Why L, L and E have been away...

Hello friends and family,

Those of you who were involved are already familiar with what I'm going to post. If you'd rather skip the details, jump to the next paragraph. :)

One morning, Len woke me up because Emily wouldn't stop crying. He had been incredibly stressed with various things but among them being a new father, finding out he developed diabetes AND high blood pressure, plus multiple rounds of layoffs at work. All compounded, he had a mini-breakdown and tried to hurt Emily. Immediately I took Emily to stay with a neighbor and called our Pastor. Len had scared himself with his actions and stopped himself from doing worse. That morning we, as a family, resolved that Len should go to therapy and begin medication. We made the appointments that day for a doctor and therapist. The doctor likened it to a postpartum event. Len began his treatments immediately. Two weeks later I took Emily to her checkup and told her pediatrician what had happened. She said she was obligated to call DFCS (Dept. of Family & Children Services). DFCS came to do the investigation and ordered us to separate father and daughter until the matter was resolved. That was late July. Since then, Emily and I were living at my mother's home under her EXTREMELY good graces. Sometimes we had very little contact with DFCS and finally we found out who was handling our case and things improved.

This has been especially difficult for Len because he was only allowed to see Emily under supervision of a select group of people. During this time Emily has learned to walk, wave, clap and point. At times he felt like he was missing out on her growing up.

Finally, the Wednesday before Labor Day, we were called in for our Family Team Meeting where the Investigations department decreed that they would NOT open a formal case and only require that we receive 10 hours of parenting counseling. After our first face to face meeting with our counselor, we would be released to be a family again.

Today, Monday, 9/14, Mommy and Emily QUICKLY moved back to join Daddy for their introductory parenting session. Our counselor is very nice and encouraged us to take her words to heart and make this lifestyle change in order to be better parents. Emily enjoyed herself too playing hide-n-seek with the counselor's pen.

Len and I are very excited and happy. We've been so blessed with our family, friends and church family. Not enough thanks can be said for your prayers and support, for your understanding and discretion but thank you. Thank you. We pray for God to bless you as you have blessed us.

Hopefully this explains our general standoffishness in some areas of our lives that fell by the wayside plus the lack of updates here but I do promise that pictures and videos are forthcoming!