we check the shower for syrup bottles

The kids are now 16 months and 8 months old. My daughter is very interested in stacking things; her favorites include wooden candlesticks and whatever food she can pull out of the pantry cupboard to relocate before we stop her.  My son is rolling all over the place and is pretty satisfied with this mode of transportation, however he often can be found in a push up position staring at a toy and in this way seems to be meditating on the idea of crawling. They are both cute and smart and I am very proud of them.

The complete exhaustion and regular bouts of crying (well, MY regular bouts anyway) have gone.  There are days that are difficult, obviously, but it isn't an all consuming see saw of bottles and diapers anymore, although there are still TONS of bottles and diapers, don't get me wrong.  There are just larger gaps between them and, where bottles are concerned, less of a need for my involvement in holding &/or picking it up repeatedly as it keeps slipping away.

At 16 months, my daughter has matured enough that I can trust her to stay in the same room with the baby if I go do something crazy like fix lunch or move the laundry around.  I often find my son with one of his cloth books, a sock, or something else random that his sister has given to him while I was gone which makes him super happy. He laughs. She laughs at his laugh, he laughs at her laugh... and we just have a house full of giggles until one of them pukes or drops something loud.

Everyone asks how they are together, and the simple answer is that I expect they will be great pals and loving siblings as they grow up because they make each other very happy even now.

So the flip side to all of this lovely joy is that I've been diagnosed with degenerative disc disease, which basically means a couple of the cushy discs between my vertebrae have gone south and it hurts a lot.  I'm in physical therapy in an attempt to train my back to use other parts of my spine more and the bum discs spot (in my lower thoracic area) less. This training also hurts, so all told, i'm in a lot of pain pretty much all of the time (as opposed to before I started PT, when I was mostly only in pain when I hadn't moved much like first thing in the morning).  I'm hoping this all works out soon because I'd love to play on the floor with my kids and you know... not cry when I have to unexpectedly lean over for a long time... like if there is a diaper explosion while my son sleeps and I have to try to clean him up while containing to poo AND not waking him up since it is, let's say, 4 am and he finally just went to sleep before his diaper suddenly stopped containing what he was putting in it. blink.

I'm so lucky my husband is so involved and willing to step in at night.  Really, he does essentially all of the post-midnight baby stuff before getting up super early and heading to work. Because our 8 month old still sleeps like a 3 month old- even requiring a few night time feedings- my husband is really remarkable to do this. Particularly because my back is most painful in the night and I get kind of cussy when I'm both sleepy and in pain...  as it turns out. :-/

Adoption Day! What happens at the adoption hearing.

We had our finalization hearing on Nov. 20th.  It only took about 15 minutes, but was amazing and perfect. Our daughter, now 5 and a half months old, slept through it, of course, since it was during nap time. First they basically introduced the case for the record and asked to see the baby (she was sleeping in her stroller).  Our lawyer joked that they'd have to come to see her because we weren't going to wake a sleeping baby, but I picked her up and held her.

They called my husband to the stand to testify first and had him spell his name for the record. They reminded us that she would not qualify for a stipend, since she was "practically perfect in every way" & asked him if we'd be financially able to handle the burden of raising this child.  They asked what sort of work my husband does, what type of dogs and cat we have, and how he would describe the baby.  His description was pretty much how every new dad would describe their 5 month old daughter, except in our case she really IS the most adorable, most clever, and most fun baby in the world!

I was called next, passing the baby to my husband on his way back. Aside from spelling my name, was spared a lot of the questions because the judge asked if I would have answered the same as my husband.  I was then asked to describe the baby, which I think is more for the parents than the courts.  It's really a chance to gush on about how much you love your baby in front of a court recorder, which is a chance I welcome, personally!  :) Let it be on the record that my baby is fantastic!   I told them we are honored and lucky to be her parents.

The judge ordered that we are officially her legal parents and said he would issue the decree!  Before we left, the official adoptive parents/kid/judge photos were taken and our family could come up and take some camera phone photos at the same time.  Actual cameras were not allowed through security! (IKR?!)  Our little one started waking up as picture time began so we have some photos of a very confused looking baby!

The court workers, including the judge told us how adorable she is and congratulated us ... and poof!  we were parents!   We were given a few copies of the decree a few minutes after leaving the courtroom.

Match Interview & finished nursery!

On Friday, we went to our match interview.  I believe about 6 families were interviewed as prospective parents, but I'm not completely sure.  We got so see a couple of pictures of the little girl they are trying to place & she is beautiful.

