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!

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 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.

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!

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!

The end of the semester is winding down now, I finished the tedium of putting together the final exams for my students today and submitted them to the copy center. Now it’s a matter of picking up the exams, administering them on Tuesday, and then grading (and grading, and grading…). Lately I have been the most disorganized (unorganized? anyone?) person on earth so I’m sure it is going to take me at least a week to gather all the little scraps of paper on which I’ve jotted down my notes on who deserves an A from Santa this year and who deserves a C (or worse). Grades are not due until after Christmas (thank goodness for little miracles) so I have a chance to take a deep breath and….

do all my Christmas shopping!! Yes, folks, I have not even started. Here we are, 13 days until Christmas, and I don’t have one person finished. I just started last week because my mom wanted to check out a local fair they were having while she visited here. I found a couple of nice gifts for Jaden’s teachers at his day care center, and maybe a couple of things for some family, but that’s about all I have done. This, unfortunately, is the usual story for me. I get caught up in the end of the semester and don’t start making my shopping list until after finals.

The more I think about it the more I realize that I’m basically caught up in a tornado from the start of the semester until the end of the semester, and I’m very thankful for those little “breaks” in between that allow me to do things like brush my teeth without simultaneously trying to remember if I already photocopied the handouts for class later the same day.

As for Jaden – he is doing TERRIFIC. He’s really come a long way in the last couple of months. He enjoys going to his ‘school’ three days a week. Sometimes he does give me a hard time about leaving, but on other days he goes straight to Miss “coco” and happily waves to me while he says “bye-bye” in his hilariously cute, toddler-phase, word approximation style accent. He must know close to 100 American Sign Language (ASL) signs (I’ve lost count)— believe it or not. I stopped having to teach him new signs — he actually teaches us signs now! His ASL-fluent teacher at school signs as she talks, so he picks up signs up from her and then comes home assuming we’ll know what he’s ‘talking’ about when he repeats the sign. It took us weeks to figure out that he was signing train, and another for helicopter. He kept giving us an evil stare when we showed we obviously didn’t know what he was talking about – it was as if he was thinking “YOU taught ME this language, why are you feigning ignorance?!”

We’ve been working weekly with early intervention on Jaden’s verbal skills. He’s coming along – he has approximately 20 word approximations now. Things like mama, dada, papa (grandpa) and bye-bye are really clear now. Today he said water and I couldn’t believe how much better it sounds than it did just a week ago. I have a feeling he’s going to start rattling off words as he rattles off signs. The funny part is that the words he speaks are also signs he knows — he’ll sign at the same time he says the word, so I still think, although it has taken him a while to speak, the signing was a godsend. Without it I’m sure we’d be having (many more) temper tantrums out of frustration. He’s been able to communicate with us really well with the signing even though the words are coming more slowly.

Interestingly, the word approximations he started with are less likely to be word approximations a child born in the U.S. would start with — for example he learned the sound of g’s and k’s first, which are usually later in an English speaking child’s language development (according to the literature early intervention gave me). My theory is that because Jaden spent 9 months listening to Korean, his tongue was learning to form Korean language sounds, and those were the first sounds he started babbling. Although, now that he is learning more and more, his language development is starting to appear more closely related to an English speaking child’s language development.

I have to wonder how our little nephew who is expected on 12/24 will fare with language development. My brother and his wife are going to bring him up bilingual. My sister-in-law will only speak Portuguese in the house, and my brother will only speak English (at least that’s the last they mentioned to us) — so it’ll be interesting to watch their son develop from that perspective. We are all SO excited about the new addition to our family – and of course the grandparents are nearly bursting with joy. Two years ago it seemed they’d never have grandkids, and here we are, with my brother and his wife expecting the 2nd (grandchild).

As for us, we always wanted two children, but I’ve been dragging my feet about putting in another adoption application. It was such a long wait for Jaden, and such a stressful process with Vietnam closing and not knowing what was going to happen with our application, etc, etc… so I think that’s what has me procrastinating. I also can’t imagine how I’ll get all the paperwork and running around done now that I have a toddler at home. It was hard enough to do it while it was just me and Neville. Plus I worry about our ages. Oy. Maybe I just need to have faith, and go with the flow. So I should just fill out the darn paperwork and leave it in our Creator’s hands, right?

We took this picture on Thanksgiving day before heading to my in-laws:

Last night Neville and I realized it was our last weekend as a ‘dual income no kids yet’ couple.  It was during one of those “overwhelming excitement” moments.  We’re moving on to a new phase in our lives – one we have waited and waited for – one that we’re so happy to be entering. It is almost hard to believe. Yet, here we are!

