Starting a new..

Whew, It's been awhile!


I can't even remember the last time I posted anything. I've realized over the months of not doing so, that i've missed it dearly. A lot has happened as of late, and yes we are still battling with CPS. I will try to explain as much as I can without too much detail.

I think I had left off with our 5 other children being taken out of our home November of 2009. And I think I had mentioned 3 were returned to us. M our oldest girl, T our four year old, and Bubba our now two year old.

Let me tell you, all of this that has gone on has been traumatizing. To the point that my poor husband, who got constantly blamed for being the "problem" in the house tried to commit suicide. He has severe PTSD, and is medicated, and does well. But he just lost all control when our children got ripped from us, and I don't even want to relive that night on here again. It haunts me. I placed my children in the care of grandpa and grandma for their own safety, not just from their father, which might I add would never harm them but he needed help, Which he got, but I feared CPS would swoop in and remove them to foster care again. My husband got very violent, and I had to obtain protection for myself as well. Basically my husband relapsed. It was sad. Thank God he’s still with us because I don't know how I would've explained that one to the kiddos.

Our oldest daughter now has severe anxiety, panic attacks, and severe trust issues. She goes to horse therapy once a week and seems to be helping a tad. She calls me every night and asks me when am I going to come home to her. Which absolutely breaks my heart. Our youngest "daughter" Has severe behavior issues now, especially when we see them and then have to leave and can't take her home with us. Bubba doesn't really understand what’s going on, but definitely shows some separation anxiety. It saddens me that this had to happen to them, to us.

My mother in law has our other son Hunter, my parents tried, but they said that they didn't want to place him with them because they were "stressed" enough.

It's been frustrating, but we are getting through it. We are fighters, and our children are most important.

On a more "happy" note. Our oldest graduated prek! She's growing up too fast. She will be starting St. Michaels Archangel Catholic school in the fall. She’s very excited. As are we. T turned four in March. She still loves princess stuff. And bubba turned two in May. He now has a fascination with airplanes, trucks, and tractors. His vocabulary has soared, and is running around non stop getting into EVERYTHING.

My husband and I are going to marriage counseling every week, we've realized through this whole process that even though we may have worked very well as a team when it came to the kids, we lost all realization that either one of us existed past that point. It has been helping out a lot, we have more us time to rekindle what we started with.

I just wanted to stop in, we've all been battling sickness especially me for some odd reason I just can't seem to stay well. Anyways, we had a talk with our lawyer. Little man falling down the stairs is mostly the reason cps took him from us. Yes, he has fallen sadly because his therapists figured it was okay to teach a child who can't even walk and was perfectly fine crawling up and down the stairs, how to walk up them. A lot of the issue was because we don't have a gate up on our stairs. Im going to share with you pictures of our stairs and where CPS wants us to place the gate.


                                                              

We have spindles going all the way up. Half way up our stairs is the only place a gate can be. 8 steps up mind you.

Half way up.

Now tell me....is that safe? Because honestly it isnt. He can still try to walk up the stairs, and he can also pull the gate down. We hadn't had any problems with stairs until his therapy. These are the people who are telling us how to raise our children. I feel as though im going nuts. I wish the judge saw these photos and finally realized that CPS is a crock-o-crap. Oh, and also we are supposed to have plug covers on all our outlets. Are you kidding me? We took them out because all of our children can take them out, and our one year old was sticking them in his mouth. AmAZing! seriously..

My husband put out our christmas lights today, they look wonderful. Our tree is up, now all thats left is christmas shopping. Hopefully I wont go overboard this year.

Ah life.

We have been so lost in the chaos of what’s going on we just don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t want to give up because I love my children, and I feel that if I give up they will hate me. But at the same time we have our other children to think about as well.



Little Man has been in foster care for almost 3 weeks, we have yet to see him. We turned in papers 3 weeks ago to have my parents foster him. They have yet to contact them, and they haven’t told us anything that’s going on. The repercussions of little man being out of “family” care are growing more each day. If we get him back, he will regress. We know this from past experience. He will regress into a blob of nothingness and we all suffer. Do we put ourselves and our other children through that? Is it selfish of us to think this way? I don’t know. Do we want to re teach everything we accomplished? I know I don’t want to. I don’t have the energy, the strength. If little man gets hurt down the line, and we get CPS on us again, do we allow them to torture our other children? I mean they took them without warrant, and absolutely traumatized them. I promised my daughter I would never let anything happen to her, How did I feel that night they took her? I was traumatized and still am. I’m afraid to leave my children. I just don’t know.


Bubba has been battling bronchiolitis and we told CPS this. It was court ordered for our children to be in daycare for 7 hours a day to help “socialize” them. We had to take Bubba to the ER and after four hours of him being poked swabbed and prodded we found out he has pneumonia. Pneumonia! None of our children have ever been that sick! It sickens me to think that CPS thinks they are doing what’s in the best interest of our children, but then subjects my child to other children who are probably sickly knowing full well that his immune system was already trying to fight off bronchiolitis. I just don’t know anymore.




