Update

We will finally be having our first licensing visit this week.  We've obviously been licensed foster parents for months and licensing could have come out any time before or after we'd gotten kids.  Somehow we'd just be overlooked for the past several months, but now it's our turn.  I think everything will be fine in our home, but it's always stressful to have someone come out and judge us.  Someone who technically has the power to close our home and stop us from keeping Sweet Pea.  Not that I think that will happen by any stretch of the imagination, but still gets me worrying.  Lots of little things to do to prep this week...

Our agency case manager will be coming out the day before the licensing visit to make sure everything looks good.  We heard more news from her about bio mom this week.  Doesn't look good at all for her.  The email was sent to me with a smiley face and even that I had mixed feelings about.  It's clearly good news for us, but still Shannon and I both had little tears in our eyes when I told him about it.

We'll be going to the beach for a long weekend next week.  It will be our first little family vacation and I'm so looking forward to it.  Excited to get away, excited for Sweet Pea to see the ocean for the first time, for her to put her feet in the sand and feel the saltwater.  I've already started gathering things to take for her.  If only packing for myself were so fun and easy.

Sweet Pea started crawling consistently this week.  She's been scooting on her belly--pushing off with one foot and pulling with one arm--for weeks, but now she's got it coordinated up on her hands and knees.  Her physical therapy supervisor should come out and reassess her sometime this week and I'm pretty sure she'll discharge her.  They had just been waiting to see her start crawling and make sure she was doing it correctly and now she is.  And I *finally* got rid of the occupational therapist this week too.  I honestly don't think she ever did anything to help Sweet Pea or to teach us what we could do to help her.  I had questioned her about goals, spoken with her supervisor, but she still stuck around.  This week I was trying to explain to her that all the other therapists are winding down and shouldn't she be finished too.  She tried to convince me she should come out once a month just to check on Sweet Pea.  None of the other therapists who actually helped us are doing that!  I know she just wanted to be able to milk Medicaid and keep getting paid for visit after visit.  She didn't even know how to do the discharge paperwork.  Not my concern.  Thank goodness we'll be done with all the therapies, that Sweet Pea has come so far that she has actually caught up with and even surpassed her adjusted age.  This is a huge step that I'm thrilled to be a part of.