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!

Approval Process Update!

Hello! Just a very quick update in the middle of a very busy week! Russell spoke with our case worker on Monday and we should have our approval from the state by Friday! We need you all to cross your fingers, think about us, pray for us, and everything else you can do to keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we hope so desperately to be approved by Friday!

Have a great week everyone! Will blog again when we know more!

2011-a look back

Hello! No new child news yet, but I thought I would take this time to reflect back on our year. It has been an eventful year, full of ups and downs. Here is a (brief) list of things I consider important that happened to us this year.

January-I traveled to New Jersey/New York with my Mom to help her with arrangements for my Uncle's funeral. He was my Mom's only brother and they were very close. It was difficult, not only to see everything, but it was hard to watch my Mom get upset knowing there was nothing I could do to help. The positive side was that I got to meet alot of my New York family that I didn't know so that was great. I got to meet my Great Aunt who is one of the most wonderful women on this planet. She is just a terrific lady who, at 81 years old, is more feisty than I am at times!

February-We officially begin the adoption process by attending orientation at the local DFCS office. We were so excited that we could not hold in our news and we began telling family and friends our good news. This is when we officially became "paper pregnant". Also, Russell began his new job!

March/April-Slowly begin paperwork, first home study completed. On April 20, our new niece Kylie was born! On April 25, our baby Sunny turned 8!

May-We unexpectedly lose Russell's mother on May 20. This was definitely, by far, the most difficult and saddest event of the year for both of us. It is extremely heartbreaking knowing that our child will never get to know either of their paternal grandparents. However, Russell's mother knew about and supported our adoption very much. She was one of our biggest cheerleaders. I am grateful that my parents have been supportive of both Russell and I through this ordeal.

June-Taryn's very busy summer reading program at work. Parenting classes start at the end of June. We meet some wonderful couples and single people who we hope, for their sake, are farther along in the process than we are. We hope that they have not had to deal with as much loss of paperwork and miscommunication as we have! During the classes, we received over 100 pages of paperwork to fill out.

July-Complete our 100+ page paperwork "Bible" for the adoption. Our first great nephew, Aiden, is born! Taryn breathes a sigh of relief as the summer reading program is over....until next year. :) 

August-Nothing exciting happens because our paperwork was stuck under someone's desk for a month!! Talk about miscommunication...

September-Taryn turns the Big "3-0". Ouch! More miscommunication and paperwork from the case workers.... We begin going back to church and are enjoying the services, pastor, and meeting new people.

October-All paperwork is completed. Home study #2 is scheduled for November 1! Russell and I celebrated 8 wonderful years of marriage on the 11th.

November-Home studies #2 and #3 completed and passed with flying colors!

December-Case worker says we are in the middle of the approval process and everything is going as planned.

So what does 2012 hold in store for us? I'm not sure, but I hope that, by this time next year, I will posting about the cute things our child does or says, and hopefully asking advice from other parents!

Russell and I hope each and every one of you have a happy and safe New Year's holiday!

-Taryn

The Approval Process

Happy December! We are so excited about everything going on with our adoption process at this point! We are right in the middle of the approval process. As you may remember reading, once our home study and paperwork are completed, we go for local, regional, and state approval. Russell received a call from our social worker this afternoon to update us on the progress. We are currently in the stage of local approval. It needs just one more signature to be approved locally! It then goes on to regional and state approval. She said we should have regional and state approval by the middle of January! Wow!

So what's next? After we receive approval from the state, our social worker will work to find us a match. It could be one or even two children! If we get two children, it would be a sibling group of either two boys or two girls. How amazing would that be? Of course, we would be soo happy just to get a child. But the possibility that we could get siblings is AWESOME!! Now our expected timeline for a child is late January (at the extreme earliest) to March (in reality).

We hope all of you are getting ready for a very Merry Christmas! We will update as soon as we have more news!

Results of the final home study!!

Okay, folks, it's what you've been waiting for! Final home study results!

We were so nervous about this final visit. The social worker showed up and Sunny was a complete angel. She remembered her from last time! She was soo cute, she only barked (again) when the case worker did not pet her! She still wanted that attention! All of us sat in the living room while the case worker asked a variety of questions. During that time, Sunny was sleeping on the couch between us. It's almost like if you didn't know she was there, you never would have guessed it.

The questions lasted for about 2 hours again. Then, she had a long checklist of items to look for in our home. She checked for the child safety locks, working fire extinguishers, and working smoke detectors. She noticed that we had two disaster plans - one in the child's room and one in the living room. She also noticed that our cords from the blinds in our home were properly placed so a child could not reach them. Another thing she checked was that all of our rugs in our house had the grip stuff on the bottom so they would not come loose.

