We have clearance!

The turn-around was really fabulous on this one. While we were on vacation, we received a call from the CI that the final home study had been submitted on November 26, and the following week we received the official letter with signatures on it stating we are cleared and ready to roll.

Of course, the children we're seeking for adoption are typically not often available, which is why we chose the foster-adoption route this time around. So our files will be sent to the county foster offices eventually (date unspecified) and we'll see what they need. But we're moving forward!

CI Interview II Report

Yesterday the CI called and said she had a cancellation for this morning, so we took it! Speed is always a good thing. She arrived at 8:30 and left a little after 10:00, and the questions weren't as intense as they were on Wednesday. Topics covered today:

• Child checklist: what behaviors/history/disabilities are we willing/not willing to accept/consider in a child/birth family. While this sounds difficult (and it is) because everything on the list could happen to anyone, the choices need to be made as to what needs, if any, we're simply not physically able or prepared to meet. Not being prepared to deal with basic needs while a child is recovering from trauma is something they'd like to avoid in general. That said, almost everything on the list (as far as behaviors) are developmentally appropriate for the age range we're looking at, so this part wasn't really that complicated.
• Level of comfort/concerns/personal perspectives on continuing birth family/important other people contact
• Finances and Will/future plans for child
• How would you respond if... child/family/public did/said...
• How will you address the concept of adoption/questions/birth family search (when older) with the child
• How will you handle child/adult offering information on trauma/details 
• Importance of our faith/plans for child
• Plans for discipline/views of child development
• Plans for daily child care/babysitters/respite providers 

Then we showed her around the house (Katharine, she approved of the bathrooms! Thank you!) and she made lots of notes, and that was that!

So now we wait again. But it sounds like we won't wait very long, at least not with her part. She will write up what she has to write up and submit it to our social worker at the beginning of next week, and call us to let us know she submitted it. Then our social worker will make any corrections and send it back to her, she'll make the changes, resubmit, and call us again. She estimates that process will be done before we travel for the holiday. Then, over our trip, they'll (theoretically) get the paperwork to the county foster office and we'll go from there.

I really have no idea if we'll have a placement right away, but there's potential. We have not yet been assigned a foster care social worker, so we'll have to get connected there and find out what we need to complete the clearance. But if they're as motivated as the CI, we could... maybe... have a child for Christmas. I'm starting to get excited again, but still feeling like I probably shouldn't quite yet.

The CI also asked if we were being foster cleared for multiple counties, which is something that hadn't come up as a possibility. There's apparently a much higher need for foster care in Charleston County, which is not our county, so if we can get multiple clearances, it may help things move more quickly as well. We'll follow up on that when we hear from our social worker.

Again, and always, thank you for your ongoing prayers!

CI Interview I report

I am exhausted.  They say that people's favorite subject to talk about is themselves, but three hours of it in a row with a lot riding on it really takes it out of you. Our CI was very sociable, making it more like a strongly guided conversation and less like an interrogation. She spent some time talking to both of us together, then half an hour or so with Lanse and then with me, and then both together again. Prior to today, people had asked what kind of things she needed to know, so here's some things we talked about:

• Adoption: why/how so far/reception of family & friends/concerns/hopes
• Parents/brothers/sisters/additional family and their past/work/hobbies and our relationship with them as a child/currently and amount of time we talk to/see them
• Our childhood: hardships/hobbies/ personality/discipline/chores/jobs
• Our formative years/events/hardships/ losses and our methods of coping/healing
• Our marriage/communication/routines/ decisionmaking/changes expected by a child's arrival
• Our/family's health: physical/mental/ emotional and how/why/treatment and how it affects us

So just a few little things. She will be back either Monday or Tuesday and we'll finish out with a bunch of other things, including the child checklist, other specifics on the children we're prepared to parent, finances, and the house itself. Of course, after all our housework, she didn't look at it today... but hopefully we'll be able to keep it mostly clean through the weekend.

And now that I've unwound a bit, it's time for some lunch!  Thank you all for your ongoing prayers!

CI Tomorrow

Tomorrow morning at 8:30 the CI will be here to begin our interview process. She should be here for two or three hours, and we'll talk about everything, apparently. We were told that she's really good and "very thorough". Thank the Lord that I woke up yesterday with scads of energy, something that almost never happens! I was able to clean the main areas of the house, put away all the filing, balance the budget, read four chapters of homework, and cook a steak dinner. Amazing!

Today, however, there's not so much energy. The medication I'm on at the moment is making me twitchy and feeling at loose ends, but I'm exhausted and don't really want to move. Even so, this morning I cleared up the kid's room and put bedding out, so that room is lovely, found another stack of books and had to rearrange the shelves to make them fit (a task I actually enjoy, so long as I don't get sucked into reading things), and aside from a small list of incidentals, I only have the upstairs loft left to straighten. Most of that is done already, and I just need to finish filling up the BORC (Box Of Random Stuff) and shove it in the attic. I also have to clean my bathroom floor, which is tiny, so that's okay. Doesn't sound like much compared to yesterday, but it's been a lot harder to get going today.

I appear to have wandered a bit. I find it interesting, though, how our attitudes have changed each time we've done the homestudy. The first time through, we didn't make it to the home visit, so we didn't have to clean like this. The second time, we were tweaked out about every little detail, and friends from church volunteered to come over and help me deep scrub. We emptied and cleaned out all the cabinets and sanitized the entire house top to bottom. This time we're much more relaxed, and balanced on that edge of wanting it to be company-ready, but also accurately represent our style of living, which is not company-ready. I seem to be the only one actually stressing out about it, (though Lanse is under a lot of stress at work, so it's hard to tell) but I'm definitely not sweating what I think of as the small stuff. Of course, my definition of "the small stuff" is different from other people's. But I figure if we ever have to do a homestudy again, we'll probably just vaccuum and make the beds.

