Got our paperwork!

Warning: Rant ahead!

So on Thursday we received our long awaited paperwork! We received a packet of approximately 10 children that are legally free for adoption (that means their birth parents have already signed away their rights or had their rights taken away from them by the court). We have narrowed it down to 2 children. We will just say that there is one boy and one girl. We do not want to be any more specific right now due to privacy concerns. We have requested more information on these children, which means we will receive a full psychological and medical history on these children. After that, we will move forward. We are soo happy that the fun part is finally beginning!


Now on to Taryn's rant. If you get offended easily, you should probably stop right here.

Throughout this process, people have been really happy for us. Except for one person, but we choose to have nothing to do with her because she is generally an unhappy person in life and has never supported Russell and I, or anyone else for that matter, on any decision we have ever made about anything. We have always answered anyone's questions that they have had about our adoption process and like I said, people have always been really happy for us.

Tonight, I had an encounter that really upset, angered, and bothered me. I was talking to another woman about our adoption and she said, "Why don't you just adopt a newborn from state care? My friend did that and it is so much better than getting a kid who's older" Then, she just walked away and I started talking to someone else about our adoption, who was very sweet. What was worse was the way she said it, like she was looking down on us. To that person: I'm sorry I'm not perfect. I'm sorry I can't just get pregnant and pop out a kid like everyone else. I'm sorry you act like you're better than everyone else. I'm sorry that I'm, well, normal.

Oh, and by the way, if you disagree with what we are doing or how we are choosing to build our family, stop communicating with us altogether.

-Taryn

Getting Closer!

Happy Monday everyone! Hope you are all having a great start to the week so far! Today, Russell called our case worker to inquire as to the status of the adoption, and we got some great news! One of her colleagues is mailing us paperwork on children that need to be adopted. Once we get the paperwork, we can choose a child we are interested in adopting and will go forward with meeting the child and pursuing adoption.

We will be sure to update you all when we receive the paperwork. We are so excited!!! Finally getting closer!!

Let's play Match Game!

Hello all! I know it's been awhile since we've blogged but there has not been alot to blog about lately. Well, anything worthwhile, anyway. During the last month, somehow pieces of our paperwork got messed up (Again?!?!?!?!) and the ages of the children we wanted were confused. The ages we have requested are 0-10, and we have told the case workers that from day 1. At one point, they had that we would only accept children ages 1-4 or ages 0-5. We have never said either of these ranges so we don't know where they came up with this craziness. :)

Fast forward to this past Monday, the 19th. We called the case worker to find out the status of our paperwork, and we were able to get everything straight over the phone. For example, we confirmed (again) our age range (0-10) and discussed the level of special needs we will accept for a child. We will not go into this publicly on our blog because it violates our future child's privacy.

According to our case worker, our file for the State Adoption Unit has been updated to reflect these changes and the case workers throughout the state begin finding us a matching child (or children). Here's a cool dialogue of part of our conversation:

Case Worker: "We will begin finding a matching child or children for you starting next Monday."
Us: "That's great, but that will probably take awhile, right? Like, 6 months or so?"
Case Worker: "Actually, no. This part usually moves quicker than you think."

Wow! Maybe quicker than we think would be less than 6 months, lol. On a serious note, it is so exciting that case workers around the state (and especially our case worker) will be working hard to match us with a child (or children)!

If you remember that old game show "Match Game", this is where we got the title of this blog post from. We are so ready to be matched!! Not only are we playing the Match Game, we are also playing the Waiting Game. We certainly hope the matching game will be much more fun then the waiting game has been!

The official letter!

Okay, folks, our approval is officially official now!! Today, we received a letter from our case worker. I'll give you the main points here:

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Brown:

We are pleased to inform you that effective 1/17/12, you home has been granted full approval status to adopt 1-2 children ages birth to 10 years, any sex, race, or nationality.

Please know that any future placements of children in your home on adoptive status will require 6 months of placement supervision prior to the adoption finalization.

Congratulations, and please contact us with any questions/concerns.


Yippeeeeee!! We are sooo excited!!

It's Official!!

Hello wonderful blogger family, friends, and followers! We wanted to share the most exciting news with all of you! Today, we received a call from the case worker to let us know we have officially been APPROVED!!! She will be sending us an *official* letter next week to inform us of our approval and we will then be transferred to a new case worker, R. (Sorry, I can't disclose this person's name due to privacy reasons.) R. is great because she is the one who works directly with children and adoptive parents!! We are being placed into the state adoption database now, so the case workers who are responsible for the children in state care can see that we are potential adoptive parents.

What happens now? When a potential match is found, R. will contact us with as many details about the child (or children) as they have. If we decide to proceed, then we meet with R., the child's case worker, the child's foster parents (if they are in foster care), and several managers from the local DFCS to discuss this further. If we still decide to proceed with meeting the child (or children), we will meet the child and spend hour-long visits with them. The hour-long visits then turn in to an afternoon, then overnight, then a weekend, and then possibly a week-long stay. If all of the above visits are successful, then the child (or children) will move in with us and then we will begin the process of finalizing the adoption and the child (or children) will be legally ours!!!

When is all this going to happen, you ask? Well, we're not really sure. Our current case worker told us we could get a call as early as next week, or 6-8 months from now (or even longer). For now, we have decided not to make any long-term plans and to take everything one day at a time. We don't know what's going to happen, so taking it one day at a time is all we can do.

We are soooo happy!! We have waited so long to become parents and we know that we have just a small amount of time left. This is the beginning of the end of the process!

We will post again soon!