WE'VE BEEN LICENSED!!!!

Wooo Hoooo!! We got our foster license!!! One huge step taken and reached. Because we have to be foster licensed before we can adopt, this means that we are one step closer to our goal.

We've started sending in paperwork to our adoption worker also. That autobiography part is really going to be tough. Here are some of the things we need to write about: How would you describe yourself, physically and personality? Describe your parents relationship? How were you disciplined? What were you like as a child? And that's just one section on FAMILY DESCRIPTION. There are other sections such as Marriage/Relationships, Parenting Approach, Lifestyle, Contingency Plans....and on and on and on. I keep telling Tonya it's like doing therapy all over again!

But we are very excited about our license and that we're on our way. We have registered for one of the classes we need to take for adoption - that will be in June. With any luck, we'll be done with the process and begin our waiting period by August.

First Meeting with Our Adoption Worker

We had our first meeting with our adoption worker on Friday. We spent about an hour with her chatting and going over all the stuff we need to do from here. If they made everyone go thru what they make adoption parents go thru, they would not need to have a Foster Care system!

Here is what is on the horizon for us now. We have to each write an autobiography, we have 3 more classes to take, a physical, we need to fill out a financial statement, we each have to have individual interviews with our worker (which will be 2 - 3 hours long - each), have health records requested, write up a profile/letter to birth mother in case someone comes in and wants to pick the parents, and then the last thing we will need to do is have a in-home interview which will be 2 - 3 hours long.

Our worker seems really nice which is good since we'll be spending so much time with her! Oh and we got fingerprinted again on Friday. Seems a little daunting but will be worth it in the end. Could we get lucky and get a special Christmas present this year???

Names!!!! OMG! Do we need names?

And now we're on to our next dilemma - Names! We want to get a child between 0 - 2 so if we get a fairly new born, giving or changing the name of the child shouldn't be that big of an issue. However, if the child is already responding to a name at the age of 1, is it ok for us to change it? Will the child know any different? And what if we do a concurrent planning?

Concurrent planning is where we start out as Foster parents for a child that has a 95% chance of being made adoptable, however there is still a 5% chance that the child would be reunified with the parents. We could have that child for 12-18 months before we can adopt. It's not really fair to change the name at that point is it?

So many decisions that are so unique the adoption process. Do they have books about this stuff??

Mommy, Momma, Mom....who will it be

So we had a discussion the other day about who will be called what. Will one of us be Momma and the other Mommy and which one of us will be who. At first we thought maybe we let the kid decide.....you know how kids are, they'll call you whatever they want to. But that would make it hard while they are not able to speak. So we're in a dilema on this one. I think Tonya should be momma because Samantha calls her that on occasion. I guess we could go with Mum and Mom....bring in some of our English roots? Naaah.....that's just too proper. So we're still undecided. It will probably be one of those things that just naturally happens? What do you guys think?

So what is this about

For any of you who don't know, we have begun the process of adoption.
We thought this would be a great way to keep everyone up to date on what's going on and where we are in the process.

After several trys at getting pregnant and it not working, we decided to go the adoption route. We have our first meeting with our Adoption working next Friday the 8th. We have already had our home study from the Foster License people. (We have to be licensed foster parents before we can adopt). We spent the month of March cleaning and tearing our apartment apart, getting rid of stuff and adding all those adult things you need as parents....like a kitchen table! We also had to have a crib and car seat in the home so we now have a psuedo-nursery.

There is so much to tell to all of you and I'm sure you have tons and tons of questions so please don't hesitate to post them here. We will try to answer them all and keep you all informed of our little journey

Well, here is our attempt at blogging and sharing our story with everyone we know. We're kinda new to this blogging thing but I'm sure the geek in me will figure it all out.