Merebear wants to throw me a thank you mommy party. I have no clue where this idea came from, I have been really sick lately and I was soaking in a menthol bath when my 5 year old bursts in and announces she’s going to throw me a thank you party because I do so much for her and her brother and sister. Yeah.. That honestly made my day.

Happy Gobble Day.

I hope everyone has a wonderful thanksgiving and weekend. May you all be well, and find peace and happiness with family and friends.

This will be a short post... The whole lot of us has Brochiolitis. Not fun...Bubba and myself got the worst of it. Bubba has to have breathing treatments.

Our mini trip

On a funner note. Today we made a mini trip to a discovery place for children our ages unlike COSI which is more foccused now on older children. It was awesome. They had aquatics, which was fun because we got to manipulate water. They had a two story twisty slide that our children including my husband enjoyed. They had play houses, dress up, a general market with little shopping carts and play food. They had an indoor zoo, which was awesome. They had a pit with burried fossils you got to dig up, and the "sand" was recycled rubber from tires. It was a great day, and we all enjoyed every second of it. Here are som pictures.

Riley wondering were he should put the ball.

That was fun! and yes thats me.

Riley coming down a much smaller version of the two story slide.

                                                   

Daddy and the two girls.

                                                

I  just wanted to post the newest email from the distruntle mother in law. She has admitted to us several times that she did file the report even though CPS "can't" tell us.


Sent: Friday, November 13, 2009 9:31 AM



Subject: Re: The grandchildren


This is heart wrenching for everyone. I know both (J) and (V)love their kids. The only one in question was (H). We don't believe children should be removed from their home unless they are physically in danger. The family should be worked with from within and I told that to the agency and that Jon and Veronica needed parenting skills classes but the kids loved them. Even though you've not worked with agencies to know, you probably are aware that if there was not a problem they would have dropped this long ago. Counties don't want to spend unnecessary dollars on staff wages or foster care. They already have more than enough to do. They don't have the time or money to "target" anyone. When there is a report, first they determine if it is valid and go from there. They are only interested in the child who was reported unless they see other issues. And if ANY children were to be removed, it would only be that child. Common sense dictates there were issues of some kind or this would have been dropped long ago. (B) and I both talked about this numerous times before talking to the agency and both agreed it was what we had to do knowing if there was nothing to it, it would go no further. It was not a decision made easily or in a short period of time. Although they would never tell us, I was of the impression there had been other reports or at least more than the hospital's. We truly ache for (J)on, (V)eronica, the children, and all involved.
 
 
Note how she wrote children in "physical" harm. CPS has never claimed that, we are neglectful because of circumstances above our control ( We didn't get paid for 4 months because of the VA screwing up my husbands pay when he was retired.) And that our children are dependant.
 
Second, A mother does not do that to her son and his family. Third, SHE doesn't even know our family to make claims. She lied about things in her report, and got away with it. Like us locking little man in a room in her house at thanksgiving. My husband checked on him 4 times, the last of which our son had vomited all over himself because a certain someone was SHOVING, I mean litteraly shoving food into his mouth.
 
Another thing, They may not have the money, but they sure as heck have the time. CPS gets more money when they have children in foster care. I AM not saying all CPS is bad, some of it is good. But statistics don't lie, 1 out of every 17 children are actually abused and or neglected. Which is amazing odds.
 
Also, This lady who is of relation to us should not have been able to make a report about anything. I know so many family members who try to make a report about something going on and they don't do a darn thing. So obviously my disgruntled mother in law used her power (She was a foster parent, which in my eyes shouldn't have been.) or she made up an alias. If she did abuse her power to file a report, thats frightning as well. How many people do you think work for CPS, or have an affiliation with them who abuse their power to get back at people? I couldn't tell you, but thats deffinetely something to think about. It absolutely makes my skin crawl.



Furthur report. Our 3 year old is home, and as my husband was giving her a bath he noticed bites all over her, she also has a Ginormous bruise on her shoulder that I know wasn't put there by me. Not bites from humans, bites from FLEAS. Now I know for a fact that we don't have fleas, our cats were treated. So now, my husband and I have been bittin by fleas. I have flea bites all up my leg, my husband has them on his arm. AND yes I took pictures! Our 1 year old son had a bite mark on the side of his forehead. You could actually count every tooth. AMAZING! They took little man away because he had a noted bruise on his forehead ONCE a MONTH but foster care can get away with it? WHAT? Ugh, it's insane! I am in no way saying all foster parents are evil, nor am I saying this one is. All it comes down to is, as children, they get bumps and bruises and owies and boo boos. Thats all I have to say about that.