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!

Inspections and vets

I had sent email to Bert two weeks ago and in the craziness of the holidays it got buried. I thought there was a chance that she'd gone off to have surgery, so I emailed her secretary and got a call back from Bert.

The health inspection request never got sent, and the fire inspection request was sent to Charleston County instead of Dorchester County. So she's sending both again, and she will copy me on the request via email so that I know exactly when she requests it.

We're pretty much ready for the inspections, though we have to go buy a large bin to store paint in, get around to locking up the tools in the garage, and I keep finding matchbooks in various drawers, so I need to go around with a box and systematically search every drawer and closet and stuff for things like matches and scissors. The obvious stuff has been taken care of, but since I have candles all over the house I tended to leave means of fire nearby. I also need to buy another bin to put my quilting supplies in, since there's currently rotary cutters on my craft shelf and blades for it in my (low) drawer. Hopefully what we have left will take about two hours (not counting the shopping for bins), plus taking the fire extinguisher to the fire station and seeing if they'll recharge it for us.

Other than that, we only had the vet records left to take care of, and that appointment's in an hour. Oh, we also have to dump our dead garden pots. We were also going to dismantle the playset, but Bert says so long as we have a plan and she can verify later that it was done, we don't have to have that done when the inspector arrives.

I registered us for the next two training classes, the first on ADD/ADHD/ODD, and the second on Lying. Should be interesting.

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.

Play structure & pets

Flossy asked why we'd have to dismantle the play structure. There's a picture of it; on the left is where the slide attaches and in the middle we have two swings, a chin up bar, and a set of rings. All those parts are in the shed; this picture was taken when we were preparing for 'Never-Became-a-Hurricane Hanna'.

If you look closely, you will notice that the left corner where the slide attaches is broken, and there are a number of slats missing in the upper level. The upper level is a square shape; and yet, it is braced by a center beam. So when you stand on the end it rocks very unsteadily. The ladder stairs are spaced quite far apart, (it's hard for me to climb up,) and up-close real life observation (not shown in the photo) you can see where some of the wood is splitting. Most of the concerning bit is up on the top level, so our choices right now are to either repair the whole thing, remove the upper level and shorten the swing section (it also takes up a lot of the yard, so I'd like to make it a bit smaller) and repair the slide and ladder, or just tear it all down. We honestly can't decide, so we want to get our social worker's opinion on whether not deciding right now is going to harm the inspection results.


Additional update information: after half-heartedly tearing the house apart looking for the vet records, new copies are now in the mail. For whatever crazy reason, the state wants proof that our pets won't spread rabies if they attack the children. Silly state. :)

State, if you're reading, that there was sarcasm. As far as logic tells me, our cats are up to date on vaccinations and never ever bite, unless... ya know... the toy you're taunting them with is small enough they get fingers by mistake.

Safety dance

We're doing the Safety Dance. For me, it's a dance of joy that people love us and we now have a bag full of donated supplies to child proof the house! Yay!

Loads of thanks to Heather Jackson at church and anyone else who may have donated to this cause.

My cousin has offered us a baby gate or two and the remainder of the outlet covers we need (minus the snazzy ones I want), so I think we'll be all set pretty soon.

Home visit & Update

Bert will come and do the final home study meeting here at our house on December 4th, around 10:00 in the morning. We need to have as much completed for the inspections as possible, since she'll be serving as sort of a pre-inspection as well as doing other things. She'll offer her opinion on what things we may have to deal with for the inspection, like whether or not we have to dismantle the play structure for it, that kind of thing.

The head of Women's Ministry at church emailed me that there's a bag of child proofing things waiting for me there. Yay! Support is wonderful. I'll pick that up on Friday when I go for Bible Study, we'll put it all into action, and then see what we have left. I also need to see when Nancy can have me come down and pick up the baby gates from her, now that Lanse isn't in the office predictably enough for them to exchange at work.

We also got Bert's approval for the online classes we found at Foster Parent College, so we'll be signing up for some learning as soon as we can sit in one place together and decide on which class we want.

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.

December 29, 2006

Well, it's December now, after Christmas (it was good!). In between now and the last post, our bathroom was redecorated and made non-moldy and safe for the inspection. Yay!

In other news, we just put our almost-last packet of stuff in the mail for Bethany. Ooooh. We finally hauled ourselves in to the police station to be fingerprinted like common... adopting parents. *hee* So those, and a bunch of other things are going in today. Yay!