remy

After not quite two weeks on our own, we have a new friend -a little boy who I'll blogname "Remy"- who came to stay with us late Saturday night.

We had been camping out as a family in the family room all weekend, and had given the a/c a break from cooling our upper level, but upon learning we'd have a visitor joining us and not knowing how the rest of our night would go, we quick scrambled to crank the air back down so he and I could sleep up in our bedroom.

We got the call at about 9:30 and he arrived at about 10:30... with absolutely nothing.  The DCS worker had to go buy him a carseat... apparently the one that they were given with him was "unusable".
He had been at the hospital all day (arrived there when mom was admitted and was subsequently admitted himself just for a thorough once over) and they sent him off with a disposable bottle of juice, graham crackers, a (pink) newborn soothie/pacifier, and two diapers. He was wearing nothing but a filthy pajama top and a diaper.

So that was it.
We gave him a bath (good thing it was so warm; we just had him sleep in a diaper. our tubs of baby clothes were somewhat inaccessible in the 586°-after-a-108°-day-attic storage!), a bottle of formula (also good thing I hadn't passed on the extra container of Miya's I found in the back of the cupboard last week), and plenty of snuggles before laying him down for the night.
He actually slept well, only whimpering a bit at about 2am, and going back to sleep after a little comforting.

And here we are a family of five again for now.

I know nothing about his case. Nothing. Other than a suggestion of why mom was hospitalized.
Since it was the weekend, the case worker who brought him was an on-call
"investigator", not the case worker who will be handling him.  I still haven't heard from his actual case worker... apparently he was in court meetings all day yesterday and I'm hoping he'll be in touch today.
And I assume DCS offices and courts are closed tomorrow due to the holiday.  So who knows how long it'll take to even begin to get things sorted out and know which way is up with this little one.

In the meantime, we're just trying to love this guy up.

He's a handful.  A cutie, but a handful.

He'll be 11 months old the end of this week.
He crawls, but slowly and unsteadily.  He pulls himself up, but the same.
Judging from the sadly misshapen noggin he's got going on (seriously bad you guys. completely flat in the back & towards one side, causing a bulge on the other side... and the bulging is so bad his face is lopsided and his eyes are out of alignment and one ear is a full half inch below the other) it seems he has probably spent most of his time left in a carseat/swing/crib or such.  If he's sticking around here for any length of time I'm going to do all I can to see about getting him some help for that... a helmet or whatever they can do to help reshape his head.  He's almost a year old and I know this is about when their skulls really start to fuse and harden for good, so he's probably running out of time for (hopefully)less invasive action to try and correct this.

But this kid has a beautiful smile and adorable dimples.
It took us a long while to coax those out of him, but now we know they're there!!

He won't eat from a spoon... he eats fingerfoods, but he has trouble pincer grasping and it's slow and hit or miss on actually ingesting food if he's doing it himself.  He'll eat a ton if I feed him.  But remember how I said he won't eat from a spoon?  Yeah, so I have to finger feed him to really get anything in him.  Last night for example, he ate a whole piece of chicken, a big handful of green beans, and probably a dozen potato fries.  All diced up and almost all put into his mouth a bite at a time by me.  By hand.  And by hand I mean by fingers.  He also ate a whole bowl of cottage cheese... once I ditched the spoon and just scooped it into his mouth with my fingers as best I could. Yes, seriously.  He refuses to let you put a spoon or a fork near his mouth, even when it obviously has the very thing he's been wolfing down, and loving, by hand.  It's not a matter of him wanting the independence and "me do it" of  a typical finger-food baby... because he's more than happy to let you help him get the food in his mouth.  Just not with utensils.  And if you try and "force feed" him with the spoon?  FREAK OUT.

He also freaks out when you put him in the crib.  Angry thrashing.  Not necessarily even a separation thing... he's just crazy angry. But once I can get him calmed and convinced our crib is not an evil place (takes about 30 minutes to get him to lay down quietly) he actually falls asleep quickly and he's been sleeping great and waking up happy.

He's very clingy.
Which, I think in the foster care world, is a good thing.  Rather than detached and not needing or caring about those bonds, you know?
When I hold him he hangs on the whole time... like a bigger hug than I've ever seen from a baby.  Along the lines of hanging on for dear life.  It's nice; the hugs and snuggles make me smile.  As long as I don't think too hard about why he's so desperate for and clinging to that touch from us.

Luckily, he's not too incredibly picky on whether it's me or Ryan who's holding him or immediately next to him.  It's obvious he prefers me (from the get go... much more eager to hang on to the "mommy") but he'll let Ryan take him when needed.  He's clingy though... I've rarely left the room without him otherwise he starts in on his sad little whimper cry.  I don't mind... I want him to feel secure and I want him to bond.  But it does make for long days.
Thankfully, like I said, he's a good (read: long) napper too. :)

We have bought him a few essentials so far... some new pj's and a couple of t's and such (most of our boy summer stuff is too big -24m- or too small -6-12m- for him because he's a solid little tank of a boy for an almost one year old).
I also picked up this little elephant "lovey" for him... he doesn't take a pacifier or have a blankie or anything (that we know of) so I wanted something he could adopt as his own security/comfort thing of sorts.  So far he likes it.
The kids claim it's perfect and like giving a part of each of them... because SJ loves and has elephant everything and Sawyer's special "lovey" is a frog head/blanket thing of the same style. "It's like we're giving him the favorite parts of us!" Savannah said.


This is my favorite part and the real part I hope he gets from us:
the word stitched on this little tag on the bottom...