Pray for us tomorrow morning. I'll let you know how it goes!

Self-induced DSS meeting

We passed the fire inspection easily, he just checked the smoke detectors and that was about it. He'd already measured windows and suchlike last year, and he treated it mostly as an update, but since we haven't any children placed yet there were some things that he didn't have to deal with (like checking records of fire drills and escape routes and such). I did have to redo our floor plan drawing just a little bit because in my haste I put the screen porch on in the wrong place, blocking a window that they could feasibly need to access in an emergency. So that's done.

All of the reference letters have been received. THANK YOU to all of our lovely friends who helped refer us! I don't know if those will be updated every year or not; obviously I hope for the fewest items to update, but if they do, I'm sure you'll hear from us.

The title of this post occurred this morning. When we were going through this process with Bethany, they explained to us that the autobiography interviews and the home visits were the ways in which our social worker gets to know us better as individuals, and we build that trust relationship. I know that I became much more comfortable working with them because of these steps. In the current system, however, we did not have to redo our autobiographies from the Bethany homestudy, and SC employs Certified Investigators (CI) - social workers whose only job is to travel around and do home visits and create the text of the homestudy from them. This person is not our personal social worker. So, I wondered, when do we get to know our own worker? I wrote and asked her how the process allowed for that opportunity, and she said, "How's Thursday morning at 10:00?"

So this morning we went to meet with her for the sole purpose of chatting about anything and becoming more comfortable with each other. I was really worried because when it came down to it, I didn't have any specific questions and didn't know what I'd say. I was also worried that by straying from "the way it officially works" we'd be labeled some of "THOSE" people, or that it would have negative repercussions somehow.

It ended up being a very nice hour. We mostly went over the process again, trying to identify those things which vary from the private agency approach, clarifying the differences between the adoption regional office and the foster county office and who does what, we shared photos of our niece and goddaughters, and chatted a little bit off topic about work, school, pets and life in general. It was a very good conversation, and accomplished what I had hoped: that we're now hopefully more comfortable working together.

Next Wednesday our CI comes to do the first of two home visits. Our lovely friend Katharine is coming tomorrow to help me do some deep cleaning that hasn't been done in a while, and hopefully everything will still be in order by Wednesday. After that visit we'll have a break for turkey day and then have the second visit (I assume that it won't be quick enough to finish before we travel, but you never know), and she'll wrap up the homestudy. Then it all goes over to the county foster office and we'll be licensed. Because we're hoping for very young children, there could be a bit of a wait... or we could have a temporary placement by Christmas. More uncertainty, but at least things are moving.

Thanks for your continued prayers!

DSS homestudy update

Here's a quick update for anyone still following along.  We've gone through the training weekend, which was incredibly informational and a bit overwhelming just to do it all in one weekend.  Our fire inspection is next Friday, our paperwork is all in, and then we just wait for the reference letters to arrive and we're good to move forward. 

After our adoption worker has all our information, she'll meet with us (I believe) and we'll get to know each other, and figure out what to do next.  I think we'll be working with both her and a foster care worker in Dorchester county (adoption is regionally handled, foster care is county level), so we'll be getting more information on that.

And that's all we know right now.  Please keep praying!! 

June already...

I recently realized that I hadn't written an update here since the homestudy was finalized. While part of that is because life simply got busy, or that we needed to have experienced something to write about, another part is due to a renewed sense of discomfort about the direction we're heading in. These kinds of feelings ebb and flow for me depending on the day, and I have been told repeatedly that the process of adoption is simply uncomfortable and intrusive and anxiety-filled, so we'd been trying not to put too much stock in it. Unfortunately, it still makes it difficult to hop online and blog things out for everyone.

Since we're new to this whole process, it seems wise to hire an agency (and social worker) to help us through the legalities and understanding what steps need to be taken so that we aren't taken advantage of or make any innocent mis-steps that get us into trouble legally or financially; thus our having signed with Bethany. We're following the directions of our social worker. But we're also, of course, trying to be aware of the subtle nudgings of God for our direction - we specifically chose a Christian agency in hopes that those elements will work together. Told that we needed to get the word out, we made the flyers that I posted about before. After that first initial "campaign" (only about a week) of sharing those with everyone, I felt strangely as though I needed to forget about it... became extremely self-conscious, and still am. A few weeks later it occurred to me that a full-sheet flyer is very difficult to share physically with people, so I sat down and designed business cards at one of those free sites, with all our adoption info on it so I could carry them in my purse. I got as far as the "submit order" button and realized I was NOT supposed to be doing this.... the best I can describe it is that the uncomfortable feeling turned to a disgust feeling and an inexplicable desire to run away from my computer. God seems to be telling me not to be yelling from the rooftops quite yet, and we have no idea why.

In the meantime, we began our search for children. Children in the care of the state are usually listed in an online database that, in most cases, includes photos; the databases are called Photolistings. There are a couple of national level photolistings - adoptuskids.org and photolistings.adoption.com - that I check a few times a week. There are some regional listings and adoption exchanges that cover a small handful of states, like nwae.org that covers some states in the North-West. Each state's Department of Child Services (or family services, or whatever that state calls it) has a photolisting, and some states have a photolisting available per county instead of one for the whole state. Then there are private organizations such as the Heart Gallery, which travels around to do advertising of hard-to-place kids in a physical location like an art gallery would show art, and Wednesday's Child, which features hard-to-place kids on TV during the news in different cities. This amounts to potentially 70+ websites that we could spend time searching through; though some children are repeated (some kids on the IL site could also be on the Heart Gallery or a national photolisting, for example). The purpose of looking through photolistings is to find a child who fits your criteria; unfortunately, some states are not allowed to post much of any useful information online, or only show the kids that have been in the system the longest, while other states list every single child in the state's custody, even if they're not adoptable for some reason. So in most cases we click a button, if we see a child we want more information about, and we wait to see how their social worker responds. Sometimes the social worker may not even hear from us... some agencies and departments sub-contract to another company to handle and forward the initial inquiries.

