Well, it sure has been a while since I posted here! That's a good thing, as it means we've been busy enjoying life. Working on an adoption with kids in tow is a much different experience, and I am fairly certain that our caseworker at Health and Welfare thinks me a bit flighty. I mean, it took Kevin and I over two weeks to fill out 8 sheets of paper on ourselves. Wait, make that like 1 month. Sheesh! When we were applying to adopt from China, the paperwork mound was, well, it was more than 8 sheets of paper....a lot more. But we were so excited, and for sure had more free time on our hands then, that we were quite efficient.
These days, I was lucky that the spilled glass of chocolate milk didn't quite reach the 8 sheets of paper I had just finished and was laying on the breakfast table. But I rescued it just in time, and our caseworker picked it up later that day, thankfully, for who knows what might have happened to it next, like an accident with paint, or even worse, accidentally recycled.
Now, all this is not to say that we are not anxiously awaiting a new addition to our family, we truly are! Though I will say, it is hard to visualize just how this new person, or persons, will change our family dynamics. When your waiting for kids before you have any, you think about the baby stuff, the lack of sleep, bottles, etc. But I never did really get beyond imagining what all that would be like. Now we have preschoolers, and I wonder, what will another child bring into the mix, and how will the two we have react? What changes will I like? What changes will be hard? This I do know, that adding a sibling to a family is one of the greatest gifts to give our current children. Sure, it can be painful at times with bickering or fighting, but those moments when your oldest takes his sister's hand and skips down the street? Well, those make all of the other "stuff" worth it.
So here's what we've been up to since I posted last. We looked at all our options for adopting, and have decided to try using Health and Welfare's Foster-to-Adopt program. This means that we may foster a child for a time before they are eligible for adoption. We're still a bit unsure about fostering and how that will affect our family as a whole, however. I mean, we do have two young kids and I'm just not sure how they will react to fostering and then saying goodbye. And I'm truthfully not sure how I will react. So our plan for now is to focus on being an adoptive family, and providing respite for current fostering families. This means that if a child becomes eligible for adoption, we could be that family for them even having never fostered them. Providing respite means that when current foster families need a day or even a weekend away from fostering, say if they have to travel, then that child would come live with us for that short period of time and then return to their foster family. After getting a window into what fostering is like through doing respite, we may change our status to become regular foster parents ourselves. But our end goal will remain to adopt, and we've agreed to take a sibling group of two if the situation arises.
After taking 6 weeks of classes, twice weekly, myself, then Kevin took the same classes. We learned a lot about what it means to foster, a little more about adopting, and about what we want for our family At this time, we are reading through our homestudy written by our caseworker, then once we approve it, the homestudy will be sent on to be reviewed by those that approve us for a license. This next process will take about 1 month, providing we don't take a whole month to read over the homestudy ourselves! Haha.
We thank you all for support and prayers as we work through this process. Also, we are still open to doing a private adoption, using a lawyer we have already spoken with here in town. So if that arises, we will welcome it, but we are finding this route to be a challenging one.
In any case, we are looking ahead, looking forward with joy, at what awaits our family! Blessings to you and yours.
