Fingers crossed!

The profile for a sibling group was put on hold for them to review home studies. I know, I know, I know... but this one was put on hold just hours after our home study was sent to them!  That is positive, right? They are actually reviewing OUR home study! And they were not taken down for having 15 inquiries already, so... maybe... ?  

We have felt a lot of frustration (mainly stemming from my impatience)  about adoption, so far.  We have seen the awful statistics about time frames & interstate adoption realities (not to mention scary stuff about undiagnosed killed-the-kitten disorders that seem to pop up way too often in blogs).  But we remain hopeful that we will be the exception. Our adoptions will go smoothly & quickly while our kids will have been overdiagnosed with disorders that they either do not have, or are well on their way to overcoming.  It's nice to dream, right? 

Last night we had a conversation about trying for a biokid again.  There is part of me that wants to have the baby experience. Not necessarily the 'blood draw once a week' experience, but the 'what a sweet young family' experience. I think I will miss that part if we adopt first.  We will be a young family, (well, a thirty-something young family) but no one will know that these kids who have (let's say, for the sake of argument) awful behaviors and foul-mouthed vocabularies are NEW to us, too.  Is it horribly selfish to worry about how I will be judged as a mother rather than thinking about how much those misbehaving kids with sailor talk need me?  I have more time on my hand now than I will post kid(s) arrival, so I'm guessing I won't have much time to worry or think about much of anything other than making sure everyone is relatively clean and fed when we leave the house. Anyhow, we decided, essentially, to not really go out of our way to try for a bio baby, but not to go out of our way to NOT try, if you know what I mean. This isn't much of a difference from what have have been doing, but the idea of the maybe of it all... that's nice to have.  I think after the miscarriage last year, it was hard for me to view my body in that way without getting very very tired.  Soooo... We'll just see what happens!  

But for tonight, we drink.  :)  

Approval- check!

Since being approved on the 13th,  I've discovered that the adoption process requires a lot of patience.  We were put back into the hands of our state's adoption lady, so our home study social worker is no longer in the picture.  And, for the past two weeks, that's been pretty much all I have to report.  

We did register on adoptuskids.org, so we are able to get extra disability & allergy information without having to make an inquiry... on the roughly 4% of kids who are not protected by local laws. We have sent our home study to one child's social worker in a different state that we found on the website and to a local (in-state) social worker to be considered for a sibling group that was emailed to us (and all state families in our shoes). 

I'm not sure how long it takes the kids' social workers to make a decision, so now we wait.  If any other child/children come up that we are interested in being considered for, we ask our adoption lady to send our home study to them too.  

It really isn't very exciting at this point- especially since I've been fighting tummy issues & the weather has been so awful.  It's just an ordinary life, except we read more profiles about kids than most people. :)  

 

anxiously waiting on approval

We are expecting to be approved as potential adoptive parents on Monday. I'm frustrated right now because I'm not sure what happens after that. Are we still working with our home study social worker? Do we go back to the state's adoption specialist? No idea.  I've asked our home study social worker this question twice with no reply.

Meanwhile, we received additional information about the remaining posted child from our original "inspiration kids" & have decided not to pursue his adoption.  As it turns out, he needs a lot of attention and they believe he would thrive most in a home where he is an only child.  We thought hard about this, since we have become emotionally attached to his profile, but we really want 3 or 4 kids. Also, there is still that chance that a bio kid would enter the picture so even if we did decide on one, it may not be in the cards.

I'm feeling a little blue this weekend. I've been having snow days for a week after having been on winter break, so I think I may just be getting a bit of cabin fever. Bleh.  I'm very hopeful that there will be a flourish of excitement next week when we get our official approval & start the matching process... whatever it is!   :)  Until then, maybe a nap is in order.

Completing the home study

We have scanned and emailed all of our paper work to our home study agency.  I'm not sure if our SW will want to come back out to the house to visit or not.  I'm guessing so since she hasn't seen our fire extinguishers in place, but she indicated that she was going to try to finish up our home study by the end of the week, with no mention of another visit.

Our first visit was very positive.  The pets all behaved perfectly, our house was pretty well organized, however I did not go too far out of my way to make it any cleaner than I would if it were my parents coming to visit.  We still had that box of mail that we need to go through someday sitting in the corner of our dining room, for instance. All in all, it was a good time and our social worker was very friendly. It was not an intimidating visit in the least.

