We soon began to have regular "visitation" with Charlie, for lack of a better word. One sunny Sunday afternoon in late September, Robert, Grace, and I picked up Charlie for a play date that would allow him to meet the whole family. He jumped in the car and seemed at ease and was talkative from the start, as we drove to meet Chris at Wendy's for lunch. He said Wendy's is his favorite. It seems everywhere we go is his favorite, but we do like Wendy's because they support adoption through fostering - although it never meant a whole lot us to us personally until recently.
Supposedly Charlie had already eaten lunch, but he ate again. As Chris remarked a short time later, "He is definitely not shy." We took our lunches to the park, where he ate the whole thing, and again he seemed right at home and comfortable, playing with his kid's meal toy, the soccer ball we brought, and a bit on the playground.
He definitely moved from one thing to another after just moments. This is an observation I am still trying to figure out over 3 months later (because it still happens) - Is this because he is in a new environment, surrounded by new people? Is it because he has ADHD? Or is it just because he is a 7-year-old little boy? When I ask the experts they shrug. Who knows? No one, apparently.
After awhile I picked up Josh from work and brought him back to the park, and it wasn't long before Christianne had to go to work. Charlie seemed particularly happy to meet Josh, maybe because he knew Josh loves Legos and all those fun boy things. We left that park and went to another and played together, all of us, on the swings and slides and various equipment.
Before long it was time to return Charlie to his foster family. The kids really liked him, and he seemed happy and comfortable with us. He often mentioned "next time," and we took that as a good sign.
The end of September included more trauma-informed training, learning some moderately troublesome things about Charlie's biological family (that's about all I can say here), being assigned yet another new caseworker for Charlie, continuing our home study, and generally doing as much as we could to completely change our lives. We discussed a time frame for the transition (goal of Thanksgiving), got frequent updates about how Charlie was doing at home and in school, and worked on decluttering our home from top to bottom, a process that was long over-due but awful to complete. We discussed plans of shifting bedrooms, discipline, emergencies, schedules, and more.
What a whirlwind of a season.
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