We agreed to foster one child for a few days, but when Liam arrived with his little sister Mia\u2014headed to a separate home hours away\u2014we couldn\u2019t let them be split. We made space with two mattresses on the floor so they could stay together. At first, they barely spoke, but soon Liam was helping at dinner and Mia was drawing pictures of us as a family.<\/p>\n
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When the agency found a long-term placement, we realized we didn\u2019t want them to go. We rearranged our lives, weathered the hard moments, and embraced the joy that began to grow. Six months later, their mother, in recovery, chose to leave them where they felt safe.<\/p>\n
We adopted them. Liam began calling Mark \u201cDad,\u201d and Mia called me \u201cMom.\u201d The day the judge finalized it, Liam whispered, \u201cSo we\u2019re never leaving?\u201d I told him, \u201cNever.\u201d<\/p>\n
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They\u2019re teenagers now\u2014messy, loud, and still inseparable. We thought we had space for one, but love made room for two, and in choosing them, they transformed our lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We agreed to foster one child for a few days, but when Liam arrived with his little sister Mia\u2014headed to a separate home hours away\u2014we couldn\u2019t let them be split. We made space with two mattresses on the floor so they could stay together. At first, they barely spoke, but soon Liam was helping at…<\/p>\n
Read More “Keeping Them Together”<\/span> »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13342,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13341"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13344,"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13341\/revisions\/13344"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/albotips.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}