We confirmed our flights and started making our packing list. Yesterday I spent a few hours with Mom’s and Dad’s help decorating the nursery. It looks so adorable – I’ll post pictures soon. There’s a lot to get done this week – we have to pick up the loaner crib (our furniture is not in yet) and set up a makeshift changing table for the time being. I need to figure out how to operate a car seat and a jogging stroller. We are completely in the dark about what they are feeding Jaden right now – we’ll find that out when we visit the foster family’s home next week, so there’s really no planning for that at the moment. We don’t even have an update on how big he is so we’re guessing based on the last medical exam we have information for, which was in May. Our SW tells us that they “feed babies a lot in Korea” so since he’s about 8.5 months now, we should be prepared to put him in 12 month clothes! 

The baby shower could not have happened at a better time. We made a list of everything we need to get this week at BRU to be completely set up for bringing Jaden home – it is a short list. We realized that after thinking for so long that we were adopting from Vietnam (where the babies tend to be about 2 months younger but much smaller) that Jaden’s closet is full of clothes for 3-6 and 6-9 months. We received many shower gifts that were sizes 12 months and up – so that’ll help a lot – but we have to do some clothes shopping this week too (poor me – how I hate to shop for baby clothes -jk -LOL).

Our plan is to arrive in Seoul on Saturday, tour the city Saturday and Sunday, visit the foster home on Monday to meet the foster family and Jaden, tour the city on Monday afternoon and Tuesday, then meet the foster family on Wednesday to take Jaden back to the hotel with us. 

It turns out that Neville’s new associate at work is from Korea, and his family has asked to meet us while we’re there. I just found out last week that I have a colleague that is teaching there for the semester – he is also from Korea – and he has offered to meet us at the airport and show us around Seoul. It is uncanny how these things come together.

We were lucky enough to get the two bedroom unit at the agency’s guesthouse. It is quite a lot less expensive than a hotel in the same area – so we’ll have plenty of Korean won left to spoil Jaden with. LOL 

We are jumping up and down inside, and nervous at the same time. It’s the first time we’re taking a 14 hour flight, no less to pick up our first child! We’ll be flying back 14 hours with an infant – which would probably be a challenge for any first time parent. (Heck, flying 14 hours is going to be a challenge for me!)

I don’t have the details worked out yet as to whether or not we’ll have regular access to the internet, but I’ll try to keep posting while we’re there, and adding pictures to the blog. I realized last week that there is a way to do as slideshow directly in the blog- if I can figure out how to post one I’ll do that rather than add in the snapfish links. It might be easier on your end to just flip through a slideshow.

Thank you everyone for all your support and the wonderful, heartwarming comments and emails. It is so great to hear from all of you and to know that you are following us through this unbelievably exciting, life-changing journey.

In any case, it becomes cumbersome to password protect and use blog-names. Any posts with pictures or links to our pictures will remain password protected, otherwise not. I’m still a little paranoid about the pictures since I heard about another family who found their pictures splashed all over a website that was written completely in a foreign language, so they had no idea what the site was about. I am still not sure they ever learned the details. So for now, pictures will remain private. 

No, unfortunately we have no adoption news to report. I am getting antsy. We are well past the timeframe we thought we’d be dealing with, especially since the beginning of the process, after the referral, went so smoothly. I guess I should have been prepared for a delay because of Chuseok (Thanksgiving) in South Korea. I’m trying to convince myself that I should contact the agency to ask what’s up. Yet, I’m sure if they knew anything they’d let us know, so I don’t want to be a pest about it. I guess since I haven’t heard from them in weeks it would not be a bad thing to call. Maybe tomorrow.

Stay tuned… as soon as we do get the travel call you’ll be the first to know (after us and the immediate family, of course).

http://www.rainbowkids.com/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=602 

It is an article written by a Korean adoptee about her experience meeting birthmothers in Korea when she traveled there as an adult. Hopefully by the time you are reading this the link will still be active (you never know with these things…). The article at the above link was reprinted from Chicken Soup for the Adopted Soul, which I didn’t even know existed until now.

This weekend my parents held a gathering with a few cousins since it has been many years since we were all able to get together. I wasn’t able to make it to the last one (long story for another day) so it was really terrific to be able to be there and spend time with everyone. Some I hadn’t seen in ages. We had such a beautiful day and it was a lot of fun. All of my cousin’s little ones are so adorable. I don’t think I have laughed that much in ages. The things kids will say and do….