You've Got Mail

I have never been so excited to open an envelope - I don't think I was even this excited when I opened my acceptance letter to college.    

We got a redacted piece of paper in the mail yesterday!

This makes it officially official we are licensed and waiting.  

6 Month Check-In

Writing that it seems so strange, it can't possibly be 6 months since we started on this adoption journey but yup the calendar says June so it must be true.  So much has happened at that initial meeting seems so long ago but we still have a long road ahead of us.   I would like to say the hard part is behind us, but I don't think that's the case at all.   What is behind us is:

• The paperwork - oh wait no we still have paperwork ahead of us in terms of tracking visits, medications, and countless other stuff. 
• The presence of strangers in our home ensuring we will be good parents - nope that continues as well.  We will likely have more people through our home to ensure we are doing a good job.
• The training - ugh not that either, we have continuing education to do over the course of the year and for every year that we are foster parents. 
• The waiting - yeah right - longer rights are ahead of us. 
• The uncertainty - will this happen, when will this happen, how will the kid(s) react.  Yeah lots of uncertainty ahead.

Sheesh it seems like we haven't done anything in the last 6 months.   That clearly isn't true here's what we have done:

• Attended informational meetings
• Selected an agency
• Completed 2 rounds of paperwork 
• Attended first aid and CPR training
• Attended foster parent training
• Completed 3 home study visits/interviews
• Child proofed our home - purchased fire escape ladders, fire extinguishers, safety locks for cabinets, covers for electrical outlets, fixed our back deck. 
• Got fingerprinted
• Passed federal and state background checks
• Physicals for me & Dave
• Got certificates of health for Paddy and Koda and made sure they were up to date on shots
• Prepared information and collected photos for our profile

 and this just goes to show that this is a continually evolving process with no end in sight.      

What does keep me going these days is we officially have a profile completed that is being sent out to social workers and we can now submit inquiries on available children.  I'm anxious to see where this goes and a little nervous to actually send off our first inquiries.  

Our First Purchase

When you're pregnant it's easy to compile a list of all of the things you need for a baby, have a shower and start buying things.   I guess if we were adopting an infant the same process would apply.  But we have a very broad age range and we want the kid(s) to  be able to pick out their furnishings so that makes it a lot harder.   Instead I have been mentally compiling a list of all the things we are going to need:

• Furniture
• Linens
• Books
• Games & toys
• Bike & helmet
• Swing set
• X-box 

OK not all of these are necessities but many of these items are going to be needed quickly.  We have been putting money aside each month to cover the cost of the big items that will be needed since we have to wait. This waiting is hard so I was super excited this weekend when we were in Santa Fe and made the first purchase for our future child(ren).    We plan on putting a photo of us/our house in this and giving it to them prior to placement to prepare with the transition.   

We're Licensed!

Well, we don't officially have the license in our hands but we got word on Monday that the missing piece of paperwork was received and we are good to be licensed.   This is HUGE!   It means we are onto the next step of the process; the searching and networking.  

I took a gander at AdoptUsKids this afternoon, it is a website that lists kids available for adoption.  This is only one avenue of the networking but I was curious to see if there were any listings that jumped out at me.   Do you believe in signs?  I normally don't believe in signs but I found this listing and immediately thought - yup these are the kids for us.   Dave said he could deal with sharing his name with a child but having a child share a name with our cat is a bit much.  

Happy Mother's Day

For as long as I can remember I've known I wanted to be a mom.  Did I think I would become a mom for the first time in my 40's absolutely not.   I watched my sisters become mom's and as happy as I was for them I was a tiny bit jealous.   When they were becoming moms I was at a place where I  was giving up on my dream of motherhood for a guy that didn't want kids. After that relationship ended I figured I would end up a single mom by choice and started researching adoption, then I met Dave and I put those plans on hold again.

Now here I am within arms reach of my goal of becoming a mom.   It's weird knowing that our kids are out there somewhere and next year at this time we will hopefully be celebrating mother's day as a family.   Do I know what kind of mom I'm going to be no - but I hope that  learning from the examples of my grandmother, mom and sisters I will be a good listener and somebody that my children will look up to.

Home Study Approved

We reached a huge milestone yesterday, we are officially home study approved!   What does this mean exactly?  We have completed all the training requirements, passed criminal background checks, completed the psycho-social evaluation, and are home is safe for children.    The next step is the licensing.  We are still waiting on 1 form from a state agency to come in and then we will be officially licensed.  

It is weird seeing your life and relationship distilled into 12 pages.  Our caseworker said ours was easy and that some people end up with 30 page home studies.  I guess we're boring.

So, what comes next.   We have to pull together photos for our profile showing our house, family, the animals, and the neighborhood.  This will be used for marketing and networking purposes.  We can't officially present our home study until the missing background check comes in but we can start unofficially inquiring once the profile is completed.  

Boob Jobs and Adoption

No I am not getting a boob job.   I stumbled across this video on an adoption message board that I frequent.  It is a humorous way to educate people about appropriate adoption language and questions.  Adoption is an unknown for many people and there are lots of questions, sometimes the questions people ask or the words they choose are offensive.  

I have been fortunate that we haven't been asked these questions.  The one thing we have been asked that does fall in this category is a variation of " Aren't you afraid the child will be unhealthy/damaged/emotionally unstable?"  While it hasn't been these exact words it is the idea that adopting a child from foster care means we are getting damaged goods.   Yes these kids have had a hard life and have experienced trauma but that doesn't mean they are any less of a person and don't need a loving family.   There would be no guarantees even if we had a biological child that they would be perfectly healthy.

Questions are natural, and I am happy to answer them, but first ask yourself "would I ask this about a boob job?"