He's hard to handle lets drug him.......

Months before and ever since the boys came home Charlie and I did a TON of research about medication, because unfortunately 42 percent of all the kids in care are on 3 or MORE mood altering drugs.

I take issue with this, and I have for a while, but then when it becomes your child that is being put on these drugs it becomes a far more personal conviction. You feel bad when you hear of a family in a car crash but when its your own its very different!

When we first got our full disclosure on the boys we read all of the meds that they were on I was so SICK when I read it. Seriously the selfishness and neglect that went into there diagnosis's is outrageous. For starters our 4yr old at the time was on a blood pressure medication............. It was being used as a trial for anxiety and also he was on an adhd medication the label on the bottle said not to use on children under 5 he had been on it for a year and a half. My 7yr old at the time was on ADHD medication and abilify first of all the adhd meds have been banned in canada because over 10 children have died suddenly on this drug. However the FDA has found no cause to discontinue the drug. The abilfy was prescribed because after raising the dose to 3 times the recommended dose of the adhd meds he was still "acting out" in school so clearly he needed an adult antiphychotic...........

Once the boys moved in we immediately went to work on getting Jason off of his meds and CJ off of the Abilfy, before you freak or criticize we were under the close supervision of a therapist and pediatrician, we had to slowly ween cj off because to just stop a drug like that can actuall cause a person to loose it!

Once off Jason thrived in every way emotionally, mentally, physically in fact he grew so fast we had to buy all new cloths, one side effect of these drugs is they severely stunt your growth. He had NO reason to be on adhd meds in fact over all he is pretty calm for a little boy and the anxiety was not bad enough for an adult blood pressure medication.

CJ poor baby, after taking him off of his adhd meds we saw him dramaticly calm down, not suppose to happen when being taken off an adhd med but it did and that happened because even though he was seeing a psychologist twice a week and being closely monitored the meds were acting as a stimulate so every time they increased it he got even worse and to counter act it he was given the abilify which the side effect of the drugs are anger, aggression, and possibly severe mood swings. Exactly what the foster parents complained about...more could be said however Im holding back......

Im writing this for a couple of reasons one is because Im passionate about getting our foster children off of these drugs, two I wanted to share our experience with this first hand, and three to share that there truly are other resources for our kids that truly do have ADHD. When we started to ween CJ off of his meds we got him a NATURAL supplement call kidalin. Its a life saver!! It has a variety of different herbs that work to together to help with the symptoms of adhd, but on top of that it works on rewiring the brain and fixing the reasons that children have adhd. That's whats so exciting . What people need to realize is that mood altering drugs are only treating symptoms not the problem. This treats the problem and I am telling you it works. We not only were able to get the kid to sit still but he is not as edgy with his attitude! And with Jason most of his anxiety has gone but when he is having some trouble some chamomile or catnip helps a lot too. And of course along with the herbs there is prayer, love guidance, structure, and discipline and all of that working together has made the difference.

I am in NO way saying just take your kids or loved ones off of any medication. Like I said before we were under close supervision of dr.s and we did it slowly. We absolutely know that in some cases medication is the best option for some individuals.

What I am saying is there is a serious problem with our foster care system, school system, and pediatric system when the first choice is to put a child on a sedative instead of first trying to use patience, prayer discipline and love!

Thanksgiving pictures

We had a great thanksgiving this year! We had so much to be thankful for! Our amazing boys and precious niece! Just to name a couple!

Our Adoption Day

I know that it has been forever since my last post and I really want to get better....

For those of you that dont know yet, the boys have had a name change. We originally were only going to change their middle names but CJ "Robert" Talked to us and told us that he really wanted to change his first name to Charlie after his papa, needless to say we were touched and so proud and so after trying out for a while he still wanted to stick with it and so his full name is : Charles James LeBlanc And Jason "Enrique" We told him that we wanted to make his middle name Jason and before we could finish talking he explained it has to be my first name!!! Jason is Charlies middle name and he so wanted to be named after his papa aswell. What was amazing is that we talked with them seperately and right after one another so they had no time to talk about it. So Jasons full name is: Jason David LeBlanc.

Thursday was our Adoption day and it was wonderful!! I simply cannot believe the reliefe that we all felt right away! Its as if I we were holding our breath for 5 months and we could finaly breath again after court.Right after court we took the boys to build a bear work shop we had a great time it was the perfect activity for us to do as a new family! Afterwards we spent some time at home resting and then later that night we had a big party at peter piper pizza with so many of the people that have loved and supported us, the boys had such a fun time! It was awesome!

Since then things have been really good always a little crazy with two energetic boys but over all its been great!

The following is a letter that we wrote to the boys about how we feel about them and what this process as been like!

