Is She Yours?

"That baby is so beautiful! Is she yours?"

For those of you who have not had the pleasure of meeting our peanut, our foster daughter is African-American. Her skin is beautiful and dark, and she has the fluffiest little afro sitting on top of her cute head. 

Nearly every day, whether it is on the bus or at the grocery store, people ask me, "Is that your baby?" Now, I completely understand it is natural for people to wonder if I grew this tiny human inside my body, considering my translucence. People are curious, and maybe they themselves have adopted children of a different race or have mixed biological children. That's what I've been telling myself anyway.

Lately though, I have found myself being increasingly aware of and bothered by this question, and by the many other ruder questions people ask. I try to not be overly sensitive or one of "those" people who looks for a fight in everything. Even still, the "Is she yours?" question remains on my mind. If baby girl was light-skinned with brown straight hair, no one would ask if she was mine. When I'm out with my blonde-haired, blue-eyed foster sister, no one asks if she belongs to me.

Forgive my ramblings, but I guess what I'm trying to grapple with is how much having a foster daughter who is a different race than I am has opened my eyes to what people think a family should be. My little girl doesn't fit in with what people imagine "my" children to look like.

This is the bottom line of how I feel about that: Whether my children grew in my belly or someone else's, they will be mine. My future family will likely include children who look much different than Brian and I. They will still belong to us.

I feel blessed that baby girl is much too young to understand what people are asking, and I dread the day when she or another foster child grasps the concept of belonging. By asking if my foster children are mine, I feel like it punches kids in the stomach. Foster kids are painfully aware that they are unwanted, abandoned, "troubled", and many more unsavory adjectives. Questioning whether they belong in my family is a sobering reminder to them that they are not living with their biological family. 

Our foster children will know that they are wanted, they are loved, and they are ours. I will advocate for their needs, love them fiercely, and be the best mama I can. All of our foster kids - whether they are with us for two weeks or forever - will belong to Brian and I for as long as they're with us, and possibly even beyond that.

Sure, this attitude will probably make it more heartbreaking when our kids leave us to go home or to a different placement, but I can't be selfish. I can't guard my heart by telling myself and others, "She's not really mine." To this precious child, we are hers, and that's all that matters.

Baby Girl: The First Few Weeks

On January 2nd, I got an email that our foster license had finally been approved. All of the paperwork, training, waiting, and home visits had all led up to that one glorious email.

Brian and I were so excited, and I hoped it wouldn't be too long before we received our first little one. I figured it would take at least a week for our contact information to get to the placement desk and after-hours, so we went about our merry way.

On the morning of January 3rd, I got THE call. "Want a baby girl?" asked the placement coordinator. Um. YES. 

I was so excited...I called my mom (she needed to know she was going to be a grandma, although she isn't really into being called "grandma" yet) and got out all the clothes in the dresser I thought would fit her. At 5pm that evening, our first little one showed up at our door. Social workers are kind of like storks which is fun...they just show up with kids :) 

Baby girl was nervous and unsure of what was going on. When I took her out of her carseat, she gave me the slightest smile, and I hoped it was a sign of good things to come.

Fast-forward to 3am, at which time the baby had slept for about 30 minutes total. Yawn. She was not a happy girl. She cried when I held her, when I tried to feed her, when I bounced her, or tried to play with her. I was lost and exhausted. 

Honestly, for the first few days (and nights. Oh, the long nights) I doubted my ability to be a foster mama. I thought that maybe I was not cut out for this. I figured baby girl was trying to say "YOU SUCK." and I felt like a failure. I just wanted to make her happy and know we were going to take good care of her.

Week two was even rougher. I was back in school but daycare had not started yet, so I was driving 30-45 minutes each day to take her to my mom (who deserves a medal for saving my sanity). I was still sleeping very little, getting behind on my reading, and not feeling like I was making my baby girl feel happy. I broke down more than once, but my amazing husband was always there to build me back up.

You know the saying "It's always darkest before the dawn"? It's so true. I finally heard last week from the daycare center that she could start the coming Monday, which was a huge stress reliever. My foster daughter also began a transformation. She lit up when Brian or I entered the room. She was learning to roll around and started to love playing on the floor (read: she didn't need me to hold her 24/7 haha). She was secure and felt safe, flirting with strangers but holding onto my arm for comfort. I feel like she's saying, "You're okay, but this here...this is my mom. Don't take me from her." 

She began to feel like ours because to her, Brian and I began to feel like hers.

