March update

Since my last post, the weather has turned lovely (though currently dropped back into coolish) and life is looking up!  After a week's vacation from school I interviewed at Cathedral of Praise, the church closest to our home, for a teaching position in their preschool (infant-K3). They hired me that week as a substitute until a spot opens up in the older grade classroom. That's based on enrollment, which is changing slightly each week, so it's a bit of pot-luck... but I've had three days of work already in the last three weeks, have two more part-time scheduled this week, and two long full-time days in a couple of weeks. It'll be lovely when I get my first paycheck, and I'm having fun too!  The director indicated they may call me a lot for the last-minute things, since I live three blocks (or so) away and can get there faster than their other subs. So that's good. I've gotta get used to the early - and fast - wake-up though; yesterday she woke me at 7:25 and wanted me there in 20 minutes, so I took my breakfast with me!

The weather's been nice enough that I spent a couple of weekends on a new outdoor project, making a "house" for my garden. The last few years I've had trouble with critters eating the produce before we do, so this is a 7.5' x 4' frame with bird netting all around it.  I have to finish the door (it got cooler, and then we went out of town) and one panel of mesh that needs to be secured, and then it'll be finished and I can post a picture.  My seedlings are starting to come up... some folks on my garden email list suggested that some old seeds may still work, but so far none of last year's are coming up. I didn't know much about proper storage then, so I may just be out of luck, but we'll see.  I'm trying something new, working with companion planting (planting certain plants together that help one another grow better) so while I haven't added much more garden area than last year, I have a lot more plants. The tomatoes will be planted with carrots, green onions, basil, and thyme; the beans (trying soybeans and green beans this year) and strawberries are beside each other and may intermingle, and then I have a few from last year that are standing alone: blueberries, rosemary, mint, and a lilac (obviously not food, but something was eating it before it could grow to a hardy stage, so it's in the garden house now).  I'm also getting a free gift of "vine peach" seeds, which I hear are the size of a peach, the structure of a melon, and the taste of a mango. That should be interesting. I also got some of the flowers that are beneficial to gardens, whether they repel pests or attract pollinators. I'm looking forward to the weather warming up a bit more so I can go out there and finish things up!

We started attending Alpha at church. We each have our own reasons for attending, though for me it's mostly the peer pressure... people are unaccountably (in my opinion) overly excited about the Alpha experience, and it's mostly something I'd like to have over with so that I can know what everyone's talking about. Alpha is a program designed for beginners to Christianity, people struggling or seeking, and for cynics and doubters who want to know more. It serves a really important purpose within Christendom, and is a great tool for introducing the basics and (hopefully) pointing folks to tools for a solid relationship with Christ. I'm really not sure that it'll do anything for me as I'm definitely not the intended audience, but I do know that - in any area of interest - it often can be beneficial to review the basics on occasion. So we'll see.

Other than that, we're just reading a lot and watching movies and hanging out with friends. We spent the weekend at my parent's house just because we could, sat around with them watching television and just hanging out.  Our foster care social worker called yesterday asking to meet with us, but I had my phone off while I was teaching and missed the call, then I called back and left a message, so I'm waiting to hear back from her. I don't know if it's a regularly scheduled visit or if there's News. In the meantime, we ought to finish installing the gate and I need to tidy up a few different areas that we've been lax about. I'll copy this paragraph into the adoption blog, so folks who don't read both will be updated; sorry if you read it twice!

I guess that's it for now.

Boredom la-dee-dah... TOOMUCHTODO!!

So life was trucking along on a relatively even pace when it was suddenly stunned by everything happening at once. (Thus, of course, I blog. *heh*)

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Nicholas arrives tomorrow and will be around until Tuesday, I think. This is a very good thing. We have many ideas but no plans, which is typically how everyone around here likes things. He is bringing our kayak and some paddles, but we have nowhere to store it and no roof rack to actually get it to water. We're hoping to replicate Steve's "hang it from the garage rafters" scenario for storage. Of course we got a car that doesn't come with roof rack as an option, so we'll have to dig up the cash for a custom fitted one. We'll see how all that goes.

