Collateral

Our collateral meeting has been scheduled for this Tuesday!  Their caseworker, along with a county permanency worker and an intern, will come to our home and spend a few hours discussing the case.  There will be opportunity for us to ask questions and for them to ask questions of us as well.  Our worker has been so helpful throughout this process and has given us pointers and things to be prepared to answer.  We did find out that there are two other families interviewing, so they have it narrowed down to the top three candidates.  It is all a bit nerve-wracking, but I have a peace about it and hope that we can convey our interest and dedication to bringing these kiddos home.  

Our kids are getting more excited as this becomes more real.  

Natalie, my mother hen, told me last night, "Mom, what is good about me being the oldest is that if they are sad and you need to be with them, I can help take care of Ingrid and Caroline."  

Teddy is probably the most excited of all the kiddos.  He prays for them every night and brings them up in conversation regularly.

Four and a half days for me to prepare and get my home prepped and ready!!  Can't wait!!

The Next Step

This morning I woke up especially bummed about the waiting and wondering about what is happening with this adoption.  I called my sister who said, 

"You sound sad, did you get a call?"  

"No," I replied, "just sick and tired of not knowing anything!" 

Later as I was in process of emailing my worker for this week's update, my other sister called and encouraged me to just give her a call.  I hung up, called my worker and left a voicemail, and called my sister back. 

One minute after hanging up with my sister, my phone's display lit up with my worker's number.  I answered it and forced my cheeriest "hello".  She greeted me and then said, 

"You'll never guess what I am looking at..."

"Please, please, please tell me it's an email!?!" I practically begged.  Scratch that, I literally begged.

"Yep! And I am forwarding it on to you right now.  Now let's see, where is your email... man I have a lot of Sarah's in my address book... ok now Justin's email...."

As she gave me this play by play of forwarding the email, I felt like I was a contestant on a competition game where they build up the suspense to say who the winner is.  I wanted to scream... "Just read it to me on the phone!!"

She sent the email and said that their caseworker contacted her to say that they had just finished reviewing home studies and were wondering if we were still interested in pursuing the case.  She wanted to set up a meeting and was asking about our availability.

So just like that, after moping around and feeling sorry for myself all morning, I found out that we are moving onto the next step!  This meeting is called a "collateral" and is where the team working with kids meets with the team working with parents and they share more information about the case.  In some ways, it is kind of like a job interview... except you are interviewing to be parents.

I do not know if there are other families meeting with their team, or if there are, how many.  I don't know if they will like us or if we will end up being the adoptive placement they go with.  But I do know that I haven't wiped the smile off my face all day and am THRILLED to even be moving on to the next step!!

Thank you for your prayers and keep them coming!!

Guarding my Heart

It has officially been one month since we received the call about the placement we are currently pursuing.  In my last post, I shared the timeline of up to the end of August when we had received an email saying that their team was still processing through home studies and would get back to us the following week.  Since that email 3 weeks ago, we have heard nothing.  Nada.  Zip.

Our worker has reached out via email and left voice mails but has not gotten a response.  I am sure that there are more pressing cases on their workload and trying to coordinate schedules to review the home studies as a team is a challenge in and of itself.  Our worker sweetly reassures us that this is not an abnormal timeline and says we should not lose hope yet.  She also encourages us to guard our hearts as nothing is cut and dry in the foster care world and we really won't know what will happen until they say "Let's make a plan to transition them into your home".

The thing is, I know that I shouldn't get attached, but I already have.

When I am making meals for my freezer, I am mentally portioning for the increased household size.

When we tuck our kiddos in at night, they pray for their siblings.

When we sit down to eat a meal together, I envision little bodies in the empty chairs.

When we are having family time watching a movie, roasting marshmallows, or shooting hoops, I can't help but wish they were here to enjoy it with us.

In a conversation with a couple of other adoptive mamas, they referred to cases they had not been selected to pursue and how it really felt like a miscarriage.  They had invested so much energy and thought and prayers into bringing this child home, and when it didn't happen it felt like such a loss.

I know that for the sake of self-protection I should prepare for the worst and mentally prep myself for the call that says we are no longer being considered.  But my glass half-full, optimistic disposition won't allow it.

So for now, I will continue to clean my house with a fine tooth comb, fill my freezer with meals, and organize and label everything in sight.  Prayers accepted!!

