Poop rained down on my desk last week. A seal in the floor under the toilet Matt installed in our master bath had gone bad, and waste water was leaking very, very slowly, soaking the floor, then the ceiling of the sun room below, finding the path of least resistance through the boards, wires, and pipes until it dripped each time the toilet flushed, slow and steady through a nail pop in the ceiling down onto my desk.

My desk is an open air filing cabinet. I use the dining room table for whatever actual work I'm desperately trying to complete on a given day. On my desk, I store stacks of paper in precarious, organized piles. Paths wind between the stacks, some several stories tall. A few patches of brown wood still show, like parks preserving green space in a model of a small city. I moved a stack, searching for some vital piece of paper last week, and discovered that someone had spilled a cup of coffee all over my desk, rendering towers of paper soaked and structurally unsound, dripping down the back wall and ruining the baseboard.

Livid, I yelled as I cleaned, banning all children and horse-like dog creatures from entering the room ever again on penalty of all manner of evil consequences. No TV in here! No sitting at Dad's desk! So positive was I that the full mug of coffee spilled had been left by their negligent father on his desk which is adjacent to mine.

After I finished mopping and wiping the coffee—which was so not coffee—and moving the various stacks of paper to my kitchen counter to dry, I probably ate chocolate. I can't remember, but it seems logical, and I have no idea if I washed my hands because why would one wash one's hands after cleaning up coffee?

It still haunts me.

Several days later we became aware of the actual source of the new flood of “coffee” on my desk and I died a little inside, but at least I wore gloves when I cleaned the poop off my desk the second time around.

Matt fixed the toilet. I apologized to the kids, but not the dog because he has been on steroids to help reduce the swelling of a nasty ear infection and he'd peed five times in the house in the intervening week between coffee clean up # 1 and poop leak discovery. Hampton Noodle has the bladder capacity of a medium-sized elephant.

Bleach, we love it.

In the midst of all this liquid turmoil, an important person in our foster son's life, who had been MIA for some weeks, reappeared, and a woman who works for the visitation supervision contractors called me to schedule an immediate visit for the following day. The timing was inconvenient, but not impossible, and I agreed to it a bit grudgingly. The worker met me at work early the next morning. She promised to have him back by 2:30 or to meet me at the kids' school. I continued to grump and stomped around muttering to myself about last minute appointments, and my schedule, which had been impacted not all that much, honestly.

I finally stopped and made myself take a hard look at my emotions and I realized that it wasn't the inconvenience, it was the loss of control. In just five short weeks, with minimal oversight and no visits, I had let myself believe that I understood how things would go for this baby boy, what his story would be. It didn't involve us—not outside of the short term—but I had formed a plan in my head that made me feel comfortable about his future. And that's ridiculous, of course, as I have 1/200th—maybe—of the knowledge needed to choose a path for his life. He has not only a family, but also social workers, lawyers, teams of professionals who specialize in figuring out what the next step is for him.

I have no control, nor should I, except the very fulfilling and happy ability to control that his days are comfortable for a time and filled with love, sleep, milk, sleep, love.

It's nearly impossible to care for a baby like he's my own without starting to think about him that way and consequently to believe that I know what's best for him. We temporarily had the illusion of complete control with our other babies because we got to make all the early decisions. They eat this way, and have this much TV, they go to this school, they do these chores. But the illusion was a flimsy one. There's very little behind the curtain to keep things running but chance and they already show me every day that I can't control their futures either.

So, I turn off the smoke machine, cover the mirrors with bright fabric, and take them all to Starbucks for a chai tea latte (for me). The Great and Powerful Oz is off duty. For now.

Is There Anymommy Out There who loves Stacey as much as we do? Keep on reading!