I haven't updated in awhile. I try to keep most of you updated in other ways but I still really want to have this as a way of documenting the experiences and emotions that we are going through during all of this. Here is a quick refresher....
After having Freedom and Redd, we had two little boys for a short stay named Ashton and Jack. It was funny having them. Tukker and Jack were smitten with each other and Tukker ended the weekend by declaring her love :) It was super cute and simultaneously disturbing.
After that we didn't have any placements for a while. We were really anxious for a long term placement and starting to worry that we were not getting those placements because they were saving us for short term placements and they didn't want to lose that convenience. Finally we got another placement on December 14th of two little boys. The foster family was going out of town and needed respite care. They felt bad leaving them because it was only their first week in care. The foster mom told me that the boys would likely become available for adoption in the future so if we liked them we should spend more time getting to know them. At the time we were only wanting one girl to adopt so I laughed at the idea of adopting two small boys.
By the end of the weekend (or the end of that night) We had begun to open our minds up to having more than 4 kids. These little guys were just a joy and we really loved having them in our home. They changed the game for us. In the last 2 months we have spent as much time as we possibly can with 3 year old Danny and 2 year old Jude. We have fallen in love with them and we have done everything we can to put ourselves in the best position we can to be able to adopt them if that becomes an option.
Finally, this Friday, February 15th 2013, the boys are moving in to our home. We have prepared their beds, dressers, clothes, toys and schedules. We have worked to see that the transition is as smooth as posible for us and for them. Now that the day is approaching, I am terrified! What if they don't ever love me as much as I already love them? What if they are not as happy here in our home as they have been in their current foster home? What if we can't give them all the things they want because we now have FIVE kids to care for and only so much money? Now it is time for me to stop myself from thinking that way. It's okay if I am scared about all the paperwork, and all the appointments, all the stuff that I was taught in training but haven't had in hands on experience with. That's okay. I will get through all that. As for the happiness and well being of these precious boys??? That I can't waste time being scared about. I love them almost as much as my own. The only thing holding back my love is the fear and realization that they could be taken from us. Until our names and their come together on a court paper saying I am their mommy and David is their daddy, we could lose them.Scary. But it's worth it, We love them and even if they are only with us for a year or 18 months, we are going t be a huge important part of their childhood. We were there for them when they needed someone the most and that makes us there parents even if we have to share the title with others.
I am so excited. I hope and pray that adoption finalization will roll around smoothly and we will have our fears soothed and the boys will be Bubel's forever. If that doesn't happen however we will face that when it comes and we will come out stronger in the end having amazing experiences.
One more thought, I was at the dentist the other day. My hygienist asked why we want to adopt? She said that she had thought about it before but that she couldn't ever truly bond with a child without sharing the magic of pregnancy and nursing with them. . . I didn't say anything. The words were stuck in my heart and soul and couldn't find their way to my mouth. I just smiled and nodded. Now, the words have come. I know now what I would say to her if I could go back again. A baby that you bring into this world, you love with an undeniable natural instinct. You never have a choice to love that child you just love them. Falling in love with a child that you didn't create? It takes an unfathomable amount of work. Not that all the work is hard or bad but it is work. You have to be patient and you have to learn to see this world from a point of view that you would never find yourself in. You have to open your heart and your mind and learn to love them. Then it happens, you find yourself crying in happiness over some small milestone this child reached or missing them with your whole self when they are away from you. That child has become your own in every way that matters. Finally in that moment all the tough stuff and work doesn't matter any more because you have this baby in your world and imprinted on your soul for eternity. It is a whole new kind of magic. That is why I want to adopt.
More to come soon. Wish us luck!
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Monday, October 29, 2012
Our wait is over!
We had our first placement! The first one was just a respite placement but it was fun and we adored the kids :) Before I go any further let me explain the type of placements that we are taking;
Transitional Respite- Sometimes when case workers remove children from a home they do not have a foster home available to immediately bring them to. So while they look for a foster home they bring them to a respite family (like us!) Who help them understand what is happening and cope a little bit. These placements will usually be for just a few days or sometimes only a single night. Then the children move on to a more permanent foster home and work on reunification with the biological family.
Respite- Foster parents have 14 days a year that they can put the foster children who are with them into a respite home so that they can go out of town or if they have a medical issue or something like that. The state pays the respite family to babysit so that they know the kids are in a good licensed home. These are also usually a short coupe days.
Foster- These children would be placed in our home for a longer period. anywhere from 3-12 months. They could also potentially become available for us to adopt in which case we most likely would. During the time they are with us we would be helping them to work on reuniting with there parents. The parents spend that time going through intensive therapy and work to reach multiple steps to earn the kids back. They get to see the children for one hour once a week for visitation while they do the work.
So now that I got that out of the way, we had a respite placement! It was just for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We had freedom who was Three and her ten year old brother, Red. They were great kids and we had so much fun. We were lucky enough to have them during Halloween weekend while we were doing pumpkins and what not.