The Waiting Game

Last time I wrote on here, we had received what felt like "the call". The call we have been waiting for on this adoption journey.  The call where our case manager shared with us about an adoptive placement and I scribbled furiously on the pages of my notebook trying to dictate every word she spoke.  The call where the kaleidoscope of butterflies in my stomach began swarming and beating their wings at fever pitch. The call that I hung up the phone and then immediately picked it back up and dialed my husband at work to regurgitate every detail and get his confirmation to move forward.

What's ironic in all this is that while this call was good and promising and exciting, it really was just a call. It was our case manager presenting a case to us like she has done before on multiple other occasions.  Yet it felt like so much more. I can compare it to the feeling of when you are trying to get pregnant and you feel the slightest bit of nausea, or tenderness, or even just note that you have a heightened sense of smell.  You don't know yet if you are expecting, but you begin to get excited and think of all the other "symptoms" you've been experiencing. It's too early to take a test, but you cross your fingers and pray that this is really it, that soon you will see those two pink lines on the pregnancy test and confirm what you already know in your heart.

There isn't much to update on since this call, but I want to share the details of this journey with you in the off chance that you have been considering adoption yourself and want to experience it vicariously first! And you know, if you felt like praying on my behalf, I wouldn't turn you down!

The call was received on Monday, August 21st. Our worker had seen a new listing fitting our search parameters on the private listing service they utilize. She had emailed the listing worker expressing she had a family that might be a good fit and requesting more information. Within minutes, the listing worker called her having reviewed the short family bio our worker had attached to her email. She said "This family sounds perfect for this case! Tell more about them! What can I tell you that they would want to know?!" Our worker took down all the information to share with us and requested photos before ending the call and calling me. After we confirmed we wanted to move forward, our worker emailed the listing worker our home study, a formal 14 page document all about our family, and stated we were very interested in moving to the next step. On Tuesday morning, we received photos. They were just candid snapshots taken on the foster home's stairs, but my goodness... all the heart eyes!

Then nothing.

No updates Wednesday. Nothing Thursday. Friday we crossed our fingers that we'd hear something before the weekend, but still nothing. The weekend passed, and with it Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday...

This waiting business is for the birds!

Our worker left another voicemail Wednesday, but texted at the end of the business day that she had not heard back.  I began to write a script of what might be happening. Maybe another family was a perfect match and was already lining up placement arrangements. Maybe the current foster family decided to pursue adoption. Maybe the listing worker was too busy and hadn't even had time to review the case.

Meanwhile, we are in limbo. I am vacillating between the hopeful giddiness of awaiting confirmation that I am indeed expecting, and the realistic/pessimistic view that we very well may not be. All the while, the nesting instinct that takes over when you are in the final days of your third trimester has creeped in. "If this is happening, I need to prepare," my mind shouts. I clean out fridges and purge through the deep freeze. I reorganize closets and sort through clothing. I kick the bathroom renovation into high gear. I even sorted my husband's tools in the garage!

Finally our worker forwarded an email from the listing worker yesterday.  It didn't say much, but it was something!! She stated they were still reviewing home studies, but that our family was still on the list. She didn't anticipate calling until next week, but wanted to send an update in the meantime.

So now we wait!

The Winds of Change

We have been home study approved for just over a month.  I am learning patience is not my virtue as this month has seemingly taken approximately 3 years to pass. Up until today the most recent referral we had was a very challenging set of 3 that also had a child older than our oldest (a parameter we are not willing to budge on).

We were called on Friday about an emergency placement. We are not on the list of families for emergency placements, but our worker wanted to see how we felt about this concept and decided to share with us. Three little girls needed immediate care until at least Tuesday. These cases are nearly always temporary and do not generally lead to permanency. They are the opposite of what we are looking to pursue, yet I felt a very strong resolve to say "Yes". I conferred with my hubby, sharing all the details that were shared with me, and he was on the same page, so I called back and confirmed that we were willing.

Our worker then shared what we should expect with emergency placements - late night or middle of the night arrival, check for lice, bathe, wash all clothing, provide pjs, feed them, prep bedding for accidents and have spare sheets ready, prepare for emotionally traumatized kiddos and the behaviors that may follow.  This dose of reality was hard to swallow. Not that I was unwilling to do these things or care for these kiddos, but that this is what their night was going to be like. I took mental notes before we hung up and was thinking through how we would rearrange sleeping quarters when she called back.  "The county has declined this placement because you are located too many miles away from the placing county".  She had prefaced our initial conversation with this possibility, but I was still taken aback.  I had felt so strongly that I was being led out of my comfort zone and now was being shut down.

