'God makes a home for the lonely...'
We just got back from a long wknd in Foley to introduce Princess Petunia to my parents and a couple of aunts & uncle. :-) Good times. LONG car ride! Just for fun, Jared and I started keeping a count of the "are we there yets" and the "i have to go pottys" and the "he's touching mes."
We're finding that the longer PP is with us and the more memories we make with her, the less "weird" this foster parenting thing seems. I'm not saying that it feels as though PP has always been with us, because it doesn't. It's just that we feel more and more like we are doing exactly what God had planned for our family to be doing. It is a sweet place.
Anyway, the weekend was filled with outings, from Mickey Mouse pancakes at the Foley Coffee Shop to watching rescue dogs perform frisbee tricks at the Hot Air Balloon Festival. The girls got our toes done....PP chose my color for me, and she & Rach made sure that their toes matched. We took PP to the beach on Sunday morning. She says that she had been once before when she was a baby, but as it is still hard sometimes to distinguish her truths from her imaginings [more on this later], I kind of think that this was her first trip. She had a blast until a wave knocked her over filling her swim suit and mouth with sand. She was all done after that! She loved swimming in the pool.
I was thinking during that LONG car ride about how much I am impressed by Princess Petunia's ability to just roll with her life. I can't imagine how I would've responded as a child, or even now as an adult, to being taken from my home and placed in a new place with perfect strangers. Tomorrow will mark the end of her 3rd week with us, and she continues to just be a joyful, energetic little girl. She's definitely not perfect, and we are continually working through challenges little by little. But the strength she has in her little heart is just remarkable.
A couple of Princess Petunia's challenges that you can be in prayer for along with us:
*We are really trying to help her tell the truth all the time. We've noticed a tendency in her to 'tell stories' about things that don't matter, usually when the kids are talking about things they've done or places they've been. She'll also lie to us some when she thinks she's going to be in trouble. It's getting better....she'll usually eventually fess up to us. But we want her to trust us and her place in our family enough to tell the truth the first time and also to not feel the need to make up stories to match the ones that the other kids tell.
*We're also working on manners....mainly things that are appropriate to say or talk about and things that are not. This area is definitely not her fault, but it can be a challenge to correct her without making her feel ashamed. She has started to pick up on things that would be inappropriate and will whisper them to me or Jared instead of talking about them right out loud. It just makes me sad to see how many things she knows about that a little 7 yr old has no business even being heard mentioned.
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