Which brings us to part of our despondency. We have set our criteria as broadly as is realistic for our family so that, if God decides a particular child is best for us, there would be fewer human road blocks. Kind of silly, thinking that tightened boundaries would limit God... I certainly don't think I have the power to do that... and yet, it seemed right at the time. We've begun to review our criteria, and I'm struggling with guilt of 'closing doors' just to fit the kind of family that I want. As it stands, our criteria are set to cover realistically what we could handle and are trained to handle, even if we don't really want to handle it. We're trying to be realistic; we wouldn't even get any kind of choice if we were going about this a bit more traditionally. Lanse also points out that God favors the willing, so in tightening our boundaries are we childishly saying no to God? We're talking, praying, reading, seeking His will. We're seeking wise counsel... meeting with our priest on Thursday to see how he might help us interpret what we're feeling and hearing.

In the meantime, we are maintaining our present course until we hear definitively otherwise. A couple of weeks ago, I once again sat down to look through photolistings, and a sense of hopelessness and despair just washed over me; I felt that the only possible way to welcome a peaceful and fun-loving child into our home would be to seriously stress our abilities in other areas... the kind of child that we want is simply not present in the photolistings. There's a big sense that we're making due to fit a philosophy we held when we began years ago that, frankly, I'm not sure I'm as convinced of anymore. But that Sunday I had spent in meditation, praying for guidance, questioning over and over why God very clearly brought us to this moment and nothing was happening. We were stalled for no apparent reason. I sat in front of my computer with children's faces on the screen, none of them mine, feeling chained to it... I couldn't close the window or let go of this desperate need to just DO something...and suddenly the answer just dropped quietly into my head: "She's not ready yet." And suddenly I was calm again and could move on to other things.

We're meant to wait; whoever "she" is, God is doing a work in her. It could be our child (we've both night-dreamed about a girl), it could be a birth mother or a foster mother, it could be a social worker... He could even mean me, and I'm trying to carefully assess myself just in case. But we know that the entire process is one of waiting, and that message didn't tell us to stop inquiring on children or looking at photos. We were not told to stop following our social worker's direction. So we've continued to look, and at one point I even felt drawn to the computer, compelled to look... and inquired on a child who did not fit the stated criteria but it just felt right to inquire. An infant, she was listed and removed from listing in three hours and was no longer available when I spoke to her social worker. I'm not sure what the purpose of the insistant feeling was in this case, but perhaps we'll find out.

I'm keeping a database of all the children for whom we've submitted inquiries. It's important to keep track so that we don't inquire multiple times on different sites, so we know when we sent a release of information form for each child, the date we hear from their worker, the date Bert sends our homestudy, and the child's adoptability status. Today there's 32 line items in the database, with 13 sibling groups, for a total of 45 children. Of those 45, only about 5 of them are current in the last two weeks, and we've heard back on 16 of them, all not available or a poor match. The rest of them... no idea. And most of them were inquiries made in the first two weeks of May. So far, things are proceeding as we were promised... no news is simply no news.

Our social worker has also been having some difficulties which support God's plan for us to be waiting a bit. A friend of hers died out of town, when she got back from that trip the agency had installed a new email server system thing (she couldn't describe it to me very well) that made all the email bounce, and the week after that something happened at her house with electric or plumbing that meant she had to be home for someone to dig up her entire front yard. One thing after another is keeping her from working on our process.. or really that of all her clients. So we call and wait and wait and call and inquire and see what may happen next. After her email snafu, it's likely that some of the replies to our inquiries are sitting in her computer somewhere.

And that's what's happened in the last nearly-two months. This week has put an interesting spin on my thoughts, as I'm working every morning with the preschoolers (ages 3-5, our target adoption ages) at Kids' Kamp, our church's Vacation Bible School program. One of my favorite adopted kids from church (international adoption) is finally old enough to attend, and it's been a joy to have him. We'll be heading to New York for the July 4 weekend and week after, but I'll hopefully have it in me to post an update before we leave.

Please pray that we will be given peace and a firm confidence in what God wants us to do. I'm looking for an action direction, clear and precise. If He wants to initiate the Large Neon Arrow approach, that'd be fantastic. But whatever works, so long as Lanse and I are clear and of one mind.

We very much appreciate your prayers and support.

HOMESTUDY READY!

WE'RE HOMESTUDY READY!!!

The ball is now mostly in our court; we will spend all our waking hours pouring over photolistings from all over the country and networking with social workers. The plan is to get the word out as much as possible, but unfortunately there is a whole world of scammers and illegal 'selling children' activity out there, so we're trying to keep our contacts clearly within social worker domains. That means that if you hear of someone with a child available within our criteria, we would love to know... but we need to have either our social worker contact theirs or theirs contact ours; we don't want any random phone calls to our house! Please be considerate about that, as many of you know us personally.

If you are a (or have any connection to a) social worker, we have a one-page profile sheet that we'd like to share. We're looking for any kind of connection that may even be second- or third-hand just to get our name circulating; so far I've thought of educators, clergy, and pediatric medical professionals as contact sources as well as folks who are directly in the social or family services professions. Our profile sheet basically describes us in a nutshell and the kind of child (or children) we feel would fit our family well, and provides contact information for receiving a copy of our homestudy from Bert at Bethany. We can email it or snail-mail it to you, whatever is most convenient. Oddly enough, though we are definitely wanting to follow any leads, we are beginning outside of South Carolina because of the way in which the state to agency interactions work. This makes the networking a little more difficult since we can't just drop by to local places, so your willingess to help is truly valued!

