our little blessing of 2010...

no fear when it came to horses

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One evening, we ask Rain our daughter, to go and borrow some sugar from our neighbour, who is the welfare officer of Joubertina, our closest town. After a while she returned in a state of excitement and asked us if we could please come and look at the cutest little boy next door. Tossie, our neighbour, had told Rain that she needed to find a tempory foster home for him, as his mother was not in a good space and asked if Tossie could find a home for him for 3 months..

After a busy morning

My wife and myself looked at each other and after a few seconds of, "should we, shouldn't we", we decided to go check the little chap out. Well.... I was not prepared for what greeted us. There was this cute, fragile little blond boy of 17 months, sitting silently in his pram, looking completely lost and vunerable and so obviously in need of some love and stability, that I was instantly filled with emotion and holding back the tears, I said to Rae that we should take him and then I turned around and walked out the door to have a good sob...

Did not like his hands dirty

For three days, he was a silent, meek little chap that ate well, slept well and much to our concern, did not "poo", no matter what we fed him to urge it on. Then suddenly on the 4th day, all hell broke loose and loose it was! From then on, there were no more problems in that department! Initially he showed obvious signs of a traumatised upbringing but as the weeks went by, he soon started changing into a happy, noisy little boy with a great sense of humour and an appetite second to none.
Our lives obviously had to adjust enormously, as we had totally forgotten what is was like to have a toddler around again. Our farmhouse, for starters, was definitely not toddler-friendly and breakables had to get put away, as well as the lovely open shelving in the kitchen had to get closed up! Occasional sleeping-in and Sunday afternoon siesta's became a thing of the past and night times became something to look forward to, as he literally begged you at 7pm sharp, for his "botty" and he would go down without a peep till 6am the next morning. His speech also developed in leaps and bounds, his first clear word being "Star", one of our dogs names. In the morning, after he had just woken up, you would be greeted with a cute little exclamation of " hi!" and a broad grin... and so our day with Luaan would start, with a big smile and all the enthusiam he could muster.

Loved collecting horse poo

We also had the amazing experience of having a little boy around, having only ever raised three girls and wow, is it different! Rae was convinced he had behavioural problems, as he tended to bash everything, take everything apart, tried to jump off tables, etc, but  friends of ours with sons, assured us that this was all totally normal! He constantly had a bruise of varying shades of blue, somewhere on his forehead!
His mother would still see him about once every two weeks and that experience taught us the MOST important lesson of all. Even though his life with her, so far, had been a tough one and he'd been with us a full month already before she was allowed her first visit, he was overjoyed to see her and cried bitterly when she left. It was so difficult to witness this but it taught us the valuable lesson of conditional love...
 In the end he stayed with us for six months, with still no sign of his mother trying to improve her situation, if anything her situation deteriated and he seemed to react less and less each time she visited.
Luaan is now with permanent foster-parents, who adore him and are really hoping to be able to adopt him eventually. Luckily for us, we have become friends with them, sharing the wonderful bond of Luaan. They make sure we get to still see him regularly, we will always be part of his life and have the role of his extended family and having him for holidays, weekends, etc, and when his new "mom and dad" need a much deserved weekend off!