Charlie spent a lot of time with Shane and Jenny when he was really young. Kallie did too, but not nearly as much. When Shane had been cleared to foster and the house had been inspected and passed, they started taking Charlie between trial periods for each of the kids they had stay with them for a week or so. We’d figured Charlie might be confused by the seemingly constant influx of kids that came and went, but he really didn’t seem to care very much. He’d sleep on the couch and play with his toys while Shane and Jenny added a room onto the back of the house. He never seemed to need much supervision anyway and got on just fine by himself. Sometimes he’d bring Shane cans of soda from the fridge while she was working, and he’d grin at her when she took them. We saw that a few times and thought it was the cutest thing in the world, and Jenny said he did that whenever he was over there.

He was almost two when Shane and Jenny took him and Kallie for Mother’s Day as a present to us. Kallie woke us up by bringing in plates of frozen waffles that she’d toasted herself, and Charlie came toddling in behind her with the plastic bottle of syrup. They had everything on the nightstand by the time Alice actually woke up enough  to realize what was going on, and as soon as she did she started to freak out because she had no idea how Charlie had gotten out of his crib and assumed that Kallie had somehow gotten him out. She was in the process of yelling at the poor kid when Jenny rushed in from the kitchen and told us that she and Shane had come over to take them and had seen that they were awake

“It was supposed to be a surprise,” she shrugged, and Alice hugged Kallie and told her she was sorry for yelling.

It was a really good day, although we didn’t do a whole lot and missed the kids by early afternoon. So we decided to go over to Shane and Jenny’s instead of spending the day alone, which was obviously the opposite of what the intention had been, but we didn’t really care. We spent the day with our children and our friends and it was much better than spending it alone. Late that afternoon we all migrated over to Bette and Tina’s, where Angelica was home for a long weekend. Before long Helena and Kit had joined us too, and we had a nice dinner out on the patio.