Thanks so much for all your prayers and support. Keep it coming... the hard part's just beginning!

A month later...

Wow. My last post was the 16th of March, and here it is the 17th of April. But there's good news! Bert took two days last week to focus on our homestudy, one of which she worked from her home office so as to avoid distractions. While going through our file, she did find questions she wanted to ask, something that was marked off as received but had NY information, and discovered that she hadn't received a recommendation from one source and that our physical exams were soon to expire.

So yesterday we went in to the doctor's office and got our physicals done again (3rd time's the charm?), and the recommendation is currently in progress (the person writing it IMed us mid-writing, so we know). As of this moment the homestudy is 99% complete; as soon as these items get to the office and she plugs in the text, we're ready to roll!!

What's next? When it's ready, we drive to the agency office, read it over and make any corrections or changes, and she'll work through a timeline with us. I have no idea what this timeline looks like yet, but we'll let you know.

Homestudy Writing Update

Well, three weeks will be up on Friday (tomorrow), but Bert's just starting to work on our stuff today. So it'll be another 2 to 3 weeks. It's okay, I'm disappointed but not upset, because she had very good reasons. She transferred and settled 5 (not 3) kids from California to Myrtle Beach, and a baby involved in one of her client's cases was born unexpectedly and needed placement, and that was out of her immediate area as well, so she was on the road a lot as well as just dealing with the normal caseload fpr both cases. We'd known about the CA kids and there's nothing to be done about an unexpected birth, so it's all good. I am, however, looking forward to getting her first clarification phone call. She warned us that when she writes these things, she works from home and the moment she comes across something she needs to check with us, she calls... no making lists and calling later, she'll just ring us up at any strange time she may be writing. So once we get one of those calls we'll know she's getting things done.

I've received some confused questions about what's going on now (working on the homestudy) as opposed to what we've been doing over the last year (working on the homestudy). So here's a clarification that those of you involved in adoption already can just skim over or skip to the end as you wish.

Over the last year (and some, see the ticker on the side of the blog) we've been working on completing a number of documents. This is us "working on the homestudy". All of these documents go into our file and once they're all completed, Bert will take them and write them into a combination of narrative and general information that can be presented as a whole to the social workers representing our potential children. This is her "working on the homestudy", which is happening right now.

So if we decide we want to parent Jenny (no, there's no "Jenny" yet), Jenny's social worker will receive a little book about us from Bert. That book is what she's writing. Some homestudies are just a few sheets of paper and some are doctoral-thesis-length; Bert likes to be as thorough as possible without being so overwhelming that the other social worker won't read it. I can't remember exactly, but I have the idea that she aims for 10-15 pages.

Our homestudy will contain:

• a cover sheet (profile page) that's a very brief 'who we are and who we're looking for'
• more detailed narrative on our past, marriage, families, current lifestyle, future aspirations; basically All About Us (as understood by Bert)
• details of the kind of children we're looking for and why (if appropriate)
  
• recommendation letters gathered from friends and family, with explanations of comments if necessary
• results of our physicals
• results of our background checks
• results of our inspections
  

When it's ready, we will drive up to Columbia and read through every word. We'll discuss with her if we think something is incorrect or could be worded differently, and then she'll make changes and run off a final draft. And then we're ready to roll.

So there's the description of the homestudy process in a nutshell, or at least in the shell surrounding our particular nut. I know that every state and every agency does things in slightly different ways, but from what I've learned from talking to people this is a pretty good representation of the concept. I hope it's cleared things up a bit for everyone.

*******************

The only other matter was that of the kitchen fire extinguisher. Yes, there are multiple kinds of extinguishers! Here's a picture, ruthlessly pillaged from the internet and edited by me:

Apparently they put out different kinds of fires. The smaller one does mostly just stove fires, but the second one we bought does stove fires (kitchen), wood type fuels (fireplace), and live electrical wires. In any case, we're all set and ready and everyone who needs a photo of our lovely mounted-under-the-counter extinguisher has been appeased.

And I think that's it for now! We'll keep on keeping everyone posted as we start hearing from Bert as she writes.

Details

Here's more details for you.

She was here about 1/2 an hour, came in and asked to see the kitchen, checked the water temp, asked to see the kid's bath and bedroom (loved the decor!), checked our potential second bedroom (if we needed it as a bedroom we'd move the office upstairs), took a backyard tour, and we were good to go. She didn't even enter the rooms we had really stressed out over! Also, we'd been really stressed out about our cats' worse habits, but she herself has 5 cats and 2 dogs and was all, "Meh, you do what you gotta do."

Sat down and filled out the paperwork; we did have one change to make from what the agency had sent them, but it's not a big deal. We had asked the agency that our bottom age range be "Walking... which is, what? Like... 2? Ish?" and she definitively wrote AGE 2 on the sheet. We wanted more flexibility... my niece just started walking and she's only 11 months. So with our approval the inspector decided to inspect for the 0 - 6 range, so we'll have to sort everyone out and get them all on the same page. Which is fine.

We're approved as-is, since the only thing that needs addressing we had already planned to address.... we had some damage to the play set. So we're good to go!

Now we just have to impress the Fire Marshal. *grin*

Thanks for your thoughts and prayers everyone!

Inspection PASSED!

It went GREAT!! She wasn't here long, just asked to see the kitchen, kid's room and bath, and the backyard; she has a whole lot of pets herself and wasn't phased at all about ours... amazing. Lovely.