Talking with my sister later that night she said, "maybe that strong feeling of resolve was a push toward foster care" (vs strictly adoption from foster care).  This ran through my mind over the weekend and conversing with another friend with experience in the field made me consider it more. After chatting with my hubby about it, I called our case manager this morning and asked about foster care versus adoption from foster care. We discussed some of the ethics of pursuing both avenues at the same time, and settled on continuing to pursue adoption as well as concurrent, (or pre-adoptive) placements, and adding our names to the emergency placement list. We spent a lot of time talking about how to prepare for emergency placements, what items to have on hand, and after we were done talking, the kids and I began making lists. Stuffed animals and blankets for them to snuggle up with, plastic mattress protectors and spare sheets, pulls ups and diapers in various sizes, jammies for various sizes and both genders, bags with a drink and snack for placements that we would drive to meet halfway, and maybe another twin mattress and boxspring.

I was really in this mode of thinking throughout the afternoon and when I missed a call from my worker and received a text asking me to call her I got butterflies in my stomach. Of course we had to play phone tag for a bit before I actually got ahold of her, but when I did, she said she needed 15 minutes of my time and that I needed a pen and paper.

Over the next 28 minutes she shared with me about an adoptive placement that had just been listed. It is early in the game yet, but I feel like this was "the call"! Adoption is never simple and straightforward, so I hesitate to share anything yet, but if you felt like shooting up a few prayers on our behalf - I would be grateful!!

Quick update

Just a super-short update (for those who are following this journey) to say that we were finally home study approved on July 18th!  I figured since it is 2:00 am and I can't sleep, I might as well post here! In addition to the 6 referrals I mentioned in my last post, we have been shown two more.  One was placed before we were licensed and the other was not a good fit with our family at this time.  I am confident that God knows what He is doing and the set He has in mind for our family is out there and will join us in His timing.  Now to pray for patience!!

Hurry up and wait

Hurry up and wait. That's how I am feeling about the adoption process currently. So many friends, family, and acquaintances have excitedly asked me for an update on our process, and I wish I had something exciting to share, but I don't just yet!

We had expected to have our home study approved on June 8th when they came for our final home visit. But because another state that we lived in within the last 5 years required a separate release form for our background check, we had to sign that that day and we are still awaiting our background checks to clear before we can be approved. The most frustrating part is that we have literally nothing to check!

Thankfully, our case manager is very sweet and has sent us a few referrals to look over as we are awaiting licensure.  We are looking to adopt from foster care which means that the children we are considering have already had their parental rights terminated. In other words, we are not fostering them while they work toward reunification with their family, we are strictly adopting. When our case manager asked if we were interested in a concurrent placement - or a foster to adopt scenario - we did say that we would consider it, but that we were leaning heavily in the other direction. 

Of the 6 referrals she sent, five were adoption oriented and one was a concurrent placement.  The latter was sent more as an FYI since the format of information is a little different and our case manager wanted us to see what the differences were.

One of our main objectives is to keep our oldest biological child the oldest child overall.  We are going to be licensed for a sibling set of 2-3 with the oldest being 8 years old or younger. Of the 5 adoption referrals that were sent, two were sibling sets of 2, two were sibling sets of 3, and one was a set of 4. 

The set of four was again sent as more of an FYI and was definitely the most heart-wrenching to read.

If you allow yourself to enter into their situation while reading - 

you see past the "is a harm to them self" 

and see that they haven't been shown their self-worth; 

you read "acts like a mother hen" 

and know that they have always been responsible to care for their younger siblings; 

you know that the reason they "rarely seek comfort in times of distress" 

is because they never found it when they did; 

and when you read that the four year old child has already been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and "worries about leaving his bedroom every morning without permission", 

you want to hunt down the person who instilled such fear in their baby and teach them a thing or two.

This set of four was out of almost every parameter we have set, so they were not a good match with our family. But thankfully, they have a match in process!

Of the four remaining referrals of sibling sets of 2-3 kiddos, three had kiddos older than our oldest, and one was within our parameters for age.

The very hardest part of this whole process (outside of waiting!) is feeling like you could justify adopting every single referral you receive! You read "these children would do best in a home where they are the only children", yet somehow manage to find a way that your four biological children would somehow still fit into that mix! You see that they are older than your oldest biological child - outside the parameter you have specifically set because of many conversations with adoptive families, perspectives from adoptees, and a plethora of best practices that have come out from studies, podcasts, articles, etc. - and still you daydream about bringing them home!

All that to say that until our home study is approved, our hands are tied, but we are hoping to find out more about the one set that was in our parameters and any others that may pop up on our radar once our profile goes live!