We then signed some papers and she left us with one last "homework assignment". We had to create a three-generation family tree for each one of us. We also had to note if the family member was deceased, and the year they were deceased. Taryn's was pretty easy because her family is pretty small. Russell's was kind of difficult, because his Mom and Dad had at least 7 siblings each! But, we figured that out and came up with two great looking family trees! Right before she left, she told us that she thought we would make great parents! Yeah!!!

What happens next? The approval process. The social worker told us that these normally go pretty fast and that we should be approved by the end of the year. And then that's where the fun part begins-we start talking about a little one! Right now, we are expecting to hear about our child somewhere between January and February. So we are planning to enjoy December as one of our last months as "just a married couple"!

What's going on?

Yeah...you're all asking me what's going on with the process. Until a week ago, it was absolutely nothing. Last week, I was beginning to get worried because I hadn't heard anything from our case worker in over a month. So Russell called our case worker last Wednesday and found out that our paperwork had been sitting on a person's desk in Thomasville for A MONTH!!! COLLECTING DUST!!! (As you can see, I'm pretty upset about it.)

We then found out that our paperwork was FINALLY transferred to this woman in Thomasville's boss in Albany for her staff to review. She told us that her aides were reviewing the paperwork, and that they would get back with us in 1-2 weeks.

Well, we received a letter last night from the DFCS office in Albany. It was pretty thick so we were excited. In it was a letter stating they need another copy of our driver's licenses and auto insurance cards. OK-no big deal. Also, they wanted us to fill out the enclosed paperwork. When we started looking through it, it just didn't seem right. There were sheets on physicals that needed to be done on our own children. Considering we don't have children, we were concerned. As we were looking at the paperwork they sent, we received someone else's paperwork!! Of course, it wasn't everything, but there were 6 pages of someone else's paperwork!! And none of the forms we needed to fill out were in the envelope.

This morning, Russell called our case worker to find out what was going on. The person from Thomasville drove up to Albany to find out personally what had happened. The person who was responsible for sending us the paperwork blamed it on her assistants. That's ridiculous, because she should have made sure the correct paperwork was going out to the right people. They called Russell around 11 a.m. and explained that we did not need to fill out any of the paperwork that they sent us (Duh!) and that they sent us the correct paperwork on Wednesday. We are seriously doubting that statement. We are giving them until Saturday to receive the paperwork, and if we still do not receive anything, we are taking action on Monday.

If they send us the correct paperwork, we are planning to fill it out and send it back to them on Monday. The case workers have told us that we should hear from the company that does the home study within 1-2 weeks of their receiving our paperwork. If I do not hear from that company, we will be calling in exactly 2 weeks.

We are so upset over everything that has happened lately, but are still optimistic and anxious to meet our child. This will all be worth it in the end.

Our paperwork is done!

Hello everyone! We finally turned our paperwork in, so we are one step closer to getting our child. We have referred to it as our 133 page Bible, lol. On Thursday, our case worker called and said she would be in her office whenever we wanted to turn it in. So I went at 4:00 and spent an hour going over all of the paperwork to make sure we had everything.

So what happens now? We have to call the head of Resource Development, who is the second person to look over the paperwork to make sure everything is in there, on Wednesday to confirm she received the paperwork. She is located in Thomasville, which for those of you who are unfamiliar with south Georgia geography, is about 45 minutes-1 hour away from Bainbridge. Once we confirm that this person has received our paperwork, she calls the vendor who will complete our home study. Then, that vendor will call us to set up an appointment for the first home study. We will have to have 2 home studies. Both home studies must be completed within 30 days of each other. After the home studies are complete, we go for approval and then the fun stuff begins!!

On another note, Russell spoke to his oldest brother today and told him our news. They haven't always had the best relationship, but he was so excited for us. I can't express how uplifting it was for us to have the support of Russell's oldest brother and his wife.

Overall, everything on the adoption front is looking up!!

Our Life Story...

What an interesting past few weeks it has been. Russ and I have been consumed with filling out our adoption paperwork and getting everything we need done in order to move on to the next step in the process. We have had to fill out about 100 pages of questionnaires, dealing with every aspect of our lives you can imagine. I will share just a few questions with you that we have had to answer:

• What was your childhood like?
• What were your pre-teen years like?
• What were your teenage years like?
• Describe your relationship with your parents as a child, and now as an adult.
• Describe your relationship with your siblings as a child, and now as an adult.
• What role does each person play in your family relationship?
• Please give us a physical description and layout of your home, including sleeping arrangements.

