Over the Hump

I finally got around to changing my "feet" picture on Facebook to this:

I'd like to say that I was just waiting for my polish to be redone and the boys' blue polish to wear off. And maybe that was some of it. But a lot of it was just me getting used to new kids and feeling like "me plus three" really equaled "us". 

Getting new kids is hard.  There is some level of fun and excitement to figuring out the new additions but there's also a lot of junk to get through. No kid gets pulled for a "small" reason...the stories are always hard to hear. I remind myself that every single thing is new to the kids here. Every smell, routine, place, person they meet--everything. They have so much to adjust to, yet the only change for me is them.

If someone were to ask me what the hardest thing is, it'd be this: The fear that these kids won't ever feel right--them with you, you with them, them in their own skin, you in your own.  There comes a time with every new transition that you hope the well that is love for other people's kids has not dried up. You worry that your new family will never run like the old, well oiled machine before it. You wake up each morning with strangers who are wondering who rocked their world so much and why on earth they are here in the first place.  But you allow yourself to get caught up in the logistics of getting them settled--teaching routines, making appointments, keeping up with CPS stuff--and then one day, when you come up for air, you realize that yes, these little beings are just as cool as the fifth or the ninth or the seventeenth one was and that your mama claws can come out for them when needed and that you actually enjoy them, warts and all. You are reassured that the well has not run dry.

And finally, you feel right in your own skin again and know that you are over the hump.