I'm gonna go fall down now. I'll post more details later. Promise.

Ready?

I think.... we're... maybe ready? Pretty sure ready? We've got just about two hours, and I'm not sure if we're ready. I've saved our to-do lists in our adoption binder; when we're all set and done with everything and start putting a life book together for our child (like a scrapbook) I'll set them all out and take a picture. Aaaaaallll the many many lists of things. The very last thing on my list is to make another list! Literally... I need to make a list of emergency numbers to put by the phone. Which I will finish when I'm done with this post.

So. Just a few more tiny things and we'll actually be prepared to open the door to the inspector at 11:30ish. Keep praying!!

More preparing

Today has been very busy as a preparing day. We had a lot of rearranging stuff to do yet, furniture to buy and so forth, so we headed out to Walmart rather early (for a sleepy Saturday). Besides groceries we got a new file box with a lid that can lock, an enormous under-the-bed storage bin, a meat thermometer... I forget what else. We also added a couple things to the list for Lowes, which should happen tomorrow.

So we came home and got to work. I got Lanse's unused tackle box out (which works with the padlock) and went around collecting up all the fire-starting devices and the "sharps" (scissors and rotary cutters and the like). Packed up all the Christmas stuff that we'd dumped in the back room and was in the way of the closet, and Lanse took it to the attic. Then I moved all the sewing related things from the back room closet to the cabinetry in the bedroom, put my quilting cotton FQs in the bin under the bed, moved all the stuff from the sewing drawer in the living room into there as well, pretty much condensed everything. I also moved all of our active files into the new file box and got that set up.

While I did that, Lanse cleaned his bathroom (the main one), moved all the stuff from the porch to the shed that we'd put on the porch from the garage (Thanks Jen!), helped me take down and pack up some last minute Christmas stuff, and was available as my shifter to help me move bins and boxes from here-to-there and there-to-upstairs.

We also used the meat thermometer to check the temperature of the hot water at the tap. Required temp for the inspection is 120 degrees or less (which is annoying, because our dishwasher says that it needs 120 or more). In the kitchen it came out at 128; we still have to check the bathroom, which I'll do when I get up to go to bed. So we have the original water heater (10 years old?) that we need to change the temp on, without a manual. Lanse poked around and says it looks like it's set for 130, so it does get colder as it comes along. It's also covered in "READ THE MANUAL" stickers. He agreed to wait until I've had one last long hot shower before trying to figure it out. He's so sweet.

Tomorrow: Church, and I assist in Sunday School with the 4 yr olds, trip to Lowes, mounting the fire escape routes and emergency numbers and all that around the house, organizing the upstairs junk closet, washing my bathroom, fixing the drain plugs in both bathroom sinks (they both broke in the same places one or two days apart from each other!), taking care of the leftover dead garden plants in the backyard, and then I have a paper to write.

What a trip tomorrow will be!

Mild frustration... again...

Okay, so I realize that it's been the holidays and things got busy. I can accept that. But when I talked to Bert yesterday, I thought we were golden. Yesterday was the mix up in inspector requisitions. Today she called a number of times... first she hadn't written down when our house was built, which we have discussed a number of times. Then she called back to verify where Lanse works, and I asked her if the reference letters had gone out, since I hadn't heard about it yet. So she goes digging, and the address we'd given her in December while she was standing in our living room (done then to save time, y'know) was still tucked into the file and never made it to the secretary who had the form. Then she called me back again because apparently they sent the employment reference form to work and never got it back. There was something else as well that she called back about, and I can't remember.

So on the frustrated side, things haven't been getting done when I thought they were.

On the positive side though, I happen to know that Bert's been sitting in the office all afternoon with our file open, and that's a good thing.

After losing most of the day to a migraine headache, I have managed to scan in and email our vet records to her, as well as print out the floor plan fire escape routes that we need to have posted in prominent places. We have to run out and get some frames for them. I printed two black and white for the living room and kitchen, and one colorful with cute clip art for the kid's room. I think next I'll print up an emergency numbers list to post with it.

I also need to make that shopping list so that when we go we can get everything at once. It'll be a big bill. Sigh.

Home Visit

It's been two days since Bert was here for the home visit, and I think I'm still processing everything. I have had some sort of resistance to posting about it; I hope it's just because I'm still thinking it over.

The fact that we are going to be parents sometime soon is starting to feel much more real, and kind of suddenly... something will come to mind and just bowl me over emotionally. I'm feeling very stressed out, but not because of any specific event or job that needs doing, but more at the fact that it's Soon. On Wednesday night we were cleaning out and straightening the back room. That room originally had all our child related stuff (I have a lot of toys and books and things from the school I taught at), and it was neat and organized, and we used it as a guest room with the air mattress. Then I needed a place to move my sewing stuff, so we put the toys in the attic and then we needed a better bookcase in the office, so all the furniture moved around again, and it was my sewing room/guest room. (I'd called it my Playroom). Wednesday night we went in to move things around again, and realized this is it. We brought the toys back down to be used and figured out where the bed might go. A friend of ours calls this kind of thing, "Weird head space", like momentous stuff is going on and we just can't wrap our brains around it.

So then, on to the official report. Bert arrived Thursday morning a little before 10:00, and we all got some coffee and sat down to talk. Colin gave us a lovely show, playing with the jingly toy mouse, throwing it in the air by its tail and doing flips to grab it again. That was fun. :) Anyway, first she addressed our concerns and questions, most of which revolved around the inspection. So we got up and did the tour of the house, explained the areas we were concerned about, talked about the furniture and so forth, she gave us some suggestions on things we may want to take care of before the state inspection. There's not many of them, and most of them we were already aware of, which is good.

