Comfort from the Dark Side

Barbara stopped by yesterday evening to drop off a few things. She told us how the telling of Max had gone yesterday (he was shocked and sad, but she said it went okay) and a little feedback from the psychologist (the initial word is that Max has frontal lobe problems, which makes processing new information difficult) and generally chit-chatted for a while.

Now, as I think that Barbara is rather a ditz and has a strange filter on how she sees the world, I probably shouldn't let myself be comforted by her. She, though, also told us that A, Max's therapist, says emphatically that we fostered so much growth in Max and that he gained so much from being in our family for a year and a half. That felt good to hear because I think of A as being totally anti us these days.

Barbara said that she understands that we will need to take a break and process, but then, if we want to try again to adopt, she would be happy work work with us. Wow. We totally didn't expect that. However, we, well, Anthony mostly who has put his foot down about this issue, will not be going that route again. Mostly I think he's right, but I'm also sad about it.

Barbara suggested that if we didn't want to try to adopt again that maybe we'd be interested in doing teen foster case, something else we'd been talking about before adopting Max as something we might do when the kids were out of the house. Yeah, well, I guess you never know, but I'm thinking probably not on that, as well.

Anthony said, after Barbara left, that they are just hard up for adoptive and foster parents and that's why she's still willing, but she seemed very genuine about it. She said she felt like we had a lot to offer a child and that it was really just a poor match with Max, which, of course, rings true because that's how I feel!

This morning, I'm working on burning pictures to a disk and I have two pictures to paste into Max's life book. Then I'm done and we'll be off to lunch with Tad-ku (my step dad) and then to the good-bye meeting. I'm a little anxious, but doing okay. Keeping busy is helpful, I guess.