In 1985 when it became very clear that I was not going to conceive again, Mike and I lucked into an opportunity that was too good to pass up. We are both Christians, and we attended a church which ministered to young families and abused and neglected children. In a state-sanctioned and perfectly legal set-up, our church counseled young teens who had gotten pregnant and didn't want abortions nor the responsibility of raising their babies. And sometimes over-extended mothers who were emotionally ill-equipped to parent came into the sphere of this program. Ashley and Ryan's mother was one such woman. I'll call her Ruby. She was 18 when Ashley was born, and her daughter was Ruby's third baby, all by different fathers. The older children were a boy and a girl who were six and 4 respectively, and by the time Ashley was 18 months old her mother was in crisis. Ruby loved Ashley, but she knew she couldn't care for her. Not only that, but she had just given birth to her fourth child, Ryan, and he was a sickly little boy. In fact, all the kids were being neglected, and she stood a chance of having CPS come in and take all of them away. Ruby had just been evicted from her apartment, and our church was helping her with expenses. But even at her young age, she had the wisdom to realize she just had too many kids. Mike and I had already finished our home study with the county adoption agency. On Sundays I worked in the church nursery for one service, and I'd met Ruby. I even had cared for Ashley and Ryan on several occasions, and they were sweet children, although Ashley seemed very stressed out. And it must have been God's leading because someone told Ruby we wanted to adopt, and she approached me and asked if I wanted her babies. Ashley was almost two, and Ryan was six months old. Eighteen months later Mike and I walked into a courtroom and turned Ashley and Ryan into Steeles. Not that it had been an easy ride. On a couple of occasions Ruby had made noises about making a mistake and wanting her children back, and until the final adoption I lived in fear of having to return them. But in the end Ruby looked at the love we had for them and knew they stood a much better chance with us. I won't say it wasn't traumatic for Ruby- it was. She loved her kids, but she just didn't know what to do. And she ended up missing them so much she left our church, and we drifted apart for several years. In the midst of all the adoption stuff, Jason was growing up. Adding Ashley and Ryan to our household was a little hard on him. He'd been the only grandson on both sides of the family for six years, although Mike's younger sister had just given birth to a son who was Ryan's age. And Ashley was a wild little toddler who took months of extreme patience and understanding before she relaxed enough to allow herself to love us. She'd been tossed about so much by her birthmom's chaotic lifestyle, she didn't trust enough to realize she was in a forever family. I had quit work two years before Ashley and Ryan were placed with us, and when I became a stay-at-home mom, I also took Jason out of daycare. He was struggling as a preschooler and was diagnosed as dyslexic, so I decided to home-school him. However, with two active young ones around the house, the home-schooling was difficult for both Jason and me. Lesson times lost their structure, and the amount of time we spent on out-of-classroom learning situations and field trips dwindled when I had to set up childcare for the babies because they couldn't go with us. Jason wanted to go to public school, and he rebelled against my teaching him. I wouldn't have minded sending him to school, but Mike put his foot down and said no. However, he didn't offer to take up the slack and help me either. Money was tight with our family of five, and we had outgrown our house. Mike and I had purchased a few acres on the outskirts of town right after our marriage, and we decided it was time to build on it. But I wouldn't dream of going back to work- I didn't have or adopt children to put them in childcare while I was at some job. I needed something I could do at home, and two of my friends from church suggested I become a foster parent. They were impressed with the way I was so calm with children, especially during a crisis, and I just loved babies. While foster care doesn't pay much, you are reimbursed for expenses, and it brings in a little something while staying at home and caring for your own kids. I took the training and signed up for small babies. Children passed through our home, usually staying for about six months, and most were in foster care because their birthmoms had tested positive to drugs. Two years passed, and I took additional training to become an emergency shelter worker, a "first-alert" foster parent who takes babies directly from the hospital after their birth. Jason was just turned 10, Ashley was six and Ryan, 4. I was in the mood to adopt again, and through foster parent scuttlebutt I learned that any child who stayed long-term with us and wasn't reclaimed by birth-parents or a member of his or her birth-family could be adopted by the foster parents. It was a dream come true for me. Nicole was born that December, a premature baby whose mother was homeless, a drug user and ambivalent towards her newborn daughter. I received the telephone call from social services when she was three week old, big and strong enough to leave the hospital. She was my first direct-hospital placement, and when I drove to the county general hospital to pick her up, here was this tiny, blond bit of a baby with incredibly clear blue eyes. It was love at first sight.