We heard from our social worker on January 31st that we have been teamed. That means that we next have to meet with all of the social workers involved and if everything goes well we may be bringing home Jaden’s little brother within the next month. I am a nervous wreck already!!! Stay tuned for more info as we have it.
Photo courtesy of flickr. Click on the image to be taken to the photographer’s album.
We have been receiving calls nearly every week from our social worker with one situation or another that we have to decide whether we want to ‘move forward’ with. All that means is that there is a child (or children) in the system that they believe will eventually be legally free for adoption.
If we move forward, then our file is put in the pile of all of the files of families that said they want to move forward. The Department of Children and Families (DCF) then reviews every file and picks the top three. After another review the top three, they pick their top family and that family is then called in for a meeting to review the file and move forward with placement.
So far we made it to family #2 only once, that we know of. Obviously we have not yet made it to #1, since we are still waiting. Most of the time we are not given any information as to what is happening with the cases that we agree to move forward on (which are 99.9% of them). Only after we bug the social worker to find out of the children have found a home are we informed — and sometimes not even then. It’s not our social worker’s fault — he can only tell us what he knows, and DCF hardly ever gives him an update on the cases. I find it very frustrating that there is no closure on most of these cases — we are just left to assume that the children have found their forever home and we were not the family for them. It is difficult not knowing for sure.
So we continue to get calls, we continue to say ‘yes, move forward,’ and we continue to wait. In some respects this wait is more difficult than when we were waiting to adopt internationally. At least with international adoption you are put in a queue and when it’s your turn travel, it’s your turn to travel. The only unknown was related to how quickly each person in line before you gets their travel call, but usually you could estimate with decent accuracy. If on average it took 4 weeks per family to travel, and you were 8th in the queue, then in about 8 months you can expect to travel. That process makes it a little easier to plan for the future compared to the process we’re in right now.
The one known, as far as time is concerned, is that if we are not matched within two years of finishing our home study, we have to complete a new home study. However, in all likelihood that won’t happen. If we are not matched within the next two years, Jaden will be nearly six, I’ll be near retirement (wishful thinking, hehe), and I highly doubt we would start the process over again. Then again, two years from now I might feel differently about it.
Time will tell all.
I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!
In the last school year Jaden did not start at the town pre-K until February or so, after an amicable battle with the administration over whether or not he should be enrolled once early intervention stopped (age 3). This year since Jaden started pre-K when the school year began, and with that we have had a whole host of new experiences to manage.
For one, we are the recipients of the school fundraiser catalog to which we have successfully distributed amongst friends and family. That is due next week (so if you want the link to peruse the catalog to see if you want to place an order just let us know – LOL).
We have received the book club sales flyers, which I sent in this morning with our order. We will now split the order between Jaden’s two schools since we get the same flyer from the pre-K and his afternoon pre-school. I will admit it took me over an hour yesterday to figure out what to order, since we already have more books than the local library. But we want to do our part to support both schools, and every little bit helps.
As I write this I realize I need to come up with a name for the two schools to keep them straight, both in my mind and in yours. In keeping with the HP theme I should call them Durmstrang and Hogwarts, but that might be a little confusing for non-HP fans out there. So I’ll just call them pre-K (the town, which he attends three mornings a week) and pre-school (which he attends the rest of the week), and hopefully that will do the trick.
A truly fun experience (yes, there is a tone of sarcasm here) is that we receive notice of events only days, and sometimes only one day, before the events occur. For example on Monday we received notice that pictures were being taken at his pre-K today. I learned the hard way already that I have to open his bag every night to see what surprises lurk in there, waiting to send the family into a tizzy to get ready for the next morning at pre-K. Unfortunately I don’t always learn from my mistakes and sometimes I find myself opening the bag the night before he goes back to pre-K, and the tizzy begins.
So the photos here show the best we could do in dressing him on such short notice of picture day. I managed to give him a haircut this week, despite his many protests, so at least he won’t look like a miniature Beatle (the group, not the insect) in the pictures. With luck they’ll take the pictures before they give them snack or send them to gym class.
Thankfully the pre-school gave us notice of their picture day three weeks in advance… but that still doesn’t mean I know what I’m dressing him in until that day…. it’s just that I won’t be able to blame them if I’m scurrying around the morning of pictures trying to figure out what to send him to school in).