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I ended my last class with a 98.23%. It's sufficient. *heh* Started a new one this week on "Children, Family, and Community", and it seems to be ok... though repeating a lot of stuff we've already had, and not to much more depth than the first time. But we'll see. It's an instructor I haven't had, and she seems to be rather hands-off right now. It's her first term teaching for Walden, though she's taught many years in a community college. I wish I was more optimistic.

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We are going through the Anglican class, which ends in Adult Confirmation. In order to be confirmed, you have to have first been baptized. There has been a family story that said when I was an infant, a Catholic family member got permission and a vial of Holy water and baptized me in the kitchen sink, since there was doubt about my continuing existence. My parents (being of the 'baptizing is for adults' vein) taught me that it didn't really count. They also taught me that communion was acceptable to take when I was old enough to understand it. In the church we currently attend, they accept infant baptisms and require baptism for taking of communion. I've been content with that thus far. However, because the Confirmation is a rite with the Bishop that requires having been baptized, and I was becoming more and more uneasy about not knowing for sure, I called the family member related to the story. Who has no recollection whatsoever and after lengthy discussion it was all agreed that even if it had, the situation 32 years ago would not have warranted the church having any record of it.

The moral of the story is that next Saturday we will be Dave Ramsey "Sell so much stuff the kids think they're next"ing at Wescott from 7am to 10:45, leaving the table to Jen and running to church for the 11:00 Confirmation rehearsal, running back to Wescott to clean up by 1:00, running home to meet my parents who are driving in from Charlotte, hitting the road for Seabrook by 2:00, and by 4:00 I will be immersed for Baptism in the Atlantic Ocean. Then Sunday morning Lanse and I will be confirmed.

Anyone who wants to come is welcome, but let us know because Seabrook is gated and we'll need to call in a pass for you.

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Adoption homestudy update! Which adds a trip to Columbia to the list of things to do in the next two weeks.

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We also needed to have physicals redone for the homestudy. I called and made the appointment Tuesday morning, went to bed Tuesday night with a sore throat, woke with a fever, and went to the appointment Thursday feeling horrid. Still feel horrid. I'm going out this morning (when I stop typing) to get my medications.

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Things to do by next Saturday:

• Pick up meds and med equipment (need a mask for the nebulizer)
• Get better
• Finish up stuff to sell at the sale
• Wrap up last month's budget info and complete this month's (which already started)
• Write two papers by Sunday night
• Clean the house for Nick (which is a disaster because of crafting stuff for the sale)
• Get groceries (we're out of everything)
• Bake bread (see previous)
• Do stuff with Nick
• Purchase and install kayak storage system
  
• Possible going away party for a friend tomorrow night
• Church
• Tuesday night class
• Meet with Doug about the baptism
• Do Week 2 homework (readings, discussion posts x3, 2 papers)
• Clean the house for my parents
• Host my parents
  
• Travel to Columbia for homestudy stuff?
• Survive through next weekends' schedule
• NOT PANIC

That is all.

Learnin'

In a burst of uncharacteristic motivation, I spent all last week learning. I learned about Anglicans, I learned about children's health, I learned about Social Services, I learned about Academic Advising, I learned a bit about my instructor, I learned some XML, and I learned about myself.

'Twas an awful lot of learnin', and it made my brain hurt.

So I'll try to make this quick:

• I just might be Anglican by belief, my "baptism" is accepted, I could have it re-affirmed or get confirmed, depending on what I want. There's a recommended church in Charlotte, but it's smack in the downtown and quite a goodly hike from my folks', and they don't have a Saturday evening service. My mom wants us all together for Easter service, as she should; they're very much not Anglican, so we're facing the 'can't please everyone all the time' scenario.
  
• Proper nutrition is important, especially in growing kids. Nutrients work together to make the body go. Energy balance is vital.
  
• Our case worker has done all her prepping for her 'sit down and write' day, which is sometime this week.
• I have a new Advisor at school who is very nice, interested about me, and will stick with me til the bitter end. This is a good thing.
• My instructor, while very intense and perhaps unaware of inconsistencies, has a good heart.
• XML sucks to learn by doing
• I love making blogs, I have a very short attention span, I'm resourceful, I'm lazy, I enjoy raw spinach, and I can predict earthquakes with my legs.

