Friday, June 27, 2008

Meeting Foster Support Specialist

So last night we met with our Foster Support Specialist. I think that is a fancy name for "person we can gripe to." She was really nice and very talkative. My stomach thought she was a little too talkative because I had not had dinner and she met us at 5pm after work and didn't leave until 6:45pm. It was really good talking to her though because she not only works for the system she has adopted 2 children and one is from the system and they are beautiful!!!

Well time is short so I must go!

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Waiting!

We finally received our actual fostering license in the mail so now we are official! However, we have no kids yet so I don't know how official I really feel. K finally called me back. I asked her to confirm that she got the package back of the boys for J so she can keep looking for a home for the and also for K's e-mail address. I actually asked for it because there is this website www.adoptuskids.org that I wanted to register at and in order to register you need your case workers e-mail address. So I registered on the website and there are a couple of possibilities on that website, however, they are out of state possibilities, but if is a good fit we are willing to go anywhere.

We talked about maybe adopting from China and we said before we look into any other type of adoption we are going to give Foster/Adoption a year for us to find our permanent kids and if we don't have any luck we will consider China Adoption.

Well i'm starting to make lots of typos so that is my cue!

Friday, June 13, 2008

First Attempted Placement

We have not received our actual license in the mail, but we got a letter in the mail stating that we were licensed and our license would be coming in the mail. We found out that the foster parents of the 3 year old were going to permanence with her so we are no longer candidates for that child. Then on June 2nd we received a phone call from our licensing worker and they said that they had 2 hispanic boys who needed a permanency placement ages 6 and 9. We had just told our caseworker that we really didn't want any kids over 7, but we would take a look at their profile because they had to find an urgent placement for these kids.

K our licensing worker came over on Monday, June 9th with J the kids caseworker and R the Adoption Agent and we saw the pictures and found out a lot of things that were a little disturbing, but nothing we didn't think we could handle. We had made a plan to meet the boys the next evening, which was my birthday. On my birthday I recieved a call from one of my good friends and I was telling her my exciting news about meeting the boys and then she proceeded to tell me about 2 friends of our that were pregnant. I don't know what happened, but when I got off the phone with her I just lost it and called my husband crying. I think the realization that this is our life and there are no biological kids really set in. Needless to say I don't think I was in any position to meet Foster kids after the day I had, but we went according to plan and I did meet them.

As they walked up the driveway I couldn't help, but notice that they didn't really look hispanic. Or what I thought of as hispanic and they looked much bigger then 6 and 9. Actually my nephew was visiting from Colorado at the time and I had hugged him and I thought to myself wow 9 really isn't that big and you can still cuddle with them and then I saw these boys. Let me just say I don't think I would be doing much cuddling with them. That may sound silly or ignorant on my part, but this is what I felt and thought at the time and in my mind I really thought I could take any kids, but when I saw these boys there were very sweet and very kind, but the little one was very stand offish and the older one was very likable, but I think I had made my decision as soon as I saw them. I hate to say it, but I thought it would be too hard for me to bond with these boys because of their size, their age, and the fact that they don't look like me. My DH said he would have been willing to take the boys, but he wanted us both to be on the same page and he understood if I didn't want to take these boys.

I prayned and thought really hard and long and a day later I called K and let her know that we had decided not to take the boys because of all the reasons I stated above. She was very kind and I couldn't help but feel even more guilty and ended up crying a bit to her and she said she could tell in my voice that this was not an easy decision for us, which it was not because I kept going back and forth about these boys after I found out my DH would have taken them.

My DH told me that evening he was a little sad because he was looking forward to having kids around the house. It's sooo weird all this time he could take or leave kids and now he has finally got the bug. The bug which I have had for the last 7 or so years. So we wait. This comes at an awful time too, because on top of all this drama we are having a huge birthday party on Saturday for DH and I as we always do since our birthdays are so close together and then Sunday is Father's Day. Another year which my poor DH is kidless. We make it a point not to feel sorry for ourselves though because we know the Lord has a plan for our lives and after I said no to these boys I did feel a huge relief because I felt like I was going to have to force myself to parent these boys and I don't know if that would have been a good choice. Plus with my in-laws in town it's probably for the best. Well that's all for now. I will just keep praying that the right child/children come along that we can help and see as a part of our family.