Have a great day!!!
We received a note from our social worker this week that the homestudy was sent to DCF – - finally! I guess that means our prints came back. It took a lot longer than usual, but that’s one more step checked off of the checklist.
Now, as the social worker puts it, “we sit tight and wait.” He said he will be in touch as soon as he hears anything from DCF. I’ll be posting here when we do get updates.
Jaden started school again today. He goes three days each week to the local elementary school for a pre-K class, then the rest of the week he’s at his pre-school in the next town. It ends up being a lot of driving for me. The school district won’t bus him to the next town, so after his morning with pre-K I have to drive him to his pre-school for the remainder of the day.
Last year he refused to get on the morning bus — we figured out after a month or so of me driving him into pre-K that he was afraid of the bus driver, an elderly man who happens to be a curmudgeon, in my opinion. I should have known when the transportation folks told me that “all of the younger kids love the bus driver” that they were setting me up for failure. Either that or having a good laugh at the other end of the line.
The point is that last year I had to drive him to and from pre-K, then drop him off at pre-school, then go to work. This year at least I just have to put him on the bus, then wait for the bus and drive him to pre-school, then go to work. It’s a little less driving intensive for me.
I could put him in a different pre-school in the afternoon (one that the school district will actually drive him to) but our options are limited, and he’s so comfortable with this pre-school after being there for two years already. I’d hate to have to move him. The less change we have in Jaden’s world, the better it is for all of us.
Here’s a picture of Jaden getting ready for his first day back at pre-K. When I took this picture I learned that my phone has a flash — who knew? — that’s why the reflective strip on Jaden’s jacket is glowing. By the way, he’s grinning from ear-to-ear because he thought it was cute that he was wearing his sneakers on his hands instead of his feet.
Do you love the long hair, or hate it?
I just received an email from our social worker that the home study is complete and being reviewed by the agency director. Now we are just waiting for the fingerprints to come back. It’s to bad it took us months to pin down the state trooper so that we could get them done or maybe they’d be back by now. Nothing we can do about it now except wait. With all of this practice I can now say we’re really good at waiting!!!
We visited Jaden’s Grandma and Grandpa this weekend and also saw his aunts and uncles for the first time in what felt like months. I also got to see my beautiful godson. He’s getting SO big. Since we specified in our adoption application that we were willing to adopt a child that’s under 3, I can’t help wondering if our child that is waiting for us is my godson’s age right now. It’s interesting what types of thoughts run through the mind during processes like these.
The big adventure for the weekend was a yellow-jacket’s nest. Somehow the little buggers managed to get pissed off at the same moment that Jaden walked by, even though a few of us had walked up and down that path a few times earlier with no sign of critters. Jaden was stung, but thankfully the sting didn’t swell too much and there was no other allergic reaction to deal with. Phew.
The next challenge was getting Jaden back outside so that we could take him swimming in the pool. It took some coaxing but we finally managed to get him out there. In the meantime, I entertained everyone by running into the house each time I saw anything that even remotely resembled a bee. Then my brother made caipirnhas and I forgot all about it.
As I described in a previous post, we’ve been going through the arduous process of completing our home study. The home study consists of a ridiculous amount of paperwork, background checks, fingerprints, training courses, and visits to the home by the social worker.
We had our first visit by our new social worker the beginning of July, and the last visit two weeks ago. Jaden kept calling him “Mr. Gentleman” which was quite adorable. I think the social worker was taken by him. I could not get over the wonderful manners Jaden was displaying. I kept wondering who took my kid and replaced him with this well-mannered boy. I guess he really wants a sibling!
I finally did get the well-water testing done last Friday, and the results came this week. After hearing a few horror stories about E. coli and other nasties, I was happy to see that we have not been poisoning ourselves with our water supply.
The social worker just let me know that the final two pieces are the fingerprints and the background check. The fingerprints were done in June — it is now just a matter of waiting for them to be returned to the social worker. The social worker said that it is taking longer than usual for the fingerprints to be returned lately. Ah, bureaucracy.
Once the prints are returned the SW will submit the background check. I’m not sure I understand this part of the process, but I’m going with the flow, as we have learned that is the best way to handle things when going through any adoption process.