I learned a lot more than that, but really it's all just details.

Paradigm Shift

Every time I think of the word 'paradigm' I relive the Salad Years skit from my Wheaton days. Salad Years was the student TV show, and one skit was two people imitating the Sesame Street two-headed monster doing a compound word thing. They did 'paradigm', except instead of 'para-dime' they said 'para-diggum'. It was amusing. I think you had to be there.

("para"...."diggum"...."para"...."diggum"...."PARADIGGUM!" "hey, there goes my dignity!")

Looovely.

And also very off-track.

Anyway, yesterday morning the phone woke me up, which is never a good way to start any day. But the weather was nice, and aside from being groggy I was mostly pleasant. The phone call was Frances from the mortgage company calling to verify when would be a good time to schedule closing on our refinance. She said she was spending the day filling out the forms for us and we'd probably close Thursday (today) or Friday afternoon. This was about... 9:30. OK, great, we've been waiting for a closing date for a month now. Fantastic!

I go about the morning, doing my morning things, and get ready to settle into schoolwork after lunch. The phone rings, and Frances tells me that not only can we not close on the refinance, but our home didn't even qualify for that loan in the first place. The loan officer was supposed to have checked our property values in their database, which apparently he didn't; so the only way we could continue is if we have a minimum of 10K out of pocket to bring with us. So not cool. So the refinance is cancelled, we're trying to see if we can get our non-refundable application fee (minus the assessment cost) back because the guy should have known we couldn't apply for it. We haven't heard back yet.

While I was finishing up on the phone with Frances (and trying not to throw my phone through the screen on the porch) our adoption case worker beeped in. She called back when I was off the phone, just to tell us that the homestudy she promised would be done by either last or this Friday hadn't been started yet. I'm not upset, there's good reasons, but I'm disappointed. Check the adoption blog for more details on that call.

So. Two upsetting and potentially life-changing things; but really it was a matter that in both cases we'd spent the last weeks or months anticipating a more comfortable and responsible moving-forward kind of life. I spent the rest of the day making calls and rearranging our financial goals and realigning my mental concepts of the near future. And relaying this all to Lanse, who was none-too-pleased as I was but processes things differently. It was an... interesting... rest of the day. Aside from a discussion reply or two, schoolwork wasn't part of it. But Lanse allowed an attack of Demon Housekeeper and stress-cleaned the main living areas and our bedroom, a quality of his in which I am very pleased. I just wish stress didn't have to be the trigger.

Some positive things happened though too. I wrapped up loose ends on the property tax snafu, and we actually can pay our mortgage and live off our income "comfortably" (in quotes, because we personally don't need much to feel comfortable; others would find our budget restrictive) and I finally got our March-April budget sorted out. We don't need the refinance to afford the house, and that's a huge sigh of relief.

That said, a little bit extra would be a great thing so we can start paying down some loans, so I'm wanting to put a little more focus in the concept of an Etsy shop with my quilting and jewelry stuff. I'm hoping to get the beading ladies at the game store to teach me some cool stuff that I can sell or give with Christmas in mind. Christmas took a big chunk out of our December budget last year, so anything I can do ahead would be good.

And then there's always schoolwork. Sigh. I suppose I should get to it.

Catching up... again

I seem to be taking long breaks in blogging now. (Long being, ya know, a few days... which some consider normal...) Anyway. That happens when I get so stressed out that depression slugs me upside the head, and I bury myself in some computer game (thanks Sarah) and convince myself that it's acceptable because there's Real People there! It's a social life.... right? RIGHT?? Ya, right.

Anyway, the financial problems of yesterweek have been mostly resolved. The property tax form was filed, though we haven't heard back yet. We received our home refinancing packet, I read every single word and wrote down questions, played phone tag, got my questions answered, and put it in the mail. Sallie Mae approved my new school loan even though I didn't finish my FAFSA (apparently the FAFSA is for the new loans in June, and I needed to just renew with Sallie for Spring Term.) FAFSA's waiting on our tax return. Our taxes are nearly done, but we have to wait for the revised property tax form. We made it to the end of our budget cycle without starving. (Well, we did let ourselves get really hungry, Dave would be mad, but only because we had $24 left in grocery for the final two days and didn't want to risk running over if we went to the store.) We realized that between our brick-and-mortar bank and ING we were getting confused and needed all our records in one place, so I spent yesterday uploading everything into Quicken online. Now we can see all our money, which is very nice, but the budget function on Quicken is quite incompatible with the way in which I budget, not to mention that we budget from the 15th and not the 1st because the mortgage takes most of the 1sts paycheck, so it's not transferring budgetary numbers properly for me. Gads, I'm such the nerd.