Our Journey as a family started years and years ago when God started developing a heart for adoption in both poppa and mom. When papa and mom got together we started talking about a family and what we wanted and both of us said we wanted to adopt. So we prayed and prayed for a few years. Mom was always on the computer looking at all the little kids that needed a home and while all of them made us sad and made us want to help, you boys were the only ones that grabbed our hearts. We loved you and wanted you the first time we saw your amazing smiles and beautiful eyes. We HAD to know more about you, and so our journey began. There was so many people that cared about you and what happened to you. They all wanted to make sure that we were the right ones for you so we had a long journey of people getting to know us and making sure that we could do the very important job of being your forever mommy and daddy. One day we got a phone call saying that they think we are the ones for you!!! That was the MOST important call we ever got both mom and papa cried because we were so happy to know that you were going to be our babies. Both papa and mama remember the first time we met you! We were so nervous and scared because we wanted you to like us... We just couldn’t believe how amazing you both were! All we wanted to do that day was to hold you and hug you and kiss you!!! But we had to wait cause you didn’t know us that well yet.

We know that you were scared, mad, and a little excited when you first met us, and it was really hard for papa and mom to see you guys having a hard time we wanted to take away all of your hurts and make it all better!

So we all started our journey as a family, we had visits and getting to know each other time, and then the BIG day came when you came home.....What a day that was It was filled with lots of emotions for all of us. I can tell you that papa and mom did not sleep that night we were to excited to have our boys home.

It has been a long journey for all of us already and our lives together have just started, we have good days and bad days we have had happy times and sad times, we have been through Lots of things that a family gos through in the short time we have been together, we have seen a wedding in our family, we have seen a very important family member pass away and been sad together and we have welcomed in a beautiful baby into our family together. What an amazing blessing to have gone through so much together already. God has truly blessed our little family.

So we are at another really big day today! We are legal today according to the law you are our boys, but I will tell you this in our hearts you have always been ours we have always loved you and we always will!

We will still have good and bad days and we will still have to work hard on being a family but we will always be there for each other and we will always love each other!

You boys are the most precious things in our lives and you have truly blessed our lives more then you can ever know!

We love you both with all of hearts!
Papa and mom

Happy Birthday CJ!

Words cant even describe how much we love this boy and what a blessing he is to our whole family!! He is 8 today and very excited and I have to say while im excited to be celebrating his birthday Im a little sad to. I would almost prefer that they just stay little for while so we can see even more of there child hood! Thats one of the really hard parts of adoption. Is the loss you feel for there past! But even so I am still feeled with joy because of my sons and so thrilled to be celebrating the birth of my son!

Our day out hiking

playing catch up!

Wow! Man has it been a while since I last posted!!!!! During our visitations with boys there was literally no time! And then I became a full time mom and well as all of you moms are guessing theres even less time now!lol What a whirl wind it has been I cant even believe that my babies are home.... seriously it doesn't seem possible or real. Something we have praying about and for since Charlie and I got married is now our reality, and we love it! The last week of visitations were terrible I mean had me at the point of tears every night wondering if this was ever something that we should have started. I know kinda scary considering we were a week out from being full time parents, and don't get me wrong we never stopped loving our sons, but the foster parents were making the entire situation a tad bit unbearable. They got so so jelouse and started undermining everything we were telling the boys and even getting mean with the boys. Honestly I'm not recovered from that week by any means and I am really trying to figure out how I am going to be able to allow visits between them and the boys really I don't know, if you think about it pray for our family in that area because any direction we take with this will have some hard things attached! Ok so now your all caught up on the stress Ill catch you up on the better stuff mostly that is! Starting Friday!!!! The morning still terrible lol I met the foster mom and the boys at a dr. appointment for Robert she had told me that it was just a 30 minute thing turned into a 31/2 hour thing!!!! Not fun it was for Roberts cleft pallet . On top of that she kept trying to act like I wasnt there and had no say knowing that from that day they were my sons...... still trying to get over that to! Any way I took them from there and we went and got ready for a candle ceremony at our home for the boys.All of there social workers, therapists, my family and the Fps were there. It went well. not going to lie there was some tension but we pulled threw. Since then the boys have been settling in quite well! We have had some testing, tough questions, more testing and alot of bonding, cuddling, and teaching! I am amazed at my boys they are totally responding to our love, correction and discipline! The pure joy it brings to my heart to heart to see our sons learn from what we tell them and then put it into practice later on in the day when things come up again. The Lord is blessing! Don't get me wrong Im exhausted, overwhelmed, and sometimes at the end of my rope but Im loving all of it!! Thanks again for all of the prayers and I will be trying to post some pics and updates a little more often!

Sunday went wonderful! The boys were great! We did have alot of testing and a couple of fits but we got through and overall just really enjoyed them! They had some times to really ask questions and they were just little checking in questions but still they were huge and they really touched my heart. Enrique asked if we were going to be their mom and dad and Robert asked if we are really excited and if our family was all really excited and we said of course! And then they excepted it. So many times I wanted to cry and hold them, and just do what a mom does! And while we are still excited about all that today was a little harder. We had a counseling session with Robert and he just totally shut down on curled up in a ball and covered his ears, he just didn't want to except any of it. He had told hi Foster dad in the car that yeah they are cool people but he doesn't feel ready to move he wants to stay at his home! A little hard to hear even though we know its natural and who wouldn't want that in their situation, but still just seeing his little heart hurting and him trying to cover it with defiance and "tough" attitude just broke my heart I wanted so desperately to put him in my arms and love on him and reassure him.

My heart is just a little heavy this evening as I think about our sons and the pain they are going through. We will be in continuous prayer for them and still longing every day to have them home!