In the last post, we had just discovered that we were chosen to adopt H & Z.  We read their file and spoke to their foster parents.  This was getting real in a hurry.  Because it was almost the end of the school year, we set a move-in date and allowed for about a week or so to get to know the kids. 

Up until this point, the kids had not yet known that they were going to be adopted.  Without going into too much detail, our beautiful kids were told once before that they were going to be adopted, only to have it fall through in a most devastating manner.  Now, CPS was correctly trying to shield their emotions until we were 110% sure that we wanted to adopt.  A few days before our first “date” with the kids, they were told about the adoption and given our lifebook about our family.  Z was thrilled, and H was less than ecstatic (understandably so) until he found out we had dogs. 

Our caseworker sent us a photo of the kids with the lifebook and I seriously lost it.  I was at work, and kept tearing up.  These were our babies. They were 5 and 10 years old, and not biologically ours, but these were our babies nonetheless.

We met them the first time with the caseworker at the foster parents house.  We were told to bring a gift, so I brought the blankets I had made each of them.  We were bubbling over with excitement, but the kids were a little unsure about us.  That is until Z with all her friendliness (which as I am discovering now is a little too friendly at times) plopped herself right between me and my husband.  She held our hands, and all the tension began to melt away.  H was more reserved, but still warm toward us.  We left that night, and made plans to meet them for dinner at the end of the week. 

                                                                                                 

We've Been Chosen!

In the last blog about our journey, we found out that we were in the top three families considered to adopt H & Z.  We were ecstatic, but tried to remind ourselves that there were many steps remaining before any children would be in our home.   One afternoon in April of 2014, we received a call that would change our lives forever.  We were chosen as the top family for the kids.  Our case worker wanted to know if we were still interested, and we of course responded with an emphatic, “YES!” 

                                              

We knew very little about them, their history, or what they would need.  Their photo (a grainy black-and-white photocopy) was already posted proudly on our refrigerator.  We had been praying that they were safe and loved even before they moved into our home.  This was getting so real, and we asked all of our friends and family to pray that we would not simply get swept up in excitement, but that we would make wise decisions regarding our future family.

We were told that there was still quite a process ahead, but everything felt finalized.  We scheduled a time to meet with the kids’ caseworker.  She came by our house and told us more about the kids.  She shared how our son wanted to change his name to Tre’, but she was not sure why.  She also told us that our daughter looked up to her big brother.  He was her hero and she adored him.  We heard a bit about how they were brought into CPS custody and what they had been through in the foster system.  We hurt for our kids over the things that no kid should ever have to go through. 

The next step involved us reading their complete file.  This task may be incredibly daunting depending on how long the child or children have been in CPS custody.  Unfortunately, our kids had spent quite some time in the system in various houses, and therefore had extremely lengthy files, which were probably nearly 1,000 pages long in total.  These must be read in the CPS office in a single sitting.  My husband and I divided and conquered the stacks, and shared information that seemed pertinent.  We spoke in depth to the caseworker that had known the kids for most of the time that they were in CPS custody.  Although we could never know EVERYTHING, this was about as good as we could get.

We were then scheduled to have a conference with their current foster parents.  All that we managed to arrange was a conference call with the foster dad due to their schedules.  This conversation provided us with more insight than we realized at the time.  I would suggest writing down questions ahead of time that you feel will help you to better understand what life is like with the kids day in and day out.  At the end of all this, we were decided.  We wanted these kids to be our kids.

My husband and I were thrilled, of course, over the idea of these adorable kids coming into our family and the adventure ahead of us.  I know that I say this all the time, but this new adventure in our lives came at a tremendous cost to our kids and their bio family.  I don’t say this to put a damper on your excitement, but rather to help with future interactions with your kids.  There will most definitely be days when your kids will not feel happy to be a part of your family.  There will be days when your child will blame CPS for taking them away from their families.  There will be days when they remember their parents as nothing less than perfect.  There will be days when all they can see are your flaws.  There will be days when nothing will seem right, no matter how hard you try. 

I challenge you to remember two things in those times: your excitement at the very beginning and the long-term goal.  You are changing lives forever, and that quite the undertaking. 

My biggest supporter =)

I am so thankful that you have all been reading my adoption blog.  You have no idea how encouraging that is to me.  However, I would not be where I am without the help of my amazing husband.  He is the one who got me into blogging and he is such an encourager.  Plus, he is a serious stud muffin. ;)


Below is a link to his blog.  His latest blog post is actually an excerpt from his book, which is due to be released on March 24th.  Please read it and see for yourselves how great it really is!
http://reclaimingthefaith.blogspot.com

We are only $2800 away from our fundraising goal of $12,000.  Please consider giving whatever you feel led to on his gofundme page.  Every little bit helps, and there are gifts at certain giving levels!
https://www.gofundme.com/k077ys

You guys are seriously the best.  God bless you all!

Are You Gonna Be My Girl?

In the last post, I explained how my husband and I met these adorable kids at a CPS event and requested information about them.  Our original caseworker, let’s call her, Marissa, left the agency, unbeknownst to us.  A few weeks passed and we were given a new caseworker that we will call June.  June called us on the phone and chatted with us.  She told us about a few sibling groups that were available for adoption.  All of them met the criteria that we were looking for, but we decided to hold off on submitting our home study for them until we heard about what happened with the kids that we met at the event, Z & H. 

June had not been made aware of our interest in these kids, even though we were told that she had been.  Truth be told, we just wanted to know a little more about their story and any other information that they could provide us.  Another week or so passed, and I received an email that June had submitted our home study for Z and H.  WHAT?!  Submitted our home study?!  That’s not what we asked for… we just wanted some information on the kids.  We called her as soon as we got the email to ask why we skipped the initial step.  June went on to explain that all the home studies were due the next day and we had to submit ours to even be considered. 