As challenging as the first couple of weeks were, waiting for her to learn to trust us was beyond worth it. Knowing how much our relationship with baby girl has grown makes where we are now even more sweet. I'm not going to pretend it's easy as pie now to be a foster mama. There are still (many) sleepless nights and bouts of crying that seem to go on forever. There are enough moments now, though, that reaffirm our decision to care for orphans and encourage us as foster parents. We're learning to love this new crazy life :)

Why I Wanted a Baby for Christmas

If you see me relatively often, you probably heard me say, "I just want a baby for Christmas!" more than once over the past two months.

No biological babies for Brian and I for a few more years :) But I really hoped to have our foster license by the holidays. I wanted a little one to share Christmastime with us. Some (including sometimes my husband) don't understand why I'd want to make a chaotic time even crazier. This coupled with the fact some of you may have heard me rambling about babies as I pranced about the law school, makes me think I should explain myself a little.

My family is big - both my immediate and extended. For the past 4 or 5 Christmases, my parents have had at least one foster daughter staying with them through the holidays which grew our family even more. When I was living at home, I loved seeing my sisters' faces when they ran out of their rooms in the morning to check out what Santa has brought them. There was something even more special about seeing the joy in my foster sisters' eyes.

Now, I realize that presents and Santa are not the true reason behind Christmas. I myself love me some baby Jesus, but it's much more than that, in my opinion. There's so much opportunity to spend quality time with family and remember how blessed we are to have everything we do. Christmas music on the radio, holiday parties, and hearing Jesus' birth story at church - it all comes together to create what I think is a magical time for many kids.

I have heard some sad, some amazing, and some hilarious stories from my foster sisters. A and M are two of my foster sisters that are also biological sisters (confused yet?). I'm thankful every day that they were removed from the horrible conditions they had been living in. Last month, A and M were telling me about Christmas with their biological mom. M said, "Yeah, my mom gets all the good deals on Black Friday. She got an iPad for a dollar! And Ugg boots for basically free..." to which A replied: "Umm she stole all of that. That's why it was free." We laughed about it at the time, but when I thought about it later, I was really sad. Sad for my sisters that Christmas had been filled with abuse, violence, and dangerous men. Sad that their mom felt the need to steal in order to provide a Christmas for her kids.

My sisters' situation is what many children in foster care come from. Homes where Santa forgets to come, and they have to listen to their classmates talk about the neat toys they got. Homes where mommy is too drunk to get out of bed Christmas morning. Christmas Eves filled with dad's scary drug-addict friends instead of candle-lit church services. No matter how you celebrate Christmas, no matter what you think the reason for the season is, and whether or not you've already told your kids about Santa, we can all agree this is no way for a child to feel during the holidays.

This, my friends. is why I wanted a baby for Christmas. I wanted to show my foster child that the holidays can be incredible - filled with love, family, hope, and a little bit of Santa :)

Maybe next year <3

Our (Mostly) Complete Foster Room and Office Combo

We are so close to being licensed, I can taste it. We have both been interviewed and now we just need to pass the home inspection, where our licensor makes sure that we have covers on our outlets, a non-slip thingy in our tub, and all of our sharp things are out of reach, haha. Anywho, our second bedroom is smallish, and is still housing our home office, but I think we did a decent job of setting everything up. Here are some pictures! We're still putting finishing touches on it, so don't judge too hard :)

View into our foster room from the hallway.

These curtains hide Brian's turntables and records. The curtain is just there for aesthetic reasons :) We realize a curtain won't keep curious kids out of it haha.

Here's a close-up of the toy boxes. We will be moving these as they're just awkwardly chilling in front of the curtain right now. Also, I bet it just looks like we threw a piece of white printer paper on the top. Nope. My awesome husband had some Ebay bucks and used it for sticker paper to make stickers for our foster friends :)

Here's the crib/toddler bed. It's currently a toddler bed and oh man, it's so little and cute! You can see the crib railing chilling behind the door. ALSO THE OWL BACKPACK. I'm in love.

We have a dresser with 5 outfits and 3 pairs of jammies for each gender, newborn to 5T :)

Lots of diapers, wipes, socks, and teensy undies.

This was the first thing I painted. I want all of my foster kids to know this!

Here's the project I made with the cork trivets, along with a banner along the top of the closet.

This is a wall I'm going to hang string and clothespins to create an "art wall" leading into the bedroom. I love to color so I guess if my foster kids don't like to, I'll just hang up my own stuff there. No one will know...I can't color in the lines anyway...

So that's about it, folks. It's a small room but I hope it will be functional and awesome for our foster kids. As long as they know they're safe, I think they'll be happy and not mind sharing space with a desk :)

Can't wait to tuck in a little one in this room!

