Princess P~ My 22 Pound Cake!

Here is the story that happens all too often. Kids are removed from their unsafe situation and they have no place to go, so they spend the day at the DSHS offices passed around to whatever social worker is available at that moment. They hang out either at the social worker's desk or in the visit rooms intended for when children are there visiting their bio-parents. Please understand I am not against this practice, in fact I am glad it's not against policy. This is not a line of work where you can predict what will happen, and sometimes you just have to do whatever works in order to keep at risk children safe.

On April 9, 2009 I got the call I had been hoping for... it was a call from Tot's social worker asking us to take a baby girl. Now, Jet was going to be moving any day to live with his 1/2 brother and his 1/2 brothers dad who loves Jet like his own son. We were just waiting for dad's fingerprint results to come back before the big move took place. That being said, when Tot's social worker called me and asked me if we could take a little 5 month old baby. I started asking questions and discovered that baby girl was at the office and J (Tot's social worker) was holding her just like the situation I described above. I of course said "yes" and waited patiently to meet this little girl. Jet had just arrived home from a visit with his bio-mom and I found out that Jet's visit supervisor had seen and held this little bundle. Both J and the visit supervisor mentioned this little girl's super chubby cheeks, but in my wildest dreams I could not have imagined these cheeks! Princess P arrived at my door and I was in shock! Now I had seen chunky babies with chubby cheeks, but wow, I had never seen them like this! That afternoon, after discovering the price of formula, I made Princess P a WIC appointment. It was at this appointment that I discovered that Princess P weighed 22 pounds. Now it's a bit alarming when one this age weighs this much. It can impact their ability to roll over, crawl and walk, not to mention put them at risk for diabetes, but you don't put one this young on a diet. You gave them their regular feedings and then wait for them to grow in to their weight. In the meantime, you kiss yourself some sweet little chubby cheeks!