Other than that, school term's almost done. This is the last week of Winter term, and I have one short paper to write and a short list of web resources to submit by Sunday night. I'm still pulling a 4.0, but this CD class has been a pain in the behind due to the instructor's lack of presence. Then we have next week off. Yay! So if I finished homework today I could have a week and a half off! (I probably won't.) The following Monday starts Spring term and a course on Childhood Health and Safety, along with its Making Connections "lab" class. Rootin'-tootin' fun, lemme tell ya.

Spook has finished his meds and is acting much better, which is a huge relief. This was liquid amoxycilin, which I can't spell, but it meant as soon as Lanse squirted it in his mouth, Spook could spit and spray and shake and splatter everything within ten feet with it. While Lanse claims that pilling a cat is harder than this, it's certainly less messy. I'm glad that's done with.

Next Friday morning we have our Fire inspection and then I head off to our church's Women's Retreat at Camp St. Christopher on the beach. The weekend after that Lanse and I go to Woodlands for our anniversary weekend (which isn't until the end of May but we could get a good deal now because it's off season). So, school vacation + women's retreat + 10th anniversary bed & breakfast... sounds like I'm lined up for some relaxation and refocusing! The timing's definitely good. Also, maybe, all depends, the last chance for some time if God works the adoption stuff quickly.

Finally, I'm working with our clergy to develop an adoption resource for our church, since a lot of members have adopted or are currently or are somehow otherwise related to it. "We" is pretty much all me for the moment as I organize some resources. Now if only people would get back to me...

Adoption inspection

We passed with flying colors! It wasn't complicated, but it was important. I have to go fall down now; the adrenaline rush and now letdown has caused a bit of exhaustion.

More details at 11:00... or, well, whenever I get around to writing them. I'll probably put them on the adoption blog, so check there later on.

Thanks for your prayers, everyone. We could feel them! We even slept last night!

Preparing for Thursday

Thursday morning around 11:30 is our first county/state inspection for the adoption. I haven't posted here because pretty much all of our weekend has revolved around the last-minute projects we had to do for it, as well as just doing homework and going to church. If you would like more of an update on the last couple of days, please check our adoption blog!

A fresh start...

In an effort to drag myself out of my depressed crazies with intention, I arranged to make excuse to do my homework at church today. I need a public place to ignore in order to actually focus on what I'm doing. But in order for me to be there, we all felt it was better for me to volunteer and do a couple odd jobs before settling in.

I arrived a bit after ten, hung out and chatted in the office, punched, collated and finished creation of the latest batch of directories for Cathy McG, finished the pamphlet I volunteered to do on Friday for the C4K project for Cathy J, ate some lunch, got the call to schedule the health inspection, freaked out and called family, and then opened my textbook... to see it was almost 2:00. I read about 10 pages and then came home. Still better than nothing.

Actually accomplishing helpful work at the church really made me realize how much ministry means to me. I enjoyed working at Grace Covenant with the school so much I know I want to do something like that, but I didn't realize how much of it was ministry work in general... I've focused my degree on the children, which was also a huge part of it, but it's the church environment over all that moves me, and I'd thought it was the classroom. I may start to refine my future plans, just based on this morning. This could be a good thing.

Then I came home, ate more, zoned out, arranged with mom to maybe get a free living room set (but we have to get a truck to move it from Charlotte, so it won't be ALL free) and then we biked up and down the street. We have a cul-de-sac on each end, so in the end it makes a nice longish ride for me. Plus it was cold, so we kinda booked it home.

I'm pleased. I think I'll have a much better time being responsible and taking care of myself if I just determine that I'll probably get around to it eventually, but there's no pressure. I work better that way.

Good intentions...