There is a good chance we will have them again :)
Transitional Respite- Sometimes when case workers remove children from a home they do not have a foster home available to immediately bring them to. So while they look for a foster home they bring them to a respite family (like us!) Who help them understand what is happening and cope a little bit. These placements will usually be for just a few days or sometimes only a single night. Then the children move on to a more permanent foster home and work on reunification with the biological family.
Respite- Foster parents have 14 days a year that they can put the foster children who are with them into a respite home so that they can go out of town or if they have a medical issue or something like that. The state pays the respite family to babysit so that they know the kids are in a good licensed home. These are also usually a short coupe days.
Foster- These children would be placed in our home for a longer period. anywhere from 3-12 months. They could also potentially become available for us to adopt in which case we most likely would. During the time they are with us we would be helping them to work on reuniting with there parents. The parents spend that time going through intensive therapy and work to reach multiple steps to earn the kids back. They get to see the children for one hour once a week for visitation while they do the work.
So now that I got that out of the way, we had a respite placement! It was just for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We had freedom who was Three and her ten year old brother, Red. They were great kids and we had so much fun. We were lucky enough to have them during Halloween weekend while we were doing pumpkins and what not.
There is a good chance we will have them again :)
Thursday, October 25, 2012
A little good news
I intend to eventually be able to post pictures and write a little about each child that comes into our lives on this blog. So far we are yet to have one of these so called children. I was beginning to think no one wanted us to have any kids :( Luckily that is not the case.
Adoption update: We have been inquiring on child after child trying to be considered for adoption of many kids who are already legally free ( Parents rights have already been relinquished). We have gotten some what far in the process for a few children but so far have not been chosen. I am attempting to be patient and understanding when we are not chosen. I know that they are very picky when it comes to who gets these kids and they are right to do so. These kids have had it tough and deserve to be very carefully placed. I will continue to inquire on child after child and keep my fingers crossed that we will soon be the best match for the right child!
Foster care update: We have now been licensed and waiting for a placement for 4 months. We were asked to take the 3 different short term placements but none of them worked out for one reason or another. We had not however been asked to take any ong term foster placement. I had a meeting with our case worker, Elaine on Monday and I got a lot of refreshing news. A big part of why we had not been given placements was because she had not updated our profile with a new assessment. We were apparently supposed to have this meeting a long while ago but she had been busy and not gotten to us. Now that we are all updated we should start seeing a lot more placement opportunities.
Elaine also spoke with me about Davids previous rug use. She mentioned that her boss Cody was wanting to wait until Davids 3 year sobriety anniversary before giving us any real serious foster placements that could turn into adoptions. His 3 year is in two weeks :) I am very proud of him and the man that he has become. He is so much different now and has grown so much that I really never think about those days anymore. Elaine said that she is going to start calling us first with all of the short term respite cases that she gets and we can take the ones that are good fits for us. That will give us some experience so that as soon as a Foster placement comes up for us we will be ready to go!
Updates to come soon I hope!
Adoption update: We have been inquiring on child after child trying to be considered for adoption of many kids who are already legally free ( Parents rights have already been relinquished). We have gotten some what far in the process for a few children but so far have not been chosen. I am attempting to be patient and understanding when we are not chosen. I know that they are very picky when it comes to who gets these kids and they are right to do so. These kids have had it tough and deserve to be very carefully placed. I will continue to inquire on child after child and keep my fingers crossed that we will soon be the best match for the right child!
Foster care update: We have now been licensed and waiting for a placement for 4 months. We were asked to take the 3 different short term placements but none of them worked out for one reason or another. We had not however been asked to take any ong term foster placement. I had a meeting with our case worker, Elaine on Monday and I got a lot of refreshing news. A big part of why we had not been given placements was because she had not updated our profile with a new assessment. We were apparently supposed to have this meeting a long while ago but she had been busy and not gotten to us. Now that we are all updated we should start seeing a lot more placement opportunities.
Elaine also spoke with me about Davids previous rug use. She mentioned that her boss Cody was wanting to wait until Davids 3 year sobriety anniversary before giving us any real serious foster placements that could turn into adoptions. His 3 year is in two weeks :) I am very proud of him and the man that he has become. He is so much different now and has grown so much that I really never think about those days anymore. Elaine said that she is going to start calling us first with all of the short term respite cases that she gets and we can take the ones that are good fits for us. That will give us some experience so that as soon as a Foster placement comes up for us we will be ready to go!
Updates to come soon I hope!
Monday, August 27, 2012
Mentor Program
waiting, waiting and WAITING!!! Feels like it has been forever since we got our license and we still don't have a placement! It is so hard for me to wait patiently for something like this. To pass the time I have spent a lot of time "shopping" for a daughter in the adoption profiles. There have been a few that I have been interested in and inquired on but no luck yet. They are very picky about who they will consider for adoptive families and that is understandable. Those kids deserve to have some one be picky for them and hold out for the best.
