Two years later, the same thing happened with Andrew. I wasn't looking to adopt another baby, but he was such a tiny, sick little thing. Andrew was 13 weeks early, born with more medical challenges than I'd ever heard of and was not expected to live. He stayed with us for two months as short-term placement, and when I was ready for him to move on, Mike had a fit. Luckily for all, God had other plans. The long-term foster mother I gave Andrew to called me the day after the move and said she couldn't stand his constant crying. Like all-day, all-night screaming. So I drove back over to her house, and as soon as he heard my voice, Andrew stopped crying and went to sleep. Andrew had three surgeries before his first birthday, but they fixed whatever was wrong with him, and he thrived. He became Daddy's little midget, and Mike even took him to work every once in awhile. Of course, he wormed his way into our hearts, and when the time came we decided to keep him. Child #5. It would be a lie to say that my relationship with Mike was all rosy and lovey-dovey at this time. I was majorly stressed out. I loved being a mom, and I was still doing short-term foster care and home-schooling. But evermore I was feeling the strain of being pulled in too many directions at one time. Jason was twelve, and he wanted to go to middle school like his friends did. He did not get along with Ashley who was 8 years old, and the two fought so much I was afraid to leave them alone for a minute for fear they'd kill each other. In fact Jason got into a whopping amount of trouble the summer of 1992 when he was fooling around with a pellet gun of Mike's and accidentally shot at her. The pellet didn't hit Ashley, but it chipped a piece of stucco from the corner of our house which struck her in the eye. There was no permanent damage, but she swore up and down that he did it on purpose. Jason was hysterical, and when two months later he was responsible for Ryan breaking his arm on the swingset, we wondered if there was some pathological anger building up inside our oldest. But no, it turned out to be just unfortunate accidents which would have some mild but definite consequences down the road. Ashley seemed to like home-schooling up to a point. She was a social butterfly who wanted to be like other girls, and I have to admit that I treated her with too much independence and maturity when Ryan started kindergarten at 5. And Ryan, who was hyperactive, was a handful in school. I felt like I was going crazy. Mike and his step-dad did not always see eye to eye on the business, and when Andrew was born he set out on his own in a new line of work. Mike had always liked repairing cars, and with three friends, they opened a garage. This was a huge time and money investment, and with Mike coming home late at night and sometimes spending all weekend at work, there was no "we" time. Our marriage suffered as I lost myself in the family and tending to babies, and he wasn't here to throw softballs with his boys or play peek-aboo with the babies. And then 1994 hit us and Ruby reentered our lives. I was spending less time out of necessity as a foster parent- I couldn't do everything, and I was seeing the possibility of the family suffering. Ashley wanted to take ballet lessons, Jason was into piano and Ryan was playing softball. The driving played havoc with babies' nap schedules and doctor visits, and what was I going to sacrifice? My children or doing foster care? But in September in '94, CPS contacted me. It seems that Ruby was involved in the dependency system, and her sixth child (she'd had two more since Ryan's birth) was a ward of the state. Now she was pregnant again, and like she had nine years before, she realized she couldn't take care of this new baby. Ruby had found out that I was foster parenting, and she notified her social worker that she was willing to relinquish her soon-to-be born baby if we were willing to adopt. Seeing the definite advantages of giving into Ruby's wishes vs. spending the thousands of dollars on foster care and court costs, and the social good of raising up Ashley and Ryan with a younger half-sibling, the caseworker phoned me. What could I say? I'd seen the trauma caused by ripping children apart, with siblings adopted out to different families. In fact, our daughter Nicole was one of five kids, all in separate homes, some in which the adoptive parents didn't want their particular child to have contact with the others. So after talking to Mike and the rest of our families, we came to the conclusion that God wanted us to grow our family one more, final, time. Compromise was the order of the day, and I stood up for myself and made some decisions. The three oldest would go to public school. And once the adoption of this new baby was finalized, I didn't intend to take in any more foster children. Another one of the conditions for the adoption was that I set Mike down and told him that he had to spend more time with the family. I couldn't do everything, and enough was enough. Despite CPS intervention, Ruby had little prenatal care. And the following March, surprise-surprise! Instead of one baby, Ruby had fraternal twins, a girl and boy. She named them Emily and Eric and handed them over to me. I was actually in the delivery room at their births, and like with Nicole and Andrew, they felt like my own children almost from the start. I was content. And then disaster struck which was certainly one of those silver-lined clouds. Well, sort of. Mike confided that he had some bad news to tell me. The garage was not making enough money, and he and his buddies were going to have to close it. I think we lost something like $20,000 in the venture, but hey, it's only money. In the meantime, Mike's step-dad, Cal, had gotten hurt falling off a roof of a house he was building, and he wanted Mike to come back into the business as a partner. And in a few years, Mike would be set up to take over the construction company when Cal retired so he and Mike's mom, Luanne, could travel. ****TTFN, Julie