The next 13 months!

It was a few weeks after "Andrew" was placed with us that his caseworker, Rachel, came to visit. She came in and introduced herself. "Andrew" ran from the back room to see who had come to visit. She addressed him saying, "Hi Nolan! How are you doing?" Ummm huh...there must be a slight mistake I thought. I know this child's name is "Andrew" according to his paperwork, and we've called him "Andrew" for two weeks now. Nolan? Please explain I thought! She looked at him sternly and said, "Why are you telling them your name is Andrew? You have always gone by Nolan, your middle name. You know that!" So..."We need to call him Nolan now?" I asked. If we weren't already working through enough issues having this child in our home, let's change his name two weeks into his placement to make life even better. Nolan just laughed and said, "Hahaha...I like to be called Andrew. I told them to call me that. It's so funny!" We spent the next four weeks learning to call this child the name he had gone by his WHOLE life. Nolan! I can't express enough how important communication is when dealing with CPS, but so many times it's just not there.

Our first visit to the doctor was comical. As foster parents you have to take each child to the doctor within three days of their placement. The pediatrician was amazing and talked Nolan through the examination perfectly. She then explained she needed to examine his private parts. She told him, "Listen Nolan, these are your private areas. This means no one is allowed to look at them unless it's a doctor or Mrs. Savanna." Nolan jerked around quickly with big eyes looking a bit scared and said, "Who's Mrs. Savanna?" The doctor looked up at me confused and asked what Nolan calls me. I just smiled and said, "That would be ma'am...he just calls me ma'am." She looked back at him and said, "Okay, listen...no one is allowed to look at your private areas unless it's a doctor or ma'am, got it?!" He looked relieved to know this stranger "Mrs. Savanna" wasn't going to be looking at his privates. Nolan called us nothing but "Sir" and "Ma'am" for about a month. Then we became "Mom" and "Dad."

Nolan was a live wire! He was constantly on the go! His first trip to the water park with Brody and me he could barely contain his excitement. I had a long talk with him about not talking to strangers, staying with me, and how dangerous it was at the water park without me. At the top of the first water slide, he was jumping around extremely excited waiting to go down. As he was jumping about, he kicked the slide very hard with his big toe. His toe nail came completely off! Like gone! He jumped around on one foot holding his toe that was dripping blood for just a few seconds. The lifeguard then told him it was his turn to go down the slide. He jumped on the slide and down he went. Brody and I also went down the slide at the same time. When we got to the bottom of the slide I quickly got to him thinking his toe had to be throbbing at this point. He acted like nothing was wrong. The water he was standing in kept it from bleeding, so he was good. If that were me and my toe, water park day would have been over the second I lost my WHOLE big toe nail. Not for this child! There wasn't much that could get him down. I only lost him once that day for about 5 minutes. I found him at the water balloon station where he had a water balloon. The only way to get the water balloons was to pay for them. He didn't enter that water park with money, but when I found him the least of my worries was how he got the water balloon. I was just happy I found the child the state had trusted me to care for.

This child has the sweetest heart, but was unable to control himself. He loved his parents and wished to go back with them when he first came. As time went on and the visits were more rare, he was perfectly content living with us. He was not so much emotionally attached, but knew he was taken care of in our home. Nolan would have accidents often because he was way too busy to use the restroom. He pushed every boundary we set for him. To say this was a learning experience for us all is an understatement.

On one occasion Eric took him to Tractor Supply to pick up a new lawnmower. It was around Easter, and those metal water troughs are so enticing when they are full of baby chickens. As they walked by, Nolan started screaming, "I want a hamster!" Eric not realizing why he was asking for a hamster explained that Tractor Supply didn't sell hamsters. Nolan was very prone to pushing Eric to his limits if I wasn't around. So what better place to do this than Tractor Supply? Nolan insisted he was getting a hamster! He stood in the isle stomping his feet yelling, "I WANT A HAMSTER!" Anyone who knows my husband can imagine the look on his face as he walked away from this child like "who's Hispanic kid is this on isle 4 screaming for a hamster?" My husband talks to our kids like they are all thirty years old. Recently, he told our three year old he needed to choose a different cartoon to watch because "this one really doesn't have a good plot." I can just hear him now trying to reason with Nolan about these "hamsters" and getting absolutely nowhere. Finally a sales lady helped Nolan to the truck while Eric was loading the lawnmower on the trailer. When they arrived home I couldn't tell who was more irritated, the little boy with no hamster or the foster dad who still hadn't convinced this child Tractor Supply didn't sell hamsters.

When Nolan came to us he had long black hair down to the middle of his back. Everywhere we went people would mistake him for a girl. He is a beautiful child! This would always cause a big scene because he would yell, "I'm a boy!" Usually followed by ,"This ain't my mom!" As I tried talking him down and explaining to people I was his foster mom. It would always end with a room full of people looking at me like I had kidnapped this little Hispanic child. I was very thankful to Nolan during these times for creating the most awkward situations in the world. Most of the time I just viewed it as a time to minister to others. Sometimes I would even ask the people gawking at me, "Do you want to become a foster parent? I know how to get you the hook up!" My husband and I knew this child needed a haircut, but as foster parents we are unable to make decisions like those. Before he started Kindergarten I pushed hard for a haircut. His mom finally agreed and took him during a visit. When I picked him up he looked like a totally different child, very grown up and handsome. We were all extremely thankful for the haircut because all the awkward situations in public diminished. A few weeks into Kindergarten he decided to cut his hair right in the front down to the scalp. No big deal really...many kids are practicing their barber skills at this age. We just laughed it off and told him it would grow back. A few more weeks passed and Nolan came to my classroom after school one day with a small cut on his eyelid. I asked what had happened as I inspected his eye more closely. I then realized this child had cut his eyelashes off. What in the world?!?! Why?? He just nonchalantly told me, "I didn't want to have girl eyelashes." He cut them off in his classroom with no mirror and still had both eyeballs, so we considered ourselves fortunate. Once again, I shrugged and told him they would also grow back. His teacher then became the keeper of his scissors. Eric and I joked saying we should have given him scissors much sooner. He would have taken care of the long hair situation on his own we believe.

We still get Nolan on the weekends from time to time and remain close with his mom. She loves Nolan very much and worked hard to get her boy back. We are grateful for the time we spent with him, because we learned so much during our thirteen months with Nolan. We learned what having true patience was. Not just patience like "my child is being a little wild today", patience like we wake up to underwear filled with diarrhea that were carried dripping through our house and stuffed under the bed type patience! Patience like a child screaming to the top of his lungs while kicking our wall, "I HATE YOU!" We also learned how to love even in times when all we wanted to do was give up. We learned how strong our marriage was under so much stress. Brody became more mature, and we learned what being "foster parents" was all about. We had a tough lesson once again on trusting God's plan instead of our own. We learned how to Love on Borrowed Time!