Then we sat and talked for about an hour, maybe a little more. She'd received our referrals (Thank you, References!) and there was an area on the form for weaknesses as well as strengths,
so we discussed those (don't worry, she didn't tell us who said what). We talked a lot about things that had been covered with our case worker in NY; not for the paperwork, since she had it all written down already, but so that she could get to know us better. We discussed LPA and the pregnancy rates and mixed marriages and how I deal with kids in difficulty areas. We talked about our history, where certain tendencies came from, our marriage and struggles early on and how we dealt with them. Basic important life things.

We've officially had recorded that we're also open to siblings, just two... but one or more than one. We think we've figured out a reasonable way to arrange the house, and we're asking that if we are blessed with two little ones, they'll be close in developmental age so they can share toys and things. Within reason, obviously. We will accept either gender if we feel that we've found The Ones, in any combination really... though we both keep having dreams (at night) that we're having a girl, so we're hoping God will lead us to that. If not now, maybe later. For siblings, Lanse prefers a boy/girl or girl/girl, whereas I prefer a boy/girl or boy/boy, even though I don't know that I can handle two boys. For some reason I just can not picture two girls in this house, I don't know why. But I know that both of us are excited and thrilled to have ANY kids, gender doesn't matter.

As soon as we've finished the things with the house, we'll call Bert and let her know and she'll file for the fire inspection. She's already filed for the Health and Safety, and was surprised they hadn't called us yet. So we'll see how that ends up. Unfortunately, she has to go back into surgery and will be recovering for another six weeks or so. Her previous surgery ruptured, or something nasty like that. Prayers for Bert are appreciated; partly because we don't want her to be in pain, but also because selfishly we want her to be able to get stuff done quickly for us, and we know that she's vital in the lives of a lot of kids right now.

So that's where we are at the moment. Her visit went well, she personally approves of the house and seemed to be very agreeable to our viewpoints in discussion. We get on the ball with the final safety items, call her, she calls them, we wait. They inspect, we get the papers filed, get the vet stuff in, and wait. Once the red tape's all cut and burned, we start the search for our kid(s). And wait. She said it could be anywhere from 6 months to a year or more, it just depends on how on the ball everyone is, and where the child lives right now. I know people who have really on-top-of-it people who get things done sooner than 6 months, but that's not very common. So that's what we're looking at.

Thanks to everyone for your prayers; we can feel them working!

Anxiety - Social Worker Home Visit

The final meeting of our home study is here at the house tomorrow morning around 10. Bert will be inspecting the house, as well as doing other final meeting related conversation and paperwork; I'm not sure what all is involved. While she's not the official safety inspection person, we wanted to have as much as possible obviously begun so she knows we Really Really Mean It.

Yesterday we installed all the child locks and things to wind the blind cords around and outlet covers (except the spiffy ones for power strips I couldn't find at the store) and the tipsy bookshelves bolted to the wall and the main areas of the house straightened and our bedroom cleaned (it had become a catch-all kind of room). The hardwoods are swept and the main bathroom is clean. I was also appalled by the large chunks of paint peeling off the front porch steps, so I scraped it and put a coat of paint on yesterday morning (with 48 hours exactly to dry, and yes, the weather was just on the cold side of acceptable for painting). The paint went on really thin, more like a stain, and all I can think is that I didn't stir it enough, since it's definitely a can of acrylic top coat exterior porch paint. No clue. It was in the garage from the previous owners, so maybe they added something to it. But at least the porch is now an 'in process' project and not a 'bad home owner' mess.

Today we have to prepare the back bedroom (kids' room that's also been a catch-all), deal with a few random piles of miscellaneous stuff, vacuum and mop where necessary, wash kitten nose prints off the windows, dust the furniture, and clean the master bathroom. Also have to call a vet and make an appointment. Then, perhaps, we'll be ready.

I'm trying to decide what I can bake that will make the house smell lovely. We need a loaf of bread, but I don't want to have to get it out of the machine while she's here, and I'm not getting up at 6 to put it in. So maybe I'll make muffins or cookies or something. Maybe cinnamon rolls, since it's a morning meeting. Suggestions are welcome.

Weekend Review

Well, the state's not so silly after all. We received the vet records yesterday, and wouldn'tcha know that all of the cat's shots except for two of Kira's are overdue... by almost a year. My reasoning is this: our last visit was in March of 07. We moved in July 07. When we were at the vet's in March, we asked if we needed them done and the vet said, "Oh, they're 3 year shots, it's not needed right now." Apparently 'not right now' meant 'come back in November', but no one made that clear. Now it's November a year later. Oops.

Note to people in transition: Don't lose your copies of the vet records.

So we'll be vaccinating the cats after the holiday. Gotta find a vet first though.

Had lunch with my cousin on Friday. She loaned us a baby gate and some outlet covers, and gave us an extra pack of beach toys they had and a kid's hymn cassette. Of course, we have no cassette player, but I'm thinking we'll try to find someone who has a machine that can burn the CD... or, now that we own the cassette, maybe we can legally download in mp3 format.

About Us

Lanse began life as an Army brat and then became a normal angsty kid, born in Alaska, passing early elementary years in a farmhouse in Michigan, and then settling in Rochester, NY, with the rest of the Tryon clan. He graduated from Wheaton College in Illinois, where he met Jessica, married her, moved back to Rochester, and now they live in Charleston, SC. He's the oldest of three boys, works in the computer field (which was self-taught from childhood, along with most of his family), and enjoys reading and playing with metal toy soldiers. He also passes hours hitting weeds with sticks and throwing rocks into bodies of water.

