that she was used to that we provided for her. It was frustrating to me and hurt my feelings that she was saying those negative things about us behind our backs, especially when we went out of our way to buy the things for her to use.
Anyways, after we slept in and had a relaxing take-out breakfast in our hotel room from a restaurant where they came up with the idea for the show "Seinfeld", we took the subway to a station closer to Central Park, walked through the park, which was very beautiful and a lot bigger than I thought it would be, on our way to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
I was so excited to be able to go to the MET for the day. It is such a famous art museum, and we hadn't visited an art museum in a long time. They had so many famous artists and works of art there, that it was almost hard to know where to start looking around and how to pace ourselves so we could see the things we really wanted to see.
I'm going to include all the pictures I took at the MET. I had forgotten how much I enjoy looking at art and getting lost in how the artist portrayed different people or scenes. There were so many incredible things to see!
As it was getting close to 5:00 and we had been at the MET all day, we decided to call it a day. We walked through Central Park a little more and then along the streets to our friends' apartment for dinner. Kyle and his daughter met us at the MET toward the end of our time there, and he invited us over for dinner, so we gladly accepted the invitation for a home cooked meal made by a wonderful cook. It was nice to catch up with them, see their little girl, and enjoy a wonderful meal and good conversation. Once it was getting to be time for their little girl to go to bed, we left as well, taking the subway back to our hotel, and resting after a wonderful, fun day in New York City.
(Blog about December 13-19, 2020)