Wow. So I will never be pregnant. I will never feel a baby kick my insides. I will never have cravings for pickles and ice cream. I will never have morning sickness. However, I am definitely what they call "paper pregnant". I am sick of filling out paperwork, question after question and signing my life away. This is definitely worse than buying a house. That was the most paperwork we've ever had to fill out for an event. Until now.

On top of that, we FINALLY got our Georgia driver's licenses last week! Most of our records and tests that we have needed to get done are finished. Our goal is to have the last bit of paperwork ready by Monday so we can turn it in and move closer towards getting our child.

Timeline

So many of you have been asking me what happens next. I'm sorry for taking so long but I've been busy with work and then I've been just plain tired!

During the parenting classes last week, we received a HUGE packet of paperwork that we need to fill out. It's probably about 100 pages worth. Let's just say that it pretty much asks for our life story. We have 60 days to fill it out, but our goal is to get it back to our social worker around July 15. After that, we will have two more home studies which will be much more extensive than the first one. The person conducting the two home studies, I'm told, will ask us alot of questions, and will be similar to some of the questions we are answering in our packet of paperwork.

After the home studies are complete (which should be late August or early September), our packet goes before local, regional, and state approval. Once we are approved by the state (late September, hopefully!), we are then considered a resource family for adoption. Our case worker works with other case workers in the state of Georgia to find a child that matches our needs. Once they find a child, they call us with the information and set up a meeting with the child's foster parent (if they are in a foster home), our case worker, the child's case worker, and the director of the local DFCS to work out pre-placement visits. Pre-placement visits are scheduled times where we get to spend time with the child. These visits start out at just a few hours each to overnight visits.

If everything works out in pre-placement, then the child will come to live with us. During the time the child is living with us, we work with our attorney and the court to make the child legally ours. It takes approximately 6 months for the adoption to be finalized through a judge. During that time, the case worker will make monthly visits to ensure everything is going well. If things do not work out in pre-placement visits, then we will go back to the drawing board as a resource family for adoption. Of course, this is an extremely quick version of the entire process. I would probably bore most of you with all the gritty details.

My hope is that we will at least be in pre-placement visits with our future child by Christmas. Wouldn't that be the best Christmas gift of all for us?

What we learned this week!

There is really nothing else to say except...what a week! Whew! We have been so busy because we had parenting classes at our county DFCS (Department of Family and Children Services) office each weeknight (Monday through Friday) from 5:30-9 p.m. We learned soooo much more about the entire process, and now have a firm grasp on our timeline. We learned alot about adoption and foster care, because there were people in there who are interested in foster care only, as well as adoption. There were 8 people (including us) in our class and we really enjoyed meeting them. Mr. & Mrs. P., Mr. & Mrs. H., Ms. J., and Ms. G were all wonderful people with a loving heart, and we are so excited for them as they embark on their journey to open their homes to waiting children. What did we discuss? Keep reading...

On Monday, we learned more about how children come in to state foster care. The social workers discussed some of their recent cases and provided examples of how seemingly "normal" families can turn their lives upside down. Learning about how some parents mistreat their children is revolting, especially for us since we want nothing more than a child in our home.

On Tuesday, we discussed how teenagers in foster care are prepared for the real world through DFCS Independent Living Program. They teach them life skills (such as getting a job, balancing a checkbook, making a budget, etc.) that will prepare them as they enter the real world. We learned about the impact of trauma on child development, how children deal with grief and loss (and also discussed our own experiences with grief and loss of loved ones), attachments, serious emotional disturbances, and parenting a child who has been sexually abused. Yes, it happens more than we all want to know. Much more. The case worker told us that approximately 82% of children in state care have experienced some type of sexual abuse. Absolutely horrifying, isn't it?

On Wednesday, we discussed behavior management techniques, understanding and preventing misbehavior, and how to parent children of a different culture, race, and religious beliefs other than our own.

On Thursday, we learned about setting limits and boundaries, merging family systems, what the first day in our home would most likely be like, and how to be an advocate for the child.

Friday was the best because we were able to meet foster and adoptive parents and their foster and adopted children. The children were sooo cute! The parents had lots of great tips and experiences that they shared with the group.

So what happens now? Don't worry, we'll be blogging about that very soon!

Classes!

Hello all! It's been awhile since I've last blogged, but there really hasn't been anything going on. When not much happens, it makes me wonder "Is this really happening? Are we really adopting a child?". But yes, it's happening, and we couldn't be more excited!

Today, we received a letter regarding our parenting classes, which is the next major step in the process. They will be held all next week! We are sooooooooo excited! It will be interesting to see what they teach us next week about the children in the process.

I'm not 100% sure what will happen from here, so I'm not going to publicly speculate the next step on this blog until something happens.

This is just another step closer to getting our child-we cannot wait to be parents soon!