Jessica had a rocky start in a Western suburb of Chicago, but managed to pull through just fine. In Second Grade, the family (Mom, Dad, she and her little brother) moved to Minnesota, where they stayed until after she had gone to college, met Lanse, got married, and moved away to New York. She enjoys reading books and blogs, hanging out at church, painting metal toy soldiers, quilting and knitting, playing the piano, and playing with kids. She has a degree in Child Development, with a concentration in Preschool, and is enjoying applying her knowledge to help her kids.

This family would not be complete without the "furbabies" they love. Colin is the oldest, but also the smallest; white, with orange spots and orange rings on his tail. He is very independent, but likes to curl up under the covers at bedtime and purr very loudly. He also has started to play more by throwing toys in the air and doing flips trying to catch them. He also plays soccer with Spook. [Colin passed away in December, 2010. We miss him dreadfully.] Spook is the middle cat, but he's the largest, grey and lightly striped. He's sort of like a clueless gentle giant; he loves being snuggled and loved, but tends to squish smaller things by accident while loving them. He's also the hunter, and likes to catch small animals if he has the chance. He enjoys being in the room with his people and eating. Spook will eat almost anything. Finally, Kira is the youngest. She's all black except for a white patch on her tummy, and a few white individual hairs around her neck. She's shy and likes to spend most of her time on the screened porch watching the birds, mostly because the old folks (boy cats) tend to smack her when she tries to play with them. She's delicate and prim, but does have times when she likes to interact with her people. She also likes to talk a lot. All of our cats are very gentle with the children, and grateful for having two such dedicated humans to be such wonderful servants, though sometimes they can be a little snooty about it.

October 8, 2008

Conversation with Bert

Bert is our Social Worker. I sent her an email last week with some questions, and she called last night to discuss them. This is part of the whole process of her getting a feel for who we are as individuals and what we want as a family, so it's a pretty important thing! I thought it was pretty cool that she called instead of emailing, except for the fact that I now have nothing in writing. So I'm going to put it here so that I have it written down, also because I think they're good questions and may clarify some things for friends and family about how this system works. These are in no particular order, except that I tried to put first the ones that I'd already mentioned elsewhere in the blog.

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Question: Can we have a checklist from you of what kinds of child proofing we'll need to do for the inspection? I tried a google search and found everything from just outlet covers and keeping a close eye, to chaining down the toilet and padlocking the refrigerator and installing nearly every bit of furniture four feet up. There's just so wide a range, I'm not sure what detail they'll be looking for.

Answer: All we need to do for the inspection is to get locks on the cabinets and drawers and any closets that might have chemicals or medications in it. We have to put covers on the outlets, and move anything that's obviously a danger, like scissors or knives in the bill desk, that kind of thing. We will also need to get those hook things that you spool curtain strings around so the kids can't hang themselves. We also have to get the smoke detectors to have the installation date written on the outside, be sure the fire extinguisher is current, and put the step stool away when they come. Oh, we also have to make sure our hot water doesn't come out above 120 degrees and our fridge is cold enough to actually keep food safe to eat. Pretty basic stuff.

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Question: Inspections: Will we have warning or are these surprise inspections in order to capture regular living conditions?

Answer: They are done by an outside company, who will call and make an appointment.

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Question: When can we safely start looking at photolistings? Will you provide additional photos and information aside from what we can find online?

Answer: We can look any time we want, but we won't be able to do anything about it until the home study is completed, and there will be no guarantee that the same children will be available at that point. She recommends we wait.

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Question: You explained about how SC agencies aren't... licensed...? to do stuff past a certain point because the state saves money by doing it themselves. At what point do we stop working with you and start working directly with them? Will you go alongside us or will our "case" be turned over to someone else?

Answer: I actually had the terminology wrong here; Bethany is licensed, it's just that the SC office does not fulfill the same kinds of services in SC when adopting a child from SC. Basically, when a family is found for a SC child within SC, SC government does all the finalization themselves instead of paying an agency to do it. Make sense? SC state will work with Bethany Virginia, or Bethany NY, but wouldn't finalize with Bethany SC because it's cheaper for them to do it themselves within state.

If we decide we want to adopt a child from SC, here's what will happen: Bert will put together all of our records in a presentable book form, and go with us to a meeting with state people, including the Social Worker for the child, and present us as an interested family. We will all talk, we will have a book about us and our lives prepared that will go to the child, and we'll set up further appointments. We will also receive a binder with every possible thing there is to know about the child, from med records to school records to a history to notes from foster care. At that stage, Bert will no longer work with us, but she is available as a resource for questions or advice. Once we leave that meeting with our binder, we have a week to look over it and decide if we want to proceed. Next we'll meet the child in the foster home, somewhere on their own turf, just chat, get to know each other. Then we'll spend a day visit, a little later have a week-long visit, then they will be able to move in if everyone's cool with it.

If we decide to adopt a child from another state, Bert will be with us to the very end, as Bethany will be the organization doing the finalization instead of the state.

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Question: We have found in the past when making large decisions that ask us to delineate guidelines (such as house-hunting search criteria) that we have a tendency to get frustrated, and then wander out to search on our own, and what God points to (so far) has always been outside of the bounds set by the stated criteria. In other words, I'm afraid that the child He has for us may be outside of the terms set on our paperwork, simply because that kind of thing seems to often be the case for us. My concern is whether or not that will affect your opinions and review of us, if we have to stick to what's on the paper... or not. If we must stay within the bounds on the paper, we may think about broadening them slightly, but if we have flexibility I won't worry about it.

