A new adventure has begun . . .

At least the title sounds better than "My wife and I have descended into madness."  On Tuesday, we took in in three foster children.  There are 2 girls and 1 boy and their ages are, get this, 1, 2 and 3!  Yes, I know, our tether on reality is pulled taunt and rapidly fraying.  Despite what the future holds due to this decision, I'll go ahead and get on the record now by saying that, at the time, it *seemed* like a good idea.

We got a call from DCS around 8:30pm and tentatively stated that it would be *OK* to be considered as a placement.  An hour later we received another call from DCS confirming us as the placement they chose for these children.  An hour later, a DCS worker was at our door with the children.  We talked briefly, signed a lot of papers, and the DCS worker made her escape.  Less than three hours after quickly deciding to accept the placement, we were alone with three children with nothing but the clothes on their backs and each one holding a toy.

The little boy, 3yo, was just fine.  He is potty trained and didn't appear especially upset at the chaos his day had turned into.  The middle girl, 2yo, loved our cats but cried for her mother a good bit.  She is semi-potty trained and knows how to say "gotta pee pee."  That isn't really all that helpful since she says this every 5 minutes or so but I can see the possibilities.  The baby girl, 1yo, seems like a typical baby.  I'm sure she was affected by the chaos of the day as well.

Once we got the kids to sleep around 1am, I was able to catch my breath and, like everything else I jump blindly headfirst into, realized how stupidly incompetent I was for the situation at hand. Just to add to the stress of the evening, it was terribly cold.  We had been letting our 2 outside junkyard dogs sleep in the house.  The kids were soundly sleeping on a pallet I made for them on the living room floor so letting the dogs stay in the living room was out.

I quickly thought of a solution and decided that we could create a makeshift corral that would lead from the back door to the garage door.  I set up a heater in the garage for them.  We set up bar stools and chairs and other objects along the way to create a path toward the garage and posted my wife and daughter at key locations to direct traffic.  I felt like a cowboy.  I opened the garage door and ran to the back door to let the dogs in with the intention of shooing them into the garage.

Typical of my ideas that *seemed* like a good idea at the time, things didn't go exactly as planned.  Mutt #1 made an immediate left after coming in the door between the recliner and the couch and started barking at the sleeping kids on the floor.  I quickly grabbed up the dog in my arms and found myself trapped behind the barricade that was supposed to keep the dogs moving in the right direction.  I eventually managed to dump her in the garage and closed the door. 

Mutt #2 followed the exact same path as Mutt #1 but, thankfully, no barking this time.  Mutt #2 is too heavy to pick up so I had to scoot him by the butt into the garage.  I'm lucky that he didn't step on one of the kids.

Amidst the confusion, two of our inside cats managed to get herded into the garage themselves.  We didn't realize this until the next morning when we tried a repeat of the corral technique the night before.  I opened the garage expecting the dogs to come running out (they hate the garage, by the way) but was surprised by 2 cats charging in like they were on fire.  This time, of course, the dogs didn't want to leave the garage so I had to push and prod them like cattle to get them moving.  The cats didn't like the garage at all but I figure it serves them right for not staying out of the way.

My wife, Tina, and I both stayed home from work on Wed. so we could get some needed supplies and secure daycare for all the kids.

I used a vacation day but, trust me, it was no vacation.