The way that this whole process works is basically as follows.  Step one: Hear about/inquire about certain children available for adoption.  Your caseworker usually tells about kids that are available for adoption and meet your specifications.  He or she gives you, the prospective parents, whatever information they are privy to in order to assist in decision-making.  Step two: You submit your home study.  This is all of your paperwork as well as the outside agency’s home study assessment (which I will discuss in a later post).  Step three: The home studies are reviewed by a board (from CPS, I would guess) of individuals who narrow it down to the top three families that seem like they would be a good fit.  Step four: The caseworkers for those three families meet together with this board to decide on a top choice for the kid(s).  Step five: The top family is notified that they have been chosen and then decide if they want to proceed with the adoption process.  The other two families are not made aware that they made the top three.

This is not the end of the journey, nor does this make anything official.  From that decision, there are still several steps to ensure that the family has a better idea what they are getting into before they even meet the kids.  This process is aimed to protect the privacy of the children (by not making their records available to more people than those that would need to see them) as well as their emotions (by not having the family meet them yet).

At this point in our journey, we just knew that our home study was submitted and we were waiting.  Our home study was submitted at the beginning of March and most of March passed without any news.  We trusted God that if this was what He desired we would get chosen.  

Someone Like You

After we finished our classes, there will still several small things to check off of our list.  We completed those around the end of January and received our license.  Our caseworker said that we should go to an event called the Heart Gallery. This event was to take place the first weekend in February and I was scheduled to work, but thankfully a friend took the shift for me.  I just had a feeling that we needed to be there.

Every year at Heart Gallery, many prospective adoptive parents are invited to come and hang out with children ages 5 and up that are legally free for adoption.   The idea is that you mingle with these kids and see if there are any “sparks”, which help to create an interest in adoption. There are tables where you can find out more information about the kids and speak to some caseworkers about the process.  CPS encourages parents to not spend too long talking to any particular child, but to chat for a bit and then move on to another child.  It is a strange, but wonderful activity.  My husband jokingly referred to it as speed dating for adoption. 

The younger kids just think the day is a fun festival—they can play games, color, win prizes and dance.  The older kids have figured out that this may be one of their last chances to get adopted and they try to make themselves more marketable.   After we got our lunch, we looked for a place to sit down.  A 16-year-old girl named Jamie smiled at us and waved and we felt like we should sit down with her.  Jamie was beautiful and polite and very set on trying to sell herself to us.  We had already determined that 10 years old was the oldest age that we were open to.  While my heart broke into pieces for this girl, we knew that it was important to stick to the boundaries that we had set and prayed about.  It has been almost 2 years since that day and I still pray that God gave her the perfect forever family.

After lunch, we wandered around and watched the kids playing together.  We saw these two young siblings coloring and decided to join them.  Phil talked with the little boy, who was 10-years-old, about basketball and LeBron James.  I talked to the little girl, who was 5, about cartoons and watched her color these little coloring sheets.  After she colored each page for exactly 10 seconds, she had me help her put them into her drawstring backpack that she got earlier in the day.  They were so sweet and so tiny, and we went to get more information on them.  A caseworker gave us a piece of paper with their photo and their names on it (and the girl’s name was misspelled). 

We went home and immediately emailed our caseworker about our interest in these kids.  We stuck their photo on our fridge and I showed it to friends and family as if these were already our children.  For those that don’t know me, I am a sharer.  As soon as I have good news, I want everyone to know.  I tend to rush into things as mentioned in an earlier post, and although I had still heard nothing from our caseworker, I really felt like these were “our kids”.  After waiting a week without a response from our caseworker, we emailed again.  We contacted CPS and found out that our caseworker had left the agency.  This occurrence is not uncommon in this type of work, as rates of burnout are exceptionally high, but it left us pretty bummed out.  So, we waited patiently (well, maybe not all that patiently) until we were assigned a new caseworker. 

To be continued…

For more information about adopting teens

https://adoption.com/whats-the-point-of-adopting-a-17-year-old-kid

Also, some statistics (credit: https://msw.usc.edu/mswusc-blog/adoption-infographic/)

Sitting, Waiting, Wishing

So, Phil and I began dating and were married about 7 months after that.  When going through our pre-marital counseling, we agreed that we would wait 5-7 years before having kids to just enjoy being newlyweds.  In year 5, we started contemplating kids and decided that it might be best to adopt first.

The thought behind this was that if we adopted first, it might let the child feel as if they were an integral part of the family, rather than an add-on to an already formed family.  No one way is better, this was just our thoughts on the matter.  Also, perhaps my experience as a labor and delivery nurse made me less than eager to have kids the old-fashioned way.

Along the way, we found the website adoptuskids.org.  It is pretty strange “shopping” for kids, but I think what it did do was spark our interest.  We found a precious little boy about 9 years old on there named Ben.  Ben is a favorite name of ours, and he had dimples and glasses, so we were sold.

The first step when adopting through CPS is attending a local informational meeting, which lasts about 2 hours.  The meeting gave a brief overview of the process, and they pretty much shattered our dreams about little Ben.  The well-meaning facilitators explained that adopting out-of-state was complicated and the process takes a while, so in all likelihood he would be adopted by then.  I’m not going to lie, I did tear up a bit over the loss of this child that I had seen online and read 1 paragraph about.  He was so cute and he already had the perfect name, so it was a foregone conclusion that he was for us.  I took comfort that he was going to find the perfect family, and that God knew what was best for us. 

At the meeting, they handed us a thick packet of information, which was to be completed and submitted.  This packet asked questions like the age, gender, and race of children we were open to.  We turned in the paperwork, but things with Phil’s job were becoming more uncertain, so we put adoption on hold for about a year.

To be continued…