Our Little Princess

Could we do it again? Were we willing to wear our heart on our sleeve one more time? Sure. That’s why we decided to do it. We knew that we had to support of our family and friends to do this. Remember that lady that I spoke to at my school that had the precious little girl? Well, they had found out that the little girl was going to be in long term custody and they had another foster child with special needs that they were already committed to. She called me and asked if we wanted to meet the little girl and see how it went. So we agreed that Cheyenne would come to our house on Saturday, September 4, 2004 to spend the night and go to church with us. She never went back home. Lisa had told us the following information: she was 17 months old, she was not very friendly with men, she still took a bottle at night, and she would bang her head on her crib during the night. Well, when Lisa got her out of the car, she went straight to John and has had him wrapped around her little pinky ever since. She spent the night, did very well, and never went back to her previous foster home. We all agreed that she had adjusted so well that we not have a transition period of going back and forth between foster homes to adjust. So Lisa brought her clothes to her Sunday night and she was a part of us from then on. Everyone accepted her as part of the family. She was loved beyond belief. Lisa told us that out of the 6 months that she was in their home, she had only had a handful of visits with her biological parents. But very shortly after coming to our house, visits started back up with her biological parents. I could go on forever about that but I will save you the pain. It was horrible. She was terrified of her biological father and didn’t really acknowledge her biological mother. She was wake us up in the night crying, not able to go back to sleep. I have pages and pages and pages of notes just from visits and the behaviors she had as after affects. It was so sad to make her go to these each week, knowing what kind of effect it was going to have on her. We went through countless court dates, Citizen Panel Reviews, phone calls and emails concerning our little girl. Our local DFCS office was going through huge turnovers. We went through 6 case workers. DFCS forgot to file one piece of paper and it almost let Cheyenne go back to her biological parents. Thankfully, the Guardian ad-Litem was keen enough to get that situation under control. Long story short, we went through what seemed like hell on earth until we finally got down to the termination of parental rights hearing.