It's been a long time. Nothing much has changed here. Our children are still gone, with no reunification in sight.

For a while all of this actually started getting easier. The once a week for an hour visits, the near constant services, going to be every night without any little, loving night-night kisses. I started seeing a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. I don't know what changed and took it back to being hard as hell. Maybe it was the fact that the relative that our children are staying with stopped communicating with us. So now we don't know what's going on with them. We don't know how they are or what they're up to (big change after knowing everything about them). We don't know when they're ill or injured. We don't know anything. They might as well be with strangers for all we know about them right now. At this point, after hearing and learning some things, I don't even trust that they're safe anymore. But what do I do? As far as CPS is concerned, our relatives are wonderful people. So they passed the background check. So what?

Maybe it's gotten tougher because so much time has passed with no clear end in sight and every time we head into court, there's another obstacle placed in our way.

Maybe it's gotten tougher because every day that passes is one more day I've missed with my babies.

The house is so quiet now. It shouldn't be. It's so tidy now. It shouldn't be. Stuffed toys that were never put down now have gathered so much dust that you can't even tell what color they were meant to be.

This stinks.