Background: Unfortunately, there's a great deal of the home study process that feels very similar to the process of buying a house. When we bought our house on Edgemont in NY, our realtor had taken us to see a lot of houses in the suburbs, as we were afraid of living in the city and had excluded it from our search criteria. However, while out on our own on a Sunday, we saw the Edgemont house and fell in love with it. We honestly didn't realize it was within city limits at the time, since it was in the cute little University area bordering a suburb. Our realtor was very indignant that she wasn't given the opportunity to find it for us because "We weren't looking there!" The last thing I want to do is torque off our Social Worker, which is ultimately why I asked this question.

Answer: The entire process of the home study helps her clarify what we meant when we marked things on the paperwork, and what areas we would be flexible on. The paperwork is always able to be altered, addenda added, as we learn and process and think through things. We are required to take 14 hours of classes, and she says that sometimes people will learn something that will really alter their ideas and they'll call and write up a change to their search criteria. No big deal. We'll be doing this kind of thing anyway every six months; just a check in on the paperwork to see if anything's changed in our family needs or desires. We are not locked in to what's on that paper.

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Question: Being new at this whole adoption thing, I had been encouraged to seek out other people who have adopted as a kind of support group. I've been chatting online through two different adoption Yahoogroups, one of which I joined last week specifically regarding adopting older children. Unfortunately, what I'm hearing is overwhelmingly depressing! While a few have had good experiences, the loudest people are the ones who have been hurt, which makes sense. But the overall opinion even with happily finalized families is that social workers hide things about the needs of the children because their main purpose is to get children into a home and off the state support system, and that the purpose of agencies are to make money. What are your thoughts to this kind of a response? (Bert took this really well, actually, so that's good.)
Background: This question was based on the area of behavior and development issues. Many older children will apparently be placed with a foster-adopt family who appears not to actually meet any of the requirements set forth by that family.

Answer: There are many reasons why situations like this occur, and unfortunately there's sometimes not much to be done about it. There's only so far that delineating paperwork can take you. One problem is that many times Social Workers don't have all of the information. This happens sometimes because of the high turnover rate of Social Workers (some kids can have a new one every six months), sometimes because of poor documentation, sometimes because Foster Families are not of good quality or don't feel some behaviors are unusual enough to write down, and sometimes simply because in cases of abandonment there's just no one to tell them anything about the child. Another reason is one that comes up in child development with any child who's been through a tough situation, fostered or not. Every situation is new, and comes with new struggles. Many of these children will suddenly find themselves not knowing how to behave and fall back on unhealthy survival techniques. Sometimes behavior may escalate due to emotional triggers like smells or sounds that may have been present during abuse and never existed during foster care. And sometimes, there's just the bottom line fact that when a child doesn't trust anyone, they often just don't tell anyone what's happened to them. There have been many instances where a child will be adopted, and after a year or two of growing trust in the parents and finally starting to feel safe, will open up and talk about some horrendous abuses that no one had any idea had happened to them.

The bottom line is that there's no guarantee. We will be focusing on knowing as much as humanly possible about a child's history, collecting it from as many sources as possible, praying as hard as we can and being open to His leading, and going with our gut upon meeting the child.

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Question: I have an elderly friend from church whose grown children agreed to foster-to-adopt through the state. They have been "waiting" for many years now with a string of kids going through, because they are continually given children who end up going back to family or have needs beyond what they can handle. They were told that they would only be given children they would adopt in the end, but it seems as though the state is using them as a regular fostering family. I'm very concerned about that possibility; I understand the role of foster-to-adopt for states that don't legally release their children until a family is found, but what prevents our being taken advantage of because we checked 'yes' on the foster option? We don't feel we have the emotional ability at this stage to serve as regular full-time foster parents.

Background & Answer: There are three choices of how to participate with waiting children: foster care, foster-adopt, and adoption. When you are a foster family, children don't stay, they just come and go, but while they're with you, you have to be their 'parent' without becoming too attached. We've decided we don't have the emotional capacity for that right now. Adoption is just that; you go through the process, find a child, adopt them. Seems simple enough, but the problem is that many states never list their waiting children as legally available to adopt until a family has been identified for them. I have no idea why they do it that way. However, these children must remain with foster care until they are legally free... which could take a long time (years) depending on the situation. So we could feasibly find our child in one of these states, but not get to have them even visit until the legal stuff was complete. The middle option is kind of a go-between option: being foster parents long enough to find your child and adopt them.

What happened with this family from church is that they decided to foster-adopt through the state, without an agency. So the state is doing this, "Oh, here's a kid you might want to adopt..." and sending them a high-legal-risk foster kid, and then removing them right away to go back to the family, basically using them as traditional foster care. They've been foster-adopting for three+ years now, and have had about 8 kids go through their home. We do not want that to happen.

Right now, here's what we're doing: We have checked off willingness to foster-adopt if we locate the child we want to adopt and they come from a state wherein they will not be legally freed until after a family is found. Because of this, the child could come here immediately with us as their foster family until the paperwork for legal freedom is complete and the adoption paperwork goes through, without waiting. We don't intend to have multiple children come and go, and can dictate that by stating our willing level of legal risk (high-moderate-none) and under what circumstances. Again, like the behavior issues, we're dealing with people who are unpredictable, and the state really does want the families reunited if the birth parents prove willing to put out the required amount of effort, (not so common); there are no guarantees.

However, we've been assured that if we choose carefully, look at every scrap of possible information on the child and the situation, and remain clear on what we want to have happen, we can have a pretty high expectations on the process. We are also protected by Bert and Bethany, as we're not dealing directly with the state ourselves unless we decide on a child from SC. But the bottom line is that we set the rules.

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OK! Is that enough information for you? Don't worry... if you're itching for more, I'm sure there'll be some soon enough! For me though, I know my brain is full and my typin' fingers are sore. Tune in again later.