Frustrations

I've been keeping my friend's baby every day this week again and it's been a good experience for me.  It's certainly been eye-opening how different it is having a baby here in my own house.  I've worked with lots of kids/babies, but never here at home.  Yesterday was the most challenging so far.  He was fussy and more restless than usual and I was exhausted by the end of the day.  It's starting to worry me a little bit how exhausting this is.  And this is just one little baby.  And an easy baby at that.  The kids we get will come with their own little traumas (or big traumas) and will certainly be more challenging.  I guess it will be a learning and growing experience for all of us, figuring out how to make it all work.

One of the most frustrating things is that Shannon just doesn't seem to get it.  He comes home asking what I did all day, why I didn't get such-and-such done, did I just play with the baby all day?  I'm ready for him to have a day at home with a baby/child and see what it's really like.  I'm impressed I've gotten as much done as I have, but then he wonders why I couldn't do more.  I had pictured I'd be cleaning out closets and this baby would just sit there pleasantly.  Hmm... not so much.  My mom is planning to come over today too.  I know she will be a huge help and support when we get kids.  She's getting so excited about it-- looking up websites about what to buy for foster kids and how to deal with the holidays, etc.

I sent an email to our case manager at Pathways the other day to check in and see where we are in the process.  She wrote back a very generic response, like "We're working on your homestudy and will let you know when we're done.  Thanks for your patience."  Disappointing, to say the least.  I mean, I know she is very busy and we are far from her only family, but it's almost been a month since our homestudy interview.  For all I know she hasn't even started typing it up yet!  It's hard to continue to be patient in this inbetween world.

It's also been frustrating because we're getting phone calls and comments from (obviously well-meaning) friends and family wondering when we're getting kids.  Several people have thought we already have kids or that we've "picked some out" and are just waiting for them to get here.  Like that's how it works...  I was trying to figure out where they're getting all this wrong information.  Have I not been clear when explaining things to others?  Then Shannon mentioned last night he figured it was coming from his mom.  She's been known to, how should I put it, stretch the truth from time to time.  It's not necessarily lying, just telling people what they want to hear.  And when she's at a bar with friends, the truth stretching gets even bigger.  So I guess that's it.  But it's still frustrating.  This process can be difficult enough without someone else complicating it even more.