I am a stay at home mom and in my experience for the last few days I have found a new respect for stay at home moms. ESPECIALLY my mom, she is a foster mom and for the past 4 months she has had 6 full time foster children. 4 of the six my mom has have been with her for many years. The other 2 for the past 4 months. I had the siblings of the 2 that my mom has had for the past few months, they stayed with my since Friday night. They are awesome children, I had 5 children under the age of 6, it was busy here. They were not needy children at all, but there was still all the concern that I would have with my own children. Such as you have had enough juice today, no more candy, eat your vegetables, why aren't you eating today, did you go to the bathroom.... ect. I am sure you get my point. These two children were not eating (which child doesn't like peanut butter and jam?) my mom looked in his mouth and you can see they are rotten, which has resulted in him stuffing food in his mouth cause it hurts him to chew. I was not able to keep them because I am not a registered foster home. This all came about because there was an emergency where a foster home was closed. They asked me to open my home as a foster home but until then the children could not stay with me. So all though my mom is full and they are not paying her for the 2 children I had, she has 8 foster children plus a sibling to the 4 she has had for years, 9 children in all. AMAZING!! as if 9 wasn't enough 2 of them are special needs. The dynamic of the children is really good they all play well.
I have to admit it was a little hard and stressful on me, there is no me time, not even at night because the baby is awake and if he isn't I am holding him, yes I love holding him but again no me time. Also the nightmares of what I know had happened to these children was hard to wake up to. You don't want to think that stuff happens to little children and then when it is on your front door it is hard to deal with. I pray God keep these children safe. Above all I am happy I can be home with my children so something awful doesn't happen to them, I promise when I am complaining about being stressed again I will look back on this last week, and realize it could be so much more stressful.