Some of you probably remember a few months ago I was really interested in a girl named Shade. She feels familiar to me and I am always drawn to her profile for some reason. I feel like I am meant to be in her life somehow. After a lot of thought and talking to a lot of people we decided that we were probably not the best fit to be her parents because she is 15 and would likely feel as if we were more like older siblings when she really needs a mom and dad. Ever since we made that decision I think about her a lot and about all the other older kids who are available for adoption but will most likely not ever be adopted. They call it "Aging out of the system" But that is just fancy talk for leaving them to fend for them self when they turn 18. There are not very many support systems for these kids and they will live the rest of there life without a forever familly. Graduations, wedding, pregnancies, births, and everything in-between will be experiences without the support and love of parents and siblings. I don't know that I can think of a darker more lonely life.
The one resource that these kids have to help them to cope is a mentor program. Of course I had to join. It pairs stable, adjusted adults with 17-19 year old teens coming out of foster care. They set each mentor up with 1 or 2 kids at a time and ask that you mentor them for 2 years as they adjust and become independent. They need help looking for jobs, applying for college, finding apartments, learning to budget, shop cook, clean and some of them need guidance in parenting if they have become young parents them self.
Some day, when our young kids are grown I think I would enjoy taking in teens and becoming there forever family. Until then I hope that this mentor program can be a way for me to make a difference for a small number of them.
Some of you probably remember a few months ago I was really interested in a girl named Shade. She feels familiar to me and I am always drawn to her profile for some reason. I feel like I am meant to be in her life somehow. After a lot of thought and talking to a lot of people we decided that we were probably not the best fit to be her parents because she is 15 and would likely feel as if we were more like older siblings when she really needs a mom and dad. Ever since we made that decision I think about her a lot and about all the other older kids who are available for adoption but will most likely not ever be adopted. They call it "Aging out of the system" But that is just fancy talk for leaving them to fend for them self when they turn 18. There are not very many support systems for these kids and they will live the rest of there life without a forever familly. Graduations, wedding, pregnancies, births, and everything in-between will be experiences without the support and love of parents and siblings. I don't know that I can think of a darker more lonely life.
The one resource that these kids have to help them to cope is a mentor program. Of course I had to join. It pairs stable, adjusted adults with 17-19 year old teens coming out of foster care. They set each mentor up with 1 or 2 kids at a time and ask that you mentor them for 2 years as they adjust and become independent. They need help looking for jobs, applying for college, finding apartments, learning to budget, shop cook, clean and some of them need guidance in parenting if they have become young parents them self.
Some day, when our young kids are grown I think I would enjoy taking in teens and becoming there forever family. Until then I hope that this mentor program can be a way for me to make a difference for a small number of them.
Monday, August 6, 2012
So close but no cigar :(
I was so excited to have these two little girls with us for our first respite placement. Tuesday morning the foster mother of the girls called to let me know that the bio grandparents had decided to take them for the weekend so we wouldn't be needed after all. I was a little bummed but I know that the girls will be happier to have spent that time with grandma and grandpa. I am now axiously awaiting our next placement oppertunity. Our trainer told us during training that we should try not to be to excited about placements seeing as how for us to get a placement a child has to be in a bad situation. We don't want to wish that n any child even if it does mean we get a baby to love for a while. :)
Elaine ( Our case worker) Emailed me today to ask if we were interested in a 6 day respite placement of four boys. The boys are quite a bit older then we were planning on taking on and David is currently out of town on work so I felt like it was best to turn it down and let the boys go to a home more suited for them for the week. I think David would have had a heart attack had he come home to 4 preteen/teenaged boys haha. He was a little caught off guard when we were called so quickly for the first time to take the two girls! I felt like it was the begining of the next step after a long wait but he felt surprised and almost not quite ready :) Difference between a man and a woman I suppose ;)
Until next time...
Elaine ( Our case worker) Emailed me today to ask if we were interested in a 6 day respite placement of four boys. The boys are quite a bit older then we were planning on taking on and David is currently out of town on work so I felt like it was best to turn it down and let the boys go to a home more suited for them for the week. I think David would have had a heart attack had he come home to 4 preteen/teenaged boys haha. He was a little caught off guard when we were called so quickly for the first time to take the two girls! I felt like it was the begining of the next step after a long wait but he felt surprised and almost not quite ready :) Difference between a man and a woman I suppose ;)
Until next time...
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
We are foster parents!!
David and I are about to begin a whole new exciting side of parenthood. We are Foster parents! I wanted a new blog to journal this journey, all though our journey certainly didn't start here. We decided about a year ago that The foster Care system was going to be our road to adoption. We worked together to get through all of the training and preparing. All the hard work has finally paid off as we will get our first placement in two days! We are doing respite care along with regular foster care. Respite is short term like 2-3 days while fostering can be as long as a year or turn into an adoption into our forever family.
I am not able to post specific details about the children online and I am not supposed to display these children publicly. I have decided that I will blog about each child here for my family to see in this private blog then I will keep my own physical scrapbook of all the children here at home where I can feel free to include as many details and pictures as I want :) Well here goes! I am sooooooo excited to post about our first two little girls this weekend :)
I am not able to post specific details about the children online and I am not supposed to display these children publicly. I have decided that I will blog about each child here for my family to see in this private blog then I will keep my own physical scrapbook of all the children here at home where I can feel free to include as many details and pictures as I want :) Well here goes! I am sooooooo excited to post about our first two little girls this weekend :)
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