The two girls we inquired about are no longer posted on the DCF photo listing so I assume they have found their forever home. Although that means we won’t be considered as a possible adoptive family, it is wonderful to know they are now home and no longer in ‘they system’.
We are almost finished with all the steps necessary for the home study. Throughout the month of March we completed the classroom based courses required by the State. We each had to fill out a separate prospective parent questionnaire, which we spent hours on. Literally. We had Jaden answer the questions on his questionnaire as best he could. For a three year old he did really well. We finished the full application paperwork, including a summary of our financials, which took a long time since it required going to umpteen different folders and websites to gather all the information. We have too many bank accounts.
We finally managed to track down the State Trooper to have our fingerprints done for the FBI and the State background checks. Jaden enjoyed going to the barracks and even came home with a souvenir flashlight that the Trooper gave him. He was talking about the ‘policeman’ for days. Those were done last week -now we wait to hear if we are acceptable.
Our social worker took a job with a different company so she is no longer our social worker. I received a call from our new social worker “Tim” who is going to come by our house next week to meet everyone and try to get the home study finished. We have two more home visits that we have to do. Home visits are visits to our home by the social worker, for him to make sure everything that needs to be done is done (e.g. smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, safety features, etc.) and also that we truly have a bedroom for another child and aren’t going to set him/her up in a closet under the stairs a la Harry Potter.
When we did the home study before adopting Jaden we were only required to have 2 home visits. Now for some reason there’s 3 plus an office visit — possibly because it’s a different agency, or maybe it’s because we’re now adopting through the state rather than internationally. At least we did one home visit in January and the “office” visit in February, which actually ended up being at the library since the 6 feet of snow we had prevented anyone from driving far on any given snowy day.
I still have to have the well water tested. The testing is a pain. I wish it were like the flouride testing where you just put some water in a tube and mail it in the provided box. For the well water testing I have to take the screen off the faucet, let it run five minutes, fill up a half-gallon sized container, then drive it 25 minutes from here to the lab “ASAP” because “the longer it sits in the container the more likely it will fail the test.” So I’ve procrastinated doing the testing for one week already.
We also need a fireplace inspection, but since our fireplace has been broken for two years now we can’t get it done until it’s fixed. Since fixing the darn thing is something I’ve been bugging Neville to do now for ages, I’m truly happy it will finally be done. We have an appointment for the fireplace guys to fix it next week, and after that I can have the town do the inspection.
There is a sibling group of two sisters that we expressed interest in adopting but they told us it will take another 6-8 weeks for the FBI and the state to clear us, plus the social worker has to finish the home study (which includes all of the above mentioned things that still need to be finished, including the well-water testing!) so they won’t even consider us as a potential family for these girls until that is all done. Some of it is in our hands, but the real wait is going to be for the fingerprint clearance to come back. So we’ll just wait and see. With any luck we’ll have adopted another child before I retire. 
I’m headed to the allergist today to have Jaden tested so that we can try to figure out what gives him major allergy symptoms in the spring and summer. Last year he was diagnosed with asthma, and at the time the allergist wanted to do more testing to pin down the cause – but didn’t want to take Jaden off of the allergy medicine in the middle of the allergy season. So we had to wait until now, and we’ll see how it goes. It would be nice if we could figure out what kept sending him home from school last year.
We are still working on the adoption paperwork. We have met with the social worker a few times, and completed a lot of the paperwork, but we still have some more to do. For one, we haven’t been able to get in touch with our town police to get our fingerprints done. They just don’t return our calls (I know, nice) and they’re not there all of the time so dropping by has proved futile as well. We have to start looking for other options since waiting for the background check and approvals once the fingerprints are in usually takes the longest.
We have been going every week to a full-day training class for the past three weeks. Tomorrow is the last one. It’s been pretty intense. We have learned a lot though, so it’s been worth it (not to mention it’s required!).
That’s about all for now!
We are starting the process again, this time to adopt domestically. It’s the very, very, very beginning…. we have just identified an agency and started the homestudy. I plan to post here more often (yeah, we’ve heard that before!!) so that I can keep everyone up to date as we progress, and also keep track of this new road on our journey.
I finally learned how to upload videos from my camera to my computer, so once I learn how to get them here on the blog I’ll add some. It was very interesting to look at them all – some are from when Jaden first came home and others are more recent. I’ll get something together and post it before we’re all old and gray!
