After adopting Ezra in 2015 we felt whole and complete as a family. Two kids is a great number. I loved the work of being foster parents though and we were pretty alright at it so we decided we’d keep going and keep helping. We fostered a few littles after Ezra’s case and each time a child left to go home or to extended family I felt like “Bless those little souls, I’m glad we could help……but going back to two kids is SO much easier than three.” Two felt easy. Something happens when you add a third that makes it go from “This parenting thing is rad” to “We’ve been invaded. There are cute, insane small people everywhere.” So we were feeling pretty good at two.
Then we got the call for “Bonus Buddy.”
Bonus Buddy had the same caseworker who’d been on Ezra’s case, we’ll call her “May”, she comes back later in our story. Bonus Buddy was the happiest little guy, a sweet baby full of smiles. I quickly came to love both him and his biological parents. His bio mom reminded me a lot of me if I hadn’t been lucky enough to have the right people in my life. I later found out she’d had the same thought about me when she said during a team meeting, “I feel like you’re me if I had my sh*t together.”
Everything was going along pretty normally with their case until one day, it wasn’t. His case was ending. I was shocked. Daniel and I don’t talk about adoption at all during a case, we stay entirely focused on loving the child and parents and supporting the child going home. We had never discussed this little boy staying permanently. Just like that though, in a matter of a day, instead of going back home he was for sure going to be adopted.
His biological parents asked if we could be the ones to adopt him. I wanted to be able to do this for him and for his bio parents, I loved all of them. I loved this kid and he had this beautiful, joyful little soul. But Daniel and I both somehow knew we were only meant to be part of the beginning of his story. I talked with May and told her Daniel and I just couldn’t wrap our heads and hearts around this little boy staying. He was great, there was nothing about him that we didn’t want to stay, we just knew we weren’t his forever parents. I told her we’d give it more time for that feeling to change if she wanted but that we were both pretty confident in the decision. DCFS agreed he would stay with us just until they could find his new parents.
I also told May about this couple we knew who wanted to see if they could adopt Bonus Buddy. We didn’t know them super well but we were friends and they’d taken care of this little guy for us. For some inexplicable reason the wife felt this strong draw toward little Bonus Buddy. The first time she saw me walk in a room with him she instantly felt a connection. She later told me she felt a little more confident approaching me about it because she knew I was kind of weird and awkward too so I’d probably just roll with the weirdness of what she was telling me (she was right). I’m all for following your gut no matter how strange it seems but I had no explanation for this friend as to why she felt connected to this little boy. I didn’t doubt at all how she felt but they weren’t foster parents, there was no way they could possibly adopt him from foster care. It was weird, I saw no reason in it, but I’d followed weirder feelings in weirder ways to great results and wasn’t about to discount it. They of course weren’t able to adopt him and we all left the situation a little perplexed why she’d felt a connection to him. (They come back into our story a couple years later)
After a search and a transition “Bonus Buddy” went to his forever family. When the caseworker was looking for his family I was terrified he’d go to someone awful, the disingenuous kind of people who try to say all the “right things” to get through the door but don’t mean to follow through. I was scared he’d disappear and I’d wonder for the rest of my life if he was loved and okay. After meeting them I remember sitting in a meeting feeling hopeful but so scared I couldn’t trust them. They said what they could to reassure me and I left thinking they seemed so…cool? They are cool. His parents are so fantastic. Watching him transition to his family I was able to see how genuine and absolutely perfect for him they were. All through his transition they did everything they possibly could to make it an easy and smooth transition for him and for our family. Giving him to his parents and big brother restored some of my faith and a smidge of my trust in people. They were far more concerned with helping us through him leaving than they needed to be and I was so grateful for their compassion. What could’ve been an incredibly traumatic separation was instead this really peaceful transition and it’s all because of the people his parents are. This was in 2017 and now our little buddy has grown into an awesome almost-4-year-old, living the good life with his awesome parents and siblings.
When the dust settled I started thinking about what would be next for us. The house felt a little empty. Not like he was missing from our family, but like there was a space ready that hadn’t been there before. We were definitely going to continue fostering (3 wasn’t SO bad), but I swore we were done saying yes to newborns (they’re exhausting). Then I got this familiar feeling in my bones. I’d had this feeling a few days before we got the call for Ezra…
“Daniel…I feel like there’s a girl coming to our family.”
Jess Building Joy 
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