Goodness, I'm six months in and I still have fears about becoming a foster parent! But that little voice has been there as long as I can remember. Foster care billboards, TV commercials, Facebook posts -- none of that talked me into anything, they simply highlighted something that was already waiting in my heart.

Then one day, I knew it was time to make the call.

Despite the fear, the uncertainty, the second-guessing, that day I simply HAD to call. And wouldn't you know, that's the very day the kid who would become my daughter was taken into foster care.

Share a moment or day in the life of a foster or adoptive parent:

My daughter is in my room at 2 p.m. while I'm working from home. She's still in her pajamas, stretched out across the foot of my bed, playing with the cat. "Do you think we can get a new TV soon? I want to watch Disney+ in my room."

My daughter is in my room at 12 a.m. while I'm trying to sleep. She's not even the littlest bit sleepy, cross-legged on the bench by the window, looking at her phone. "What if we round up all our change and put that into savings? We could save for a big trip by, say, eighteen months from now, don't you think? We'll just need to get permission from the agency. Do you think they'll let us go out of the country, or do we need to pick someplace in the US?"

My daughter is in my room at 11 a.m., folded up in my desk chair, frowning fiercely into a computer screen. "I hate this," she says for the hundredth time. "I don't see why I have to do all this stupid stuff. I already did this at my old school. It's for babies. I don't need to do all this stupid stuff, I just want to be grown up already and have a job! God! I HATE THIS!" She slams back to her own room, schoolwork rejected again. I don't know what we're going to do about grades.

My daughter is in my room at 4 p.m., combing hot pink styling wax through my hair. It came in a box of beauty supplies and she decided it would be best served on my short hair rather than her long, gorgeous locks. Laughing, she smears a gob of pink wax down my forehead. I rescue a palmful and paint her forearm pink, and she shrieks with laughter, wielding the comb like a hot-pink weapon. "Stay back or your glasses get it!"

My daughter is in my room at 5 a.m., fresh from a nightmare. "Sarah," she sobs. "I don't want to die. Please don't let me die." I try to comfort her and she stiffens, rejecting the arm around her shoulders. "No, it's okay. I'm okay. Go back to sleep, I shouldn't have woken you." She goes back to her room with her head down in shame.

I follow my daughter to her room at 5:05 a.m., sit on the edge of her bed, and talk about absolutely nothing. Disney movies and travel plans and schoolwork and beauty products and anything else I can think of. I can't hold her like I could if she were small. And I can't provide physical comfort, because touch, for her, is the opposite of comforting. But I can be here, relentlessly, until the shadows recede to the corner of the room and her eyes finally, finally close. This is life with my daughter.