It's very exciting setting up the kids' rooms, although we are holding off any decorating until we know for sure who we are getting. Part of the reasoning behind this is to involve them in the decor decisions as part of transitioning.  We want them to feel like the rooms they move into are really THEIR rooms. We want them to take ownership of the spaces, but also doing things to set up their rooms gives us something concrete to do as a family those first few weeks rather than staring terrified at each other wondering what to do next. On some level, I'm also hoping that doing these things during the "honeymoon" period & giving them some pride of ownership will prevent them from destroying everything once the "testing our love" phase begins.

After the home study is complete, our social worker will present us to the state's adoption board.  The state will then approve us (hopefully!) as adoptive parents. We will then be in contact with our state adoption specialist and will start the matching process.  At this point, the kids I've considered my "inspiration kids"  are still posted online.  If they remain there when we are approved, they will be the first inquiry we make.

Post-class nerve-citement

We finished our adoption classes Saturday afternoon!  I found the classes very informative.  I was asked by family if the classes made us want to run away & the surprising answer is no!   I guess this was the goal of DCS, but we actually came out of the classes feeling more prepared & with a better understanding of not only the process, but the emotions involved with the process.  We feel relatively secure in our positions of future mommy & daddy.  AND not all of the information was what we'd already seen online, which was our fear... Okay, a lot of it was... but the anecdotes were good add-ins and made it seem more real. :)

I even made a friend-  another mommy-to-be who is interested in adopting sibs. We both look forward to having someone to call who knows just what we are going through.  This was a great surprise since all sources seem to indicate people looking to adopt siblings are rare... even more rare are those who don't have kids at home already who are going from 0 to 3 (which is what we both are interested in).   She also has a set of "inspiration kids"  and we were both very glad to hear that her set and my set are not the same set, although our similar frequenting of the adoptuskids.org site let us each be familiar with the other's set of "inspiration kids".  Additionally, the trainer overheard us talking about these kids and said she had wondered who we were interested in.  I don't know why that made me feel good but it did.  Someone who knows us a little more than through email knows we are interested in THIS set of kids. And didn't seem to think it was a crazy idea... :)

Theoretically, of course, they are JUST inspiration kids, we should not get too attached to a photo and mini-bio. But, let's be honest. It was an amazing relief to realize we aren't dreaming about the same kids so we didn't have to see each other as competition.  Also, there is a possibility that I will be heartbroken if (yeah, ok, when) these kids get adopted before we've gotten to the point to throw our parental hats in the ring, or, worse, if we have reached that point and are not the chosen parents.


Right now is a waiting period.  We have finished our classes, but do not have any information about the home study yet.  I'm busying myself with beginning to clear out closets & otherwise organize all the catch-all type piles that have lived in the rooms which will belong to the kids.  Not the most glamorous aspect of preparing for kids (I'll let you know if I do find a glamorous aspect), but necessary.

September: one classy month!

In the last month, my husband and I have taken all but one of the required classes we need for our pre-adoptive training.  These classes are the introductory training sessions for foster families, except for the last one which is all about adoption.  After that class is complete, we will begin the process of completing our home study.  Really, we don't know much about the adoption process, since the classes thus far have been geared toward foster homes, so I'm very much relying on knowledge gained from other people's blogs about adoption home studies & the checklists I've found for my state's foster care "environment"  rules.  I figure if we are on target to be a safe foster home, we should be good to adopt, eh?

Although these are the source for our general guidelines, we have decided to only pursue adoption.  We just do not feel like our hearts are tough enough to handle legal-risk placements. Additionally, worth note, I have quit my job last week.  My husband is currently doing a lot of freelance work in addition to his full-time work, and we have a LOT of projects that we need to complete around the house in preparation for the kiddos.  Oh, yes.  KiddoS.   Did I mention we are definitely looking at sibling groups exclusively? So, yeah. It's been quite a month!

The kids I wrote about last post are still listed on the web.  I call them my "inspiration kids".  They continue to inspire me to do what needs done for my family-to-be, but I really don't know their situation & they may have a different mommy by the time I'm having my fingerprints sent in, let alone get to the "seriously consider actual kids" point of the adoption process.