Miss Representation

To me honest, I'm kind of terrified for my future daughters to become preteens and teenagers. There's so much horrible stuff to navigate around, and for me, middle school and most of high school were hell on earth.

I recently watched a documentary called "Miss Representation" and was quite impressed. There wasn't anything terribly shocking in it but seeing all of the little things that bother me about politics and the media put together into one film really affected me. Here are just a few of the statistics discussed in the film that resonated with me*:

"53% of 13-year-old girls are unhappy with their bodies. That number increases to 78% by age 17."

"In 2011, only 11% of protagonists in films were female."

"Women make up 51% of the US population... however women comprise only 20% of congress."

"35 women have served as US governors compared to 2,319 men."

Can we really be surprised at this, though? Look at just a sampling of recent films; women are portrayed as sex objects with no real goals except to "get the guy." I cannot open a magazine - whether fashion or decorating themed - without seeing unnaturally thin models plastered all over the glossy pages. Even a teen who is, by medial standards, well within the healthy weight range, looks much different than the photoshopped women that cover billboards and other advertisements. What a sad, sad world we live in.

I myself was lucky enough to grow up in a household where gender stereotypes weren't hammered into my head from a young age. I was allowed to play with whatever toys I wanted (including Hot Wheels and other "boy" toys), and went to work with my dad, a landscaper, often. I played outside, got dirty, and went through a phase where I didn't want to wear froofy dresses. All fine by my parents, who always pushed me to follow my goals and attend law school, even though historically the practice of law has been male-dominated.

I want my daughters to know that their value does not lie in their bodies or their appearance. I want to raise them to be strong, to go after what they want, and to not let gender stereotypes limit what they want to be "when they grow up." My daughter wants to be a stay-at-home mom? Wonderful! I was blessed with a stay-at-home mom and know what a job it was to raise us brats :) My other daughter wants to be the president of the USA, a fire chief, or a police officer? Equally awesome. I want to empower them to take control of their lives and not be impeded from joining male-dominated careers. I want them to know they have just as much choice regarding what they will become as their male classmates.

I struggle, even decades before I will have teenagers, with figuring out the best approach. How to I limit their exposure to sexualized media and empower them to be strong women? I don't think a completely sheltered approach is necessary or even helpful, but I also don't want them to think they need to become man-hating bra-burners either.

In all seriousness, though, I hate that I don't have a perfect "plan" or an answer to this problem. What I hate more though is that the society we live in requires to do so much damage control in order to raise strong, confident girls and respectful boys (I realize that teaching my boys about gender stereotypes and female sexualization is also necessary but that's a whole different blog post). Miss Representation has many excellent suggestions at the end of the film which I have filed away in my brain for the future. Honestly, all I can do is open the lines of communication with my kids and pray for the wisdom to teach them what's best.

What are your thoughts? Is the sexualization of women too dramatized? Or is it far more dangerous than portrayed? How do you hope to raise confident girls and respectful boys? I need more things to file away in my "future-parent-of-a-teen" section of my brain :)





* Source: www.therepresentationproject.org/statistics

A Home for the Holidays

Timothy (name changed) was brought to Safe Place after the horrific abuse inflicted by his caregivers escalated to the point of him being tied up in an outbuilding. He came to us with countless bruises, a concussion, and dislocated joints resulting from his struggle to get of the cords wrapped around his wrists, ankles, and neck.

After sleeping for a few hours and getting some breakfast in his belly, Timothy took a hot shower to relax his painful body. He was brought to us without shoes, so he got to pick out a new pair, and was stoked to get brand new Jordans :) Timothy was profusely thankful and gracious for the shoes as well as the clothes we gave to him. He spent the day playing the Wii and watching movies, all while wearing his new shoes of course!

What touched me so much about Timothy was the amount of empathy this guy possessed even as a preteen, especially considering the abuse he suffered and the violence he was subjected to. He was an only child, yet he was patient and gentle with the 2 and 3 year-olds we had at Safe Place that weekend. He "ate" the pretend sandwiches the 3 year-old made for him out of the plastic play food, and colored with the 2 year-old. Timothy shared the Wii with an autistic child around his age, and never once got frustrated or asked to play by himself, both which would have been understandable reactions! I was so blessed to spend a day with this little one.

The sad thing about young Timothy is that because he is older, he will probably not enjoy a stable stay in foster care. I think about him often, and I wonder if he's found a place to settle down in through the holidays. With Halloween in a couple of weeks, and Thanksgiving and Christmas shortly after, my heart always breaks this time of year. I cannot imagine being separated from my family during the holidays.

