Visiting Lacy

With the help of a case manager, Randy and I started to visit Lacy as often as possible.

At first, the staff there was painfully difficult to deal with. In retrospect, I realize that they were protecting a child that had nobody else to speak for her. I later learned that there has been previous children adopted from this facility, and not long after were dead or returned in much worse condition than when they left. So for the first few weeks, we were considered the enemy.

For a while, many of the toys we brought to Lacy disappeared by our next visit. Often Lacy was ushered away from us after only a few minutes the the justification that she "had a schedule she needed to keep".

Undeterred, Randy and I managed to gain permission from Lacy's social worker to visit her as often as we liked. Our visits increased to every afternoon, every single day of the week. We came after her nap, and would often stay until it was dinner time. Soon, we just stuck around for dinner as well.

Not long after, we began to notice that Lacy's meals were not what we would want for her. One week she was fed canned peas and mashed potatos three times. I was livid. This little girl needed more than canned food.

Randy and I started bringing in Lacy's dinner everyday. We brought her snow crab legs, sushi, stir-fry, chicken, raspberries, oranges, tacos... nothing we brought ever came out a can. Lacy loved it! Especially the snow crab legs! Of course, some of the staff made comments as we rolled in with a pound and a half of snow crab for a two year old, but it made us so happy to see Lacy excited about new things.

Soon we were buying her new clothes, shoes (pink crocs), books and toys. We wanted so badly for Lacy to be part of our family. Within time, the staff became more tolerant of our presence, and we even found a few friends among the group. Randy and I were taking all of the classes required by the county to be foster parents, as well as the classes required by the facility to take Lacy home. It was tedious, frustrating and especially time consuming. At the time, I was working full time and taking 24 units a semester. I often slept only 4 hours a night, and skipped sleeping tuesday nights because I was working at the hospital from 6pm to 6am between my 5-day-a-week-classes. Not only was Randy working weekends and taking the same amount of classes, but we had just been told that his dad had cancer and was given less than a year to live. Our lives were out of control, but for some reason, we continued to visit Lacy.

Along the way, we understood that her birth mother still had rights, although she rarely showed up. In the seven months we were visiting Lacy, her biomom showed up four times and never for more that 15 minutes. Each time bringing a different man with her and introducing him as "daddy". We had no guarantee that Lacy would be coming home with us, or if this was all we would ever know of her. Randy seemed to deal with the uncertainty better than I did. He was, and has always been, the most amazing parent! From the start, Randy bonded with Lacy. I need to keep my distance, often just sitting in the corner and watching Lacy play. I wasn't sure if I could survive watching Lacy go home with bioparents that were less that prepared to deal with her issues. I often joked that this whole thing was going to go one of two ways... Lacy would be the most incredible thing that ever happened to us, or God was giving me a testimony that would speak to people who were totally screwed over by life! I was not particularly interested in the second option.

For the second time (a whole diff blog) in my life, I prayed this prayer... "Lord, if this is not your will, take it away right now. I can't go through this only to see it taken away". I waited for it all to end, you see the first time I prayed this prayer everything suddenly went away.

Asking Randy

I went home that afternoon with my contraband picture of Lacy, ready to broach the subject with my husband.



Always preferring the direct approach, I jumped right in... "So I found a kid for us to adopt."



"Oh really" he responded hoping to get me to shut up so he could watch the last five minutes of the SciFi show on TV.



Ignoring his dismissive comment I continued, "No, seriously. There is a little girl at this children's sub acute facility and she needs a home, I think we should check it out. (Lacy is the kid in a very tight shirt about 2/3 of the way through the video, I find it funny that it doesn't exactly depict what the kids really look like there, they look mostly like this and this)

In the end it didn't take much convincing. He agreed to come down to the facility to meet Lacy, with the understanding that final veto power was his. So on the afternoon of April 20, 2007 Randy and I went to meet Lacy. For about 20 minutes we played with her in the multi-purpose room. She was almost two-and-a-half years old.

