Kid update

Couple of bathtub pictures not sure why I thought this was so funny but Sean had the medicine cup in his mouth and he looked like some sort of sea creature or a dental experiment gone bad.

Don bought him a plastic magnifying glass so he was checking out the sea life in the tub. Ethan told us at dinner tonight that you can't swim in a pond because there are sharks in there. Sean said "sharks don't live in ponds, they live in the ocean."


 My sister asked what was going on with Sean and his sisters so I decided I'd better do an update.

Jenny sent me an email. (I can send emails to the jail via a service and when I send her an email they give her a piece of paper that she writes me a letter on then they email it to my "jail inmate account." Nice) Ryan doesn't want to give the girls up without a fight because it's like he's giving up so he wants to go to trial. Apparently his idea of a fight is three days of everyone saying what a lousy person he is and his state paid attorney calling everyone a liar. Personally, that doesn't sound like a good time to me. If he wanted to fight perhaps he could have stayed sober, off of drugs, out of jail, gotten a job and a place to live. That's not how he fights. Ryan even told me his attorney said it was "an uphill battle."

Jenny is now vacillating on if she should "fight".  Jenny asked me if I think she should go to "trail." I haven't answered but will tell her while it's her choice if I was her I would rather tell the kids I had made some really bad decisions and rather than drag them down with me I loved them enough to make sure they would have a good life. But, hey if you want to sit in front of a DCFS judge in hand cuffs and shackles for three days and explain how you've turned your life around and should have your kids, have at it!

I sent Jenny a bunch of jail jokes in my last email and she told me "the girls on the pod really liked them." Nice to know I can bring a little humor into life on the pod. Jenny told me there was drama on her pod but didn't tell me what. When I said that to Ryan he said that Jenny had gotten in an argument with another inmate. Impressive.

Ryan wanted to see Sean today and actually showed up! We met him at Gateway in the food court. I felt kind of bad for him he had walked from where ever he is staying. I asked if he'd gotten Jenny's stuff packed up and he said it was in the back of his dad's truck. I asked what he was doing and he said working now and then and trying to go to school at SLCC in June, like Jenny. (Yep she's at the jail campus.) Four years I've known him and his life is no better and I don't see it ever changing.  We were going to see a movie at the Planetarium so he walked over there with us and he and Sean hung out for an hour before the movie. At first Sean wouldn't talk to him and I told Ryan "he's nervous" and Ryan said "so am I." Sean warmed up pretty quick and was talking up a storm but Ryan never looked comfortable. Don and I sat down in the lobby and tried to give them some time alone but it was obvious Ryan couldn't wait to get out of there. When we told him it was time for us to go to the movie he looked relieved.

We had our homestudy today. We had to have it done before Catherine can set a hearing date. There's an irony to someone coming into our home, looking at our financials, looking in our cubboards, wanting to know about health insurance, life, dental, how we were raised, our criminal background, health history, and requiring letters of reference from five people who know us. Please stranger who we are paying $600 to, are we good enough to parent the child we've had for 4 years? Just saying! He was a nice guy. He said he couldn't figure out why he got a criminal background on Aric Cramer. He knows my ex and I explained that it is Aric Cramer Junior he got the background check on. Don thought we should pay $600 and have him do a homestudy on Ryan. Oh wait, just pull up the newspaper article where the police described his home as deplorable. That's a pretty quick study.