If you would like to get involved in bettering the lives of local foster children this holiday season and beyond, I encourage you to come to our event on November 6 - A Home for the Holidays. You will hear what Safe Place has provided for kids since we opened in 2010, learn about where we hope to go in the future, and hear about ways to get involved. There are so many ways to help these kids, whether volunteering directly with the children, providing services or gifts-in-kind, and many, many more! If you want to help these precious kids, we will find the spot for you.

Here is the link to register for the event:
http://www.eventbrite.com/event/8638571199/efbeven

If you would like to be seated at my table, please email me to let me know so I can ensure you are seated with me! Feel free to email me with any questions, comments, or concerns at katie.c.lohr@gmail.com.

I look forward to seeing many of you at this event. Thank you for being willing to be a voice of a child!

Don't Judge a Book by its Cover, or a Child by Her File

"Problem with authority, emotionally needy, controlling, moody."

Madalyn's (name changed) file is full of negative things to say about her. Her sister Audrey's (name changed) file is not much better:

"Emotionally volatile, throws tantrums, destroys property."

Madalyn and Audrey are two of the dozens of foster sisters I've had in the last several years. They both have files that travel around the foster system with them, outlining all of their transgressions and other "relevant" history.

Madalyn and Audrey's files make them seem like horrible, hopeless, volatile little girls. What I know about them could not be further from the truth.

Madalyn is creative, loves to sing, and is very affectionate. While she sometimes is a space invader when it comes to hugs, I accept each one because I know all Madalyn wants to do is love and be loved. Yes, she can be dramatic, but this helped her orchestrate a "fashion show" with all of our other foster and permanent sisters, and other fun things! She's incredibly artistic, and made me the coolest pop-up card she proudly gave me on my birthday.

When I look at Audrey, I do not see an emotionally volatile little girl. I see a child who suffered such horrendous abuse that at her young age, she does not know what to do with all of the fear, sadness, and confusion that she feels. When Audrey does throw a fit, she emerges from her room soon after - crying, begging forgiveness, and telling our mom and dad she "doesn't know why" she behaved that way. I see a little girl who spoils my dog so much that he literally cries with excitement when he sees her, jumping up to lick her all over the face. Audrey is consistently the first one to ask one of our other sisters why she's sad and is one of the most compassionate children I've ever met.

The way I see my sisters is the way they truly are. Madalyn and Audrey are not the troubled, difficult children that their files portray them to be. Yes, they can be emotionally exhausting sometimes and generally require more help and guidance, but they are also beautiful little ones who have so much to offer this world. Every time I spend time with them I am in awe at the incredible young ladies they are turning out to be despite their first years being filled with abuse and instability.

These girls are more than the contents of their files, and shouldn't be judged based on what they contain. I am blessed to know them as the loving, hyper, and entertaining kids they are!

More Than a Dress

This is not simply a size 18-24 month dress with pink hearts. It stands for something awesome - the next chapter in our lives.

No, I'm not pregnant :)

Anyone who knows me knows I have a huge crazy family. Part of that is because my parents have fostered for many years and continue to do so. I absolutely love volunteering with foster kids and was excited to get my foster license someday.

Brian grew up with one sister who is only three years younger, so I figured we'd have kids then get our foster license later in life. Fostering and taking care of kids is natural to me, but I didn't want to throw my poor husband into that chaos until he was ready haha.

A few weeks ago, Brian told me he could see taking care of kids in our home. We have begun the process to become foster parents. I'm signed up for classes next month, and we're working to get our home more kid-friendly!

Now, I know you're thinking we must be crazy. Brian works full-time and come August I'll be back in school. Plus, our condo is not so big. 2 bedrooms, 900 square feet, two humans, and one canine.

I know sometimes it will be overwhelming. I know that I might not sleep as much if a baby is placed with us. I realize it might be inconvenient to find a babysitter or bring a toddler along to a double date.

Whenever I think too much about the stress or inconvenience, I am always reminded of this: these babies who will come into our home don't have stress-free lives either. It wasn't convenient for them to be yanked out of their houses from the only parent or parents they've known. They are scared, confused, and hurting. They have been abused or neglected and haven't had their needs met. These babies will be more overwhelmed than we will be.

When I compare my life to those of kids in foster care, I see how immensely blessed I am. Close family, amazing husband, and an incredible support system. I'm lucky to have my needs met financially and have a safe, comfortable home.

I think it's time I share all these blessings with some kiddies :)

So, back to the dress that was the inspiration for this post. This was the first thing I bought to fill the dresser we hope to someday have full of clothes for little ones. It's much more than a dress - it's a symbol for a new adventure :)