Story of hope!

Last night I spent some time reading through posts on the website www.circleofmoms.com, and some of them eased my fears and some of them created new fears. In reading one post where a couple had started their fost/adopt classes and started looking through a website similar to www.nwae.com and reading through the profiles of some children in their state that were available for adoption. They had fallen in love with the photos and the descriptions of 3 children that they thought would fit into their lives perfectly, but they were in the beginning steps of becoming certified and like me had fears that this process could take a long time due to the home study and background checks and what not.

Two weeks later, still with a long way to go, the woman couldn't stop herself and she inquired about the children. She learned that they had been in foster care for a few years and only two of them were living in the same home but that the 3 wanted to live together. Other families that were certified had inquired about the children but no further steps had been taken.

Another two weeks went by and the woman checked the website again and they were still there and her fost/adopt classes were done. This only put her at the half way point and they had a lot to do but she inquired about the children again and found that since her last inquiry that no one had asked about them again. She scrambled and started filling out stacks of forms and making appointments.

Nearly 6 weeks later the couple had finished everything and were waiting on the background checks to come back and then that would be that. She checked every week to see if the children were still there on the website, and they were. At the beginning of week 7 (after the fost/adopt classes) the background checks were in. The woman had been very detailed when writing about things that could come up in these checks (as they ask you to do) but they still wanted the couple to do an extra class due to something in her husbands background check.

The woman was in tears as she searched through the list of classes to find the next set of them. There was one that very night! With a heart full of hope she called but never got an answer. Desperate the couple showed up at the class and explained the situation and were permitted to take the class that would run the next 4 days, every night.

At the beginning of week 8 they made arrangements to meet with the children for dinner at McDonalds (one of the ones with a play area) on Wednesday night. The children had not seen each other in 3 weeks and at first were more interested in each other than the couple. An hour later they were all laughing and playing in a ball pit together. The social worker was very pleased and they made a date to spend time with the kids the next week but the social worker reminded them that these things take time.

That Friday the couple got a phone call from the social worker. The male child (who didn't live with his sister) was in the hospital with minor injuries as his foster home had burned to the ground that morning (electrical fire). The foster family did not have a place to take him and the social worker was looking for a place to take him. In the hospital the boy kept asking for the couple.

They went and picked him up from the hospital that night and a week later his two sisters moved in with the couple as well. The adoption was final on national adoption day of 2010.

Somethings are meant to be, you just need hope and to work hard toward your goal. Not all adoption placements happen this fast and this was a rare case, but I am in hopes that ours goes fast as well.

Haunted by the home study!

I woke up this morning to the horrid sound of my alarm clock. For a moment I was lost as I had been having a very intense dream about the home study that we will go through once we have moved and our classes our final. For those that don't know, a home study is when a social worker of sorts comes to you home and talks about your family, your extended family, and goes through all sorts of things in your to make sure that your ready and have everything the state requires you to have for foster care and/or adoption.

In this haunting dream that I was having, the one the alarm clock woke me up from, we were moving into our place, another apartment. As planned, I was making our new home ready for the home study as we were moving, but I was missing something. You know those little child safety plugs that you can get, they are usually white and cover your power outlets.... Well, we were missing one.

The next day, in this dream, was our home study and I wasn't able to replace the one outlet cover and we failed our home study. Just then, the alarm clock went off and I woke up.

I know that if we are missing something in our home study that we will be allowed to get it and do the study again, or part of it again, and I also know that after having this dream I will buy extra of little things like this!

Getting Started

I think I have tried to write this blog a million times but I get scared and stop. Its something that I am trying to over come. You see, I fear that I may write this blog and then something will get in my way to stop us from creating our family. For me, this fear is reasonable since I have been trying to get pregnant and have our own babies for years and although I have been pregnant many times we still have no children.

It would seem that I have always known that I would need to adopt as this is not the first time that I have been on this path and attending adoption and foster care classes, but somethings and some relationships are not meant to be, so I know I stopped the classes before for a good reason. This time around, I know I am on the right path and with the right person, but yes, I am still scared that something will stop us, but I am very hopeful that nothing will and we are looking forward to being parents.

Our foster care and adoption classes start the first Saturday of August and then in September we have CPR classes, so things are still far off but seem so close at the same time. After our classes is when we will put in our official application for the fost/adopt program and start down the possible long path of getting approved and the scary moment of the background checks. I fear that we will have a lot of hoops to jump through when it comes to background checks, no that either of us have ever done anything that should keep us from adopting but it could make them look at us funny and they could require extra classes. Fingers crossed it all goes well.

The background checks are not our only major hurdle to get over, there is also the fact that we must move and that may be hard to do. As we know that we want to adopt at least 1 boy and 1 girl, our little 2 bedroom apartment will just not work. Of course there is also the fact that our apartment complex is not and has not done what they should as far as repairs are concerned. We still have a hole in our bathroom ceiling from a leak that came from the upstairs neighbors, water damaged carpets, and some of our neighbors are not people that we want our children around.

So moving will mean higher cost of rent and new furniture. But on the plus side, as we are moving in we can child proof things in the way that the home study requires and we can be sure that we don't miss anything, and that could make the home study go far faster!

We have so many thoughts for our future, maybe we will move back home to Nevada one of these years....