Wednesdays with Todd

For several years, Todd worked from home on Wednesdays and Derrick and I would do our school work around him and would inevitably distract him with some information he would find fascinating. I have to tell you, I’ve learned so much more teaching Derrick these past ten years than I ever really learned in school. There are so many things that get glossed over, left out or misrepresented when you’re in a classroom full of fidgety kids who want nothing more than to be anywhere else but there and you’re under time constraints to teach them everything on your lesson plan in the assigned 50 minutes per day. Learning at home has provided us with the opportunity to really explore subjects and dig deep into events and lives of historical figures that have interested us along the way.

So, it was inevitable that on Wednesdays Todd would pick up on some bit of trivia or overhear some new scientific development that would grab his attention and he would join our discussion, at least for a little while.

On this particular Wednesday, August 18, 2010, Todd was in the kitchen trying hard to concentrate on his actual work and not listen in on the discussion Derrick and I were having in the living room. That was going pretty well until his phone rang and it was DCS wanting to know if we would accept a placement. He quickly brought me the phone and I got all the details from the worker and relayed them to him and Derrick.

There were two little girls, 3 and 4, about to be 4 and 5, who were sisters and had been removed from their home just that day. This would be their first time in custody, so there was very little known about them at the time. The three of us talked it over and decided that having a couple of little girls in the house would be a nice change and while they were younger than what we were expecting, having been told that because we were open to teenagers that’s who we’d be getting calls about, we could handle a couple of preschoolers for a little while. We told DCS yes and they said that they would call us back soon and let us know when they would be bringing them to our home. We were all on pins and needles, anxiously awaiting the phone call telling us our house guests would be arriving soon!

A few hours later, DCS called back and told us that they had just discovered that there were two more girls in the home, but these were teenagers. They were all somehow related and they wanted to keep them together. Would we be willing to take in all four of them? Again, the three of us talked it over and decided we would be willing to take them all after Derrick declared, “That’s a lot of estrogen, but let’s do it!” I did ask the placement coordinator if they remembered that they had originally told us they would place no more than two foster children in our home, but that if they were good with it, we were more than willing to take them. They assured me they were FINE with it and that there was a supervisor standing right there to approve the exception request.

It was official! We were soon to be a real foster family!!  Wednesdays at home would never be the same again.