After our short time together, we returned home. As Randy drove I asked him what he thought.

"Let's do it".

Finding Lacy.

Our story begins more than just a few years ago. Really, our story begins as simply my story.

I have been fascinated with the idea of adoption since I was very young. Around the age of 10 I would lie in my bed at night attempting to find a way to convince my parents to adopt a child. But I could never find just the right angle.

Instead, I decided that when I was married, I would adopt.

Throughout my teens and young-adult years the idea of adoption continued to capture my heart and my mind. When I imagined my future, it always included a child born to another woman.

In 2002, I married Randy. Somewhere along the line I mentioned adoption. His response was, "do you still want to have any of your own?" Sure, why wouldn't I? What I didn't know at the time was that his family had once considered adopting a special needs child, and adoption had been in his heart as well.

I remember looking at adoption websites only a few months after we were married. I deeply believed that we would adopt a child, but I had no clue how it was going to happen. I even called a few agencies for paperwork, just to get the ball rolling. At that time, I began to pray for the child that would join our family. It was 2002.

Unfortunately, we were nowhere near ready for a child. Randy and I were both floundering in life, unable to finish anything we started and having no idea where we were headed. We could barely manage ourselves.

By 2003 I had managed to become a Realtor by day and continued to waitress at night. With my first home sale was underway, I was hopeful that we would begin to find our way in life, but that sale quickly became my worst nightmare. A fellow realtor offered to help me, and ended up stealing the sale from me. Only three months into my new career and I hated sales, I hated real estate, I NEEDED to figure out something better for my life.

While "working" the phones (aka wasting time on the Internet at the front desk) one Sunday morning at the real estate office, I found a career called Respiratory Therapy, and it looked pretty interesting!

I re-enrolled myself back into college for the last time (I had been to a few colleges by this point)... and after a few weeks Randy talked about joining me.

Together we enrolled in all of the same classes (only had to buy one book). Slowly we began to finish the many prerequisites. Anatomy, Physiology, Microbiology, Chemistry... class by class we discovered that we could become more than what we believed we were.

Times were tough. One semester we had car trouble and we had to drop out of our classes so we could work more shifts to get us back on track. Many times we were discouraged, but we pressed forward convinced that respiratory therapy was going to change our lives.

By 2005 I was enrolled in the respiratory program at a local college. Randy would start the year after. Part of the program involved clinical hours. As a student, we were required to work at a hospital twice a week for two years before we could become licensed.

One such clinical rotation was at a local children's sub acute facility. It was a live-in hospital for kids on ventilators. Obviously I did my best to avoid that place like the plague! Who in their right minds wants to see a bunch of kids on ventilators?

By the end of my second year, I had successfully avoided the children's facility. On my second-to-last rotation our clinical director made the decision to swap my position with another student's position. I would spend the next eight weeks working at the children's sub acute facility. Obviously I fought that decision with all I had. My clinical director wouldn't budge. I was stuck.

The facility was everything I expected it to be. Depressing. Only one of the 52 kids was able to communicate effectively. Most of them just drooled and contorted themselves in unrecognizable positions.

Towards the end of my rotation, that one child passed right by me as I walked to my car. She was a two year old little girl with pig-tails sticking straight up off the top of her head that bounced as she walked. She was wearing shoes that were obvious hand-me-downs. They were scuffed, and two sizes too big. Her pants were boys denim shorts that barely stayed on, and her top was an old pajama top that rolled up above her tummy because it was a size too small. But she chatted with her nurse as she bounced right past me.

I had to know who she was. She looked so... so... NORMAL? Why was that kid here?

I began to ask around, and I discovered all of the dirty details of this two-year-old's past. To sum it up, she did not have a mother who would ever be able to care for her, and she needed a home.

Time to ask Randy if she can come home...

Here is a copy of the picture in her file.

Taken with my cell phone.

This is all I had to show Randy.