Adoption Class #9 (1 More To Go!)

3/24/08

(Yes this is late. I'm battling the stomach bug that the kids I nanny for had on Monday....)

Tonight's class was on "Teamwork and Partnership in Foster Care and Adoption".

This was our favorite class by far. In tonight's class they brought in a panel of foster and adoptive parents to tell us about their experiences and to answer questions we had. All three families that they had come in were truly inspirational. All three families got into foster-to-adopt with no intentions of age-range, just to help out a child that needed a family. Two couples were adopting 18-year-olds. The common person thinks, why are you adopting an adult? But their stories were amazing. Those 18-year-olds want a family just as much as a 5-year-old. A single mother was there and she had one biological daughter, 5 adopted children, and 2 more foster children. And her kids were so well-behaved! It was so nice to see the bond that existed between the children (and the 18 year olds) and their adoptive parent(s). Much of our classes have centered around the possible worst-case-scenarios available in our route of adoption and it was refreshing to see that this actually does work!

It gave us all hope for a successful adoption.

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At one point in class we had to share a teamwork experience, and since Josh shared this embarrassing fact about us in class, I'll now share it with you:

When Josh and I work together toward something we call ourselves "Team Jalicia". So say we are going to clean the house together-we have a quick meeting divvying up the tasks and then we'll do it football-huddle-style and "break" to our tasks yelling with enthusiasm "Jalicia"! True story. We are such dorks.

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AND even BETTER news!!!! We found out last night that the little girl that sparked our whole wanting to adopt in the first place, Zaynah, is STILL AVAILABLE! So as soon as our home study is written up we'll be sending it to her case worker asap! We thought she was no longer available because she was taken off the database, but she is! I'm trying to find an old picture of her I had from when she was on the database, but can't find it. Anyways, she's a doll! Now we're just hoping our home study gets written up quickly!

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I am home sick today and Josh took a work-from-home day so we are going over the little details that we need to finish up for the process. (Just when we think we're done...we check the list and realize we're not....)

Here's what we have left to do:

-Post floor plan and fire escape plan in house

-Post emergency phone list

-Fill out fire safety form

-Copy marriage certificate

-Make up digi-scrapbook page for our portfolio (need advice of which site people like to use?)

-Lock up Josh's tools

-New lock on basement door

-New lock on garage door

-Fire extinguisher for garage

-Put up handrails in stairwells

-Last MAPP adoption class on Tuesday, March 31st from 6-9pm

-Meds training on April 15th from 6:30-9:00pm

-TCI training on Monday May 4th from 6-10pm

-Get fingerprinting done!

Phew!

Our home study write-up will be done by May and then they come through for the final inspection.

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I've had several people ask how quickly can the process happen of getting our child. Once our home study and trainings and background check are complete we can start to send out our profile to potential children's case workers. Depending on how quickly we are approved for a particular child we then work toward a smooth transition into our house for the child. (ie; we don't just show up and take the child away with us. We work up to it by visiting, etc). Then the child comes to live with us and is "ours" but is still technically a foster child until the adoption goes through which can take around 6 months. Maybe longer, but they'll be dealing with me and I'm not the sit-back-and-wait kind of person. So I guess we could have a kid as soon as this summer IF everything happened quickly, but the adoption wouldn't be finalized until around the New Year.

"When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us." Alexander Graham Bell