Emotional Empty

Remember here when the judge said the boys would go home?  That was 12 days ago.  A week prior to that court date (19 days ago) was when we started hearing rumors that the boys would go home.  And that is when we began the craziest emotional roller coaster of foster care yet.

I thought it would be simple once the judge ordered that the boys should move home.  Rookie mistake. We have had 6 moving dates up to this point.  And that doesn't include the always present "or some other day".  Ugh!  This means for practically the last three weeks we have been treating every moment as our last.  Because, well, it could have been.  Can you say emotionally draining?  I was trying to make every Friday Family Fun day/weekend/meal/bathtime special.  So the boys have eaten their fair share of pizza, gotten crazy amounts of snuggles and were spoiled with a few treats aka already purchased Christmas presents. 

But all of this constant worry that this moment, no this moment is their last has drained all of my emotion.  I am now numb to it all.  I have been officially on emotional empty.  But I don't necessarily think it is a bad thing.

We found out a few hours ago that we are in the last 36 hours- and that is a lot of notice.  Previously, they were estimating giving us about 2 hours notice.  Confused?  We are too!  But no one ever said how the foster care system works has to make sense.

I think being on emotional empty might be good so that I don't add to the boys Artichoke's emotions.  Zucchini has always been Mr. Easy Going, unless you try to eat his food or take off his shoes.  So he is completely unfazed by any of our discussions with him.  Artichoke is crazy smart and therefore figured out "something" was going on.  Then last Thursday he was told how hard his parents were working and that he'd move home soon.  Well the wheels have been turning ever since.  So when we told him tonight that tomorrow was his last day at this school- complete heart wrenching meltdown.  Leaving us to have the most difficult conversation I've ever had in my life. 

Emotional empty was actually a huge benefit tonight.  Because the last thing that conversation needed was more tears.  It needed someone who was sympathetic but could also try to make sense out of all of these changes- without giving any specific details.  That, of course, is the social worker's job tomorrow night.  Good luck with that!

So wish us luck in our last 36 hours.  This part of foster-mom-ing really sucks!