There were ten people on the panel as interviewers, however the head of the department was the one who asked us almost all of the questions.  It was fairly painless, with questions about our hobbies, our financial status, and our expectations for a child.  To be clear, the financial questions were mostly just verifying some of the things written in the home study as well as making sure we understood that this child will not have a stipend or be covered by medicaid, like many kids adopted from DCS would.  Nothing we weren't expecting.  They asked us how we resolve conflicts and our ideas on discipline.  I feel like it went pretty well, but of course one never knows about the "competition".   We are strong candidates, I think, so if another family is chosen, I'm confident that they are also an amazing family.  Still though, they should obviously choose us.  :)

In the mean time we finished (mostly) our nursery! We began it as a room for foster babies, so it is more complete than we probably would have had it if we were not planning to foster- a room devoted to a baby that may never come is pretty discouraging, but we are fairly confident we'd get placed with a foster sib group that includes a little one... and very hopeful that we might put off the foster scenario for a bit because of a new baby...  I still need to hem the curtains and the fabric draped over the chair is a stand-in for a future rocker or glider, but other than that... yay! At least one room in the house is totally put together.  We have had so many overlapping projects, it has been difficult to keep any order.  THAT, however, is what I'm supposed to be working on now, so... I'll update with news when I have any to tell!  Fingers crossed!

Interview

This morning I got a call saying my husband & I were chosen as one of the families to be interviewed for a baby who needs a home.  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!  This is the first interview we've received in this process. The woman told me not to be nervous (i wasn't until she said that) & that the panel would ask us a bunch of questions, mostly about parenting.  

I'm actually feeling more excited then anything. I was beginning to doubt our homestudy and beginning to wonder what it was that lead to us never being chosen.  So, of course I'd love to raise this baby, OF COURSE, but it's also just a relief to finally be selected for interview.

So excited!  yay!

And we are waiting... and waiting... and waiting.

There have been no updates.  We have our home study sent to strangers, we watch the children's posts with fingers crossed, and nothing ever happens and we never hear anything else. Eventually, we assume the children whose summaries and photos we poured over are living in a happy home and doing ok, that we were not the chosen family. Then we find a new set of sibs that we pour over and imagine in our house.  Repeat. and repeat. and repeat.... and repeat.

It is such a strange time.  People ask us how the adoption is going and we shrug. We have no idea.  Is this normal?  Why don't the social workers have the courtesy to send out a form letter email thanking us for our interest & letting us know that the kids we came to care for in that unique wishful way had found a home?

In the last month, we have gone to a "meeting"  which included us, our adoption specialist, and one other couple we had met in training & we attended an adoption support group that included us and the lady who organized the group.  Blink.  During the meeting, we told our adoption specialist that we are interested in switching to the foster to adopt side of things.  I wrote to her two weeks later and she said she was still waiting for our file to be sent from our home study agency.  Now, it's been a month.  What is the big hold up?  I don't know.

I know that adopting takes a lot of patience, but I feel very much forgotten. It is so maddening to see the ads for adopting kids from foster care when we are sitting here twiddling our thumbs waiting to do just that. We continue to prepare our home, which involves us building a partition wall to divide one giant room into a bedroom and library/playroom. But, other than that, we just go about our lives :)

I'm sorry for venting, but I feel that is all the wisdom I have to offer at the moment.  The process is indeed long and uneventful.   They are not kidding.

intrastate adoption

Our state has a touch of sparsely populated-ness.  Not like some states in the west, but enough that there just are not the amount of kids ready for adoption that you might find in a more metropolitan area.  Particularly lacking are those that fit our "we would be able to handle parenting these"  requirements.  Regardless of the fact that we are looking for siblings, we just don't have any in-state choices.  We put our home study in for one set that appeared just after we were approved, but since then, there just have not been any.

This issue wasn't a huge deal, because we are registered with adoptuskids.org & we have found a handful of out  of state sibling sets that we have also been interested in & inquired about.  We had no idea there were so many issues with this.  But, there are.  I found the statistic that in 2010, there were more people struck by lightning in the US than were able to successfully adopt across state lines. (see Washington Post link below) There are commercials saying how many kids there are in the country that want a home, implying that there is a chance you might actually be able to GIVE them one, but as it turns out, this kid trade is all about money, and the social services of states are not eager to help their families adopt from another state because they won't get money for it.  It's all very upsetting.

If you are interested in adopting across state lines, please read the linked articles for more information.  Also read about the legislation that is sitting in Washington.  It's heartbreaking.  We are not sure what our next plan of action will be.  I'm very burned out by adoption from foster care right now.  I'm wondering if we will be able to follow through with it, quite honestly. I quit my job working for the state, in part, because I couldn't handle this kind of thing anymore. And here we are, facing this same issue as a roadblock to becoming parents.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-all-the-snags-in-interstate-adoption/2012/06/01/gJQAB4uq7U_story.html

http://www.listeningtoparents.org/

the bill in congress:  https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s1511

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.

splitting a sib group

It is one week before Christmas. Today our "inspiration children"  were taken off the list of available kids.  Surprisingly, I felt happy for them & their Christmas family.

