(no subject)

[charliesmum]

My arms hurt, and at first I couldn't figure out why, but then I remembered. On Friday at the first playoff baseball game, Amber (my friend's 5 year old foster daughter) was playing with this little girl and the girl was trying to show Amber how to do cartwheels. Well, for some reason I decided to see if I could still remember how to do them. Good news, I can. Bad news, I'm too old for cartwheeling around a park, and they kept asking me to 'show them again.'

It was fun though. There is something so joyous in a cartwheel. It's very freeing. Painful, ultimately, but freeing.

Then we played "London Bridge is Falling Down" and Amber thought that was the best game ever. She'd never even heard of it before, which indicates rather clearly the type of life she had before going to my friends'.

Amber's mother, as I may have mentioned, was/is a drug addict, and the three children were woefully neglected. There were feces everywhere, the kids were foraging for food in the trash, and the mother expected five year old Amber to take care of the two-year old twins.

Not sure where the father was in all this, but whenever he did bother to show up, it was only to sexually molest his daughter. He is now trying to get custody of the children, but if there is any justice in this universe at all, and I pray to God there is, he won't get it, and the parental rights will be terminated. The mother is currently in jail.

The thing that really gets me is how both the parents truly expected Amber to be an adult, albeit in different ways. She should have been learning how to play London Bridges, not trying to care for her brother and sister and being used as a sexual thing by her father. Why do people do this? Why are they so stupid?

Anyway, back to more cheerful topics. We spent the day at the pool yesterday and are heading back there today. Amber told her Mom that she wanted "Carol with the pretty brown hair and pink lipstick" to play with her again in the pool. How cute is that?

Oh, I have someone interested in the Hoosier, and I think she'll pay the price I'm asking, so keep your fingers crossed!

Comments

[october31st.livejournal.com]

I have never turned a successful cartwheel in my life. I was too klutzy as a kid, and now I'm... well, still klutzy, and less aerodynamic.

That little girl sounds terribly sweet! I hope all works out well for her. The way she spoke about you reminds me of babysitting for a five-year-old girl, who was naming herself and her sister and friends as princesses of various things. She wound up by naming me "Princess Katie of curly hair and roses." Best name evar :D

[chavvah.livejournal.com]

Aw, that is cute!

I once babysat for a little boy who decided he was going to marry me. He had a ring from a gumball machine and everything. He would get down on one knee and propose: "You're supposed to say yes and cry, but not because you're sad." I think he watched a lot of daytime television. ;)

[chavvah.livejournal.com]

Poor Amber. It makes me so sad to hear about kids like that. I'm glad she's getting good care now, she deserves it.

Because of all of the issues surrounding Jamie and I having kids, our plan is probably to become foster parents (eventually, not now). There are so many kids in the world who need love.

Speaking of kids, this morning one of the senior staff members brought his baby boy Liam to work, and I got to hold him while I chaired the morning meeting (which ensured everyone was paying attention to me). Liam was super chatty, and kept trying to take my glasses off, it was hilarious.

[darkthirty.livejournal.com]

the problem with social services in most countries is that they are run by academics, basically, who have theories about what's good - and will not consider real actual circumstances significant. also, when children are involved, there seems to be a lot of fear - professionally, socially etc. the papers talk about child poverty, say, as if it were separate from poverty, which is unfathomably stupid, and any reporter using this angle should probably be writing coronation street and not news. at any rate, children are used in many ways to help a society define itself, generally in a false way....

[femaelstrom27.livejournal.com]

Poor Amber, that's such a scary thing for her to go through. The situations that abused kids can wind up in make me smack my forehead at the stupidity of foster services in America. I have no idea how they'd let her father get custody of her again, but I know that crap like that can happen and it's just like....what the hell? How can you possibly think she's better off with her dad?

Anyway, "Carol with the pretty brown hair and pink lipstick" is probably the sweetest nickname I've ever heard.

[zambonigirl.livejournal.com]

Poor kid. Yay for cartwheels and London Bridges, though.

All they have to do is go to a doctor and present the evidence. I'm sure that no judge in their right mind would send that child back with that man. I hope.