When a scuffle breaks out in the back end of Dawn Moss’ house, she only disappears a moment before the screeches of children subside and she returns to the living room with a grin on her face.

“One in the corner, six more to go,” she says with a laugh. “Sometimes, you’ve just got to put somebody in the corner.”

At her feet, a small child in a red onesie stands on his toes with his fingers on the ground and his butt in the air, debating whether he wants to walk or climb up the slide attached to a small playhouse in the corner.

Dawn goes back to the corner, where a social worker resumes telling her about the child’s situation. Dawn and her husband, David Moss, will keep the toddler for a couple of days until a more permanent living arrangement can be made.

During his temporary stay, the toddler will bring the number of foster children living with the Moss family to five. Two other children, their biological daughter Braedyn, 5, and their recently adopted son, Emmett, 2, also live in the four-bedroom house.

With the newest temporary addition, the ages of the children in the house will be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5 and 6.

An ever-changing family

Two years ago, David and Dawn did not foresee the blessed pandemonium their lives would become when they signed up to be a part of the foster parenting system through the State of Louisiana.

They had two older daughters, Emily and Erin, from previous marriages, and the then-3-year-old Braedyn. Even though Braedyn had siblings, the other girls were much older, and the Mosses didn’t want her growing up feeling like she didn’t have companionship at home.

They also felt a sense of moral conviction to reach out and help society’s most vulnerable.

“We got started with the foster system because we didn’t want Braedyn to feel like she was an only child,” David said. “But we are also Christians, and there is this verse in the Bible — James 1:27 — that says the purest form of religion is taking care of the widows and orphans.”

They met the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Service’s requirements to be foster parents, and after completing 21 hours of training and a home study process, they were ready to take that first step.

After careful, prayerful consideration, the Mosses said they would like to take in children ages 2 to 6.

That’s when they met Emmett.

“The first time they called us, Emmett was 2 weeks old,” David said.

“Because Dawn was a nurse, they thought he could stay with us.”

When they got to the hospital, the baby weighed four-and-a-half pounds. His birth weight had been 3-pounds, 9-ounces; he was a full-term baby who hadn’t been able to gain as much weight as he needed because his mother was anorexic.

Emmett had heart, kidney and respiratory failure when he was born, and he was taken into state custody after his biological mother tried to take him off the feeding tube.

But with a lot of love and a lot of feeding — every two hours — Emmett grew, and with that growth outgrew his health problems.

After more than a year with Emmett in their home, the Mosses felt like they had more to give, and told DCFS they were willing to take in more.

They’ve had seven more children come through their home in that time, some for stays as short as two weeks, some for 10 months. The children’s races and backgrounds have varied, but they’ve all been in need.

“We even had one little boy who stayed with us who had cerebral palsy,” Dawn said. “We really had to ask ourselves, how can we take in these so-called ‘normal’ kids and not take him?”

Most of the younger children adapt to the foster environment very quickly, David said, while the older children might cry for the first couple of nights.

“The weird thing is that within two or three days, all of them are calling us Mama and Daddy,” Dawn said.

But the Mosses are aware that they’re not mama and daddy, and part of their job is to work with biological parents and grandparents to help effect a reunion of the temporarily-split apart families if possible.

“We have to take care of these kids whose parents haven’t taken care of them, but we can’t judge the parents,” Dawn said. “We have to do our part to encourage reunification. It has been a real ministry opportunity in a lot of ways.

“Sometimes when these kids come to you, even (the state) can’t tell you everything about their history and what they’re coming from.”

In the case of Emmett’s family, David and Dawn drove weekly to Alexandria to meet with his biological mother — who sometimes failed to show up at the meetings — so she could take supervised parenting classes with him.

When that didn’t work out, the state looked to his biological grandparents. At one point, the Mosses were told to pack Emmett’s things and bring him to be handed over to the family.

After nearly two years of having raised him from a newborn, it was a difficult day. Like the other foster children, Emmett had called them “Mama” and “Daddy,” but they were the only ones he’d ever really known.

“On the drive over, I turned and said to Dawn, ‘Maybe it was God’s plan to get him strong enough to go,’” David said. “She looked at me and said, ‘I am praying for a miracle,’ and by the time we got to that meeting, things had changed.”

Emmett’s biological grandparents never claimed custody, and when the court ruled he could be adopted, David and Dawn stepped in and did it. The adoption was finalized April 29.

“When we finalized the process, my pastor’s wife went with me that day, and when it was done she was crying and looked over at me and said, ‘You aren’t crying?’” Dawn said. “I told her, ‘I have cried for two years. This is the happiest day of my life.’”

Family life plus five

Most mornings at the Moss home are — in Dawn’s words — “a blur of clothes.”

School breakfasts help ease the morning preparations, and David and Dawn split up the school-age kids into younger and older groups, taking turns making sure they get ready.

In the hours when they’re not at home parenting, Dawn is a nurse at Promise Hospital and David delivers medical equipment for Magnolia Medical.

After school, work and homework, the children play outside until about 7 p.m., when it’s time for supper and baths.

David and Dawn have a double shower, and so the two older boys use that while the younger children are given baths in a big garden tub.

Despite the possibilities, it’s not a wild time, Dawn said.

“We’ve really been lucky,” she said. “Children really crave structure, and when we offer it to them they just sort of fall in line.”

On Sundays after church, they always go out to eat at a local Mexican restaurant, and everyone behaves, David said.

“It’s not a lot of wiggling and fighting,” he said.

But that doesn’t mean children aren’t still children.

One end of the house is the children’s wing, and while the house is only three years old, “It’s been destroyed and rebuilt piece by piece,” Dawn said.

In another instance, a child — who proudly raised his hand to claim the act when David mentioned it — poured a sports drink in David’s new riding lawn mower.

“Thankfully, someone tattled, and I was able to get it out before it messed up my mower,” David said.

Being foster parents has meant other changes as well.

“I’m nearly 45, and I’m supposed to be going through a mid-life crisis, but instead of looking at a motorcycle, I was looking for a minivan,” David said.

The Mosses haven’t gone unnoticed for their unusual family, and Dawn was recently nominated to take part in a foster parenting-awareness event with Louisiana First Lady Supriya Jindal, “Duck Dynasty” star Korie Robertson and another Vidalia resident, Carrie Vest.

During the event — which happened Friday — Dawn and the other mothers rappelled down the One America Place building as part of the Louisiana Family Forum’s “Over the Edge for Adoption” awareness event.

Dawn said participating in the event and even sharing her experience in other ways isn’t about bringing attention to herself.

“There are over 400 children in the Louisiana foster care system that are eligible for adoption,” she said. “We want to get the word out there so maybe more people will sign up and those who are foster parents won’t have to take on so many kids, and so the children won’t have to share as much space and so those kids who can have a permanent home can get that.”