Then the youngest was re-posted alone.

I am heartbroken for him & his siblings.  Another loss in their young lives. I don't know the situation, and couldn't possibly guess (nor is it my business) what happened with the older two, but I'm thinking of him tonight & hoping he doesn't feel too alone.  I'm hoping he has a wonderful foster family who is able to console him & hug him tight.

Adopting older kids from foster care is really really difficult sometimes. Even knowing the kids all have heartbreaking stories in their past, it is humbling to watch the small window I have into their lives as more heartbreak unfolds.  I spent what was probably too much time weaving a story of what "could" have happened and how it "may still"  become a happily-ever-after story.  My husband thinks I'm a little nuts, but I needed to find that possibility in order to process the emotions of the day.  I can't imagine how a child copes with this stuff. I hope he can imagine a happily-ever-after story for himself.  

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.

Home study: Paperwork begins

A couple of days ago, we had first contact with the social worker from the agency which will be preforming our home study.  She emailed a lot of forms to be filled out as well as a list of documents we need to gather.  I already emailed back with a lot of questions regarding these forms  & am trying to shrug off what I feel was a rather curt response from the sw.   The forms contained almost no instruction & were very much geared toward foster care applicants, not adoption-only. Most of my questions revolved around that wording.

One of my main goals early in this process is to develop a thicker skin.  This is going to be a long, difficult journey & the questions will  be getting really serious. THEN the profiles of children will be very very difficult to process. THEN the kids themselves will do and say things that I should not take personally. All of this is wrapped up in dealing with a state agency. Having previously worked for a state agency, I know that these forms are originally processed with less care than a slaughterhouse. Having a font-change in the middle of an answer is to be expected and is NOT a sign of disrespect to the applicants.  (Yes it is, forms management workers! These forms are difficult enough to get through without these types of annoyances.)

The checklist of documents we'll need:

• Birth Certificate x2 (mine, his)
• Marriage License, 
• Drivers Licence x2
• Pet Vaccine Records x3 (2 dogs, 1 cat)
• Homeowner's Insurance
• Car Insurance x2
• Car Registration x2
• Recent Pay Stub x2
• Last Year's Tax Return. 

We'll have to update the cat's shots, I think.  & I will need a new copy of my BC, which is in the works.

The list of forms we'll need to complete:

• Foster Care License application (yes, we need to do this, even though we don't want a FC license)
• Criminal History Background Check Application x2
• Child Care Plan (where will the kids go if not with us or at school) 
• Child Protective Services History Check Application x2
• Medical Approval Form x2 (doctor fills out saying we are healthy & probably not on drugs)
• Acknowledgement of Role Form (we understand the care of children is what we are signing up for)
• Water Agreement (check box & sign to say we are on city water) 
• Home Safety Checklist (what they will be looking for, more on this later) 
• Quite Imposing Awkward Question Form x2

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.

So there are these kids...

As my husband and I are in the middle of changing jobs and still TTC (albeit halfheartedly),  I have been paroozing the adoptuskids.org site with a good bit of regularity.   And I saw them.  THEM.  The kids that I feel so drawn to, I almost feel like I recognize them. They are a sib group and pretty much everything I ever wanted in kids.  (I know, whatever that means, right?)  I talked about them with my husband, showed them to my mom, and daydreamed about showing them around my house for the first time...  is that insane?  maybe.

The reality is that we have not even started the paperwork, had not previously given much thought to adopting older kids, or even adopting out of foster care.  If we started TODAY we are months away from being approved to even get more information about these kids.  And they are awesome, so they will probably already have a different forever home if we were to get to that point.

BUT, it sure did get my wheels turning.  I don't think I really seriously thought about adopting in such a real way until I read their little mini-bios. I am looking around my house and picking it apart. Noticing for the first time everything that a social worker would mark us down for on a home visit or whatever inspection.  

The dogs aren't as well-trained as they could be.  ding*

The second floor bedroom doesn't have a fire escape ladder. ding*

Some of the things are me just being overly hard on myself.  On the other hand, some of the things would be legitimate concerns for someone checking out the safety of our home. So... I guess  I'll call and ask about getting the process started in case these kids DON'T get adopted right away, or in case we see other kids that would be just as perfect for us.

In any event, I will start a real list of things I see as concerns that I can start to take care of. Then I'll start to take care of them.  :)  It feels so much more proactive than peeing on a stick and watching for the happy face.