Despite yesterday's good intentions, I woke up with the migraine from hell this morning and after I finally dragged out of bed, sat staring comatose at my computer most of the day until just about an hour ago when the drugs finally kicked in. Even so, I've talked to Bert a number of times, got the vet records scanned and emailed, and finally printed out the fire escape route floor plans we have to hang on the wall. I also remembered that our agency has discussion forums, and chatted in there a bit.

More updated info on the adoption blog, again.

Just a bit ago, I checked my school communication thing in my classroom to discover that my instructor has actually been adding comments to all my papers throughout the term, in additional text boxes in blue text down the right margin, but none of them have been showing up in my returned graded papers. So all this time I've been upset that she never comments, and she actually has been. But because she started all my papers with a note across the top, I didn't realize I was missing something. So we're going to find a way to get my comments to me, hopefully, and we'll hope that I wasn't supposed to be building on things she said. My grade seems to say that I'm doing fine, which is a relief. I just wish I hadn't felt so annoyed about her not doing her job as a prof, since apparently she was and it was the technology that failed me.

So far...

So far today I have:

• put dinner in the crock pot - another experiment
• baked bread
• contacted financial aid services for school
• contacted academic advisors to see if I can get into another class that starts Monday
• talked to Bert at Bethany (more info on our adoption site)
• received mail from Heidi (YAY! Thank you!)
• received my next Netflix movie
• received my textbook for the class I'm already in for Monday
• checked in to both of my current classes
• answered questions on my school research community
• watched video of Kaylee WALKING (click to watch on Flickr)
• scheduled an appointment with a new vet (it's at 4:00, please pray! Our last scheduled vet visit didn't go so well)
• finished two puzzles on jigidi.com (flash jigsaw puzzle site)

Later today we will:

• take the cats to the vet
• eat the food I hopefully haven't destroyed
• collapse
• maybe watch a movie

Tomorrow I will (theoretically):

• go to Home Depot and BabiesRUs for some final child proofing items
  
• finish child proofing the house
• do some homework
• try to contact my AA again

December?

Holy cow... how'd it get to be December already??

Thanksgiving was really relaxing, over all. We went to my folks' in Charlotte, but we'd had a huge Thanksgiving to-do when my brother and fam were there a couple of weeks prior, so we just kinda chilled out, had a regular-sized meal (but with nice dishes and appropriate traditional items, just not as many), watched a lot of movies, did a couple of my favorite Christmas puzzles. Went out driving with my dad just to drive around, hung out with mom watching movies, read three of four of the Wrinkle in Time books. Lanse painted a lot and hung out with the local gamers he knows from Rattrap Productions. Pretty relaxing.

Also, FYI... there's a new post on our adoption blog.

I've been fascinated to see via the live feed gadget who visits my blog! I'm really curious.... Chelmsford, Essex, who are you? Feel free to leave me a comment! :)

http://tryonsadopt.blogspot.com/

I decided since we've got enough posts on our adoption process all over the internet in various forms, I'm combining them into one website. Stop on over and read our Tryon Adoption Story. It's growing slowly as I collect stuff; won't be up to date for a bit yet.

Indecision

The more I browse and think and learn via email groups, the more I'm realizing I really want a girl. I know that I can love little boys too, and the wait for a girl is incredibly long, (more so the younger you want), plus if we were just to get pregnant, we wouldn't have a choice. So I don't know that it's worth saying anything about it. But I feel like I understand girls better, and while I know there are sports-oriented girls, I oddly feel like I can handle that better than sports-oriented boys. I haven't had a whole lot of experience with little boys, but all the ones that I have known have been very physical without a whole lot of reasoning skills. That makes me nervous, I don't know quite how to relate to it. Granted, the younger they are the more we can influence that sort of thing to some extent. And it's not just a sports thing, that's just an area in which the kind of thing I'm talking about often appears. I just tend to 'get' a higher percentage of girls than I do boys.

I also find myself still very drawn towards sibling groups (just 2), partly because we know we eventually want two anyway and I really don't want to go through this crazy government process again, and also because I feel like if there's two kids who are good at relying on each other it'd be some sort of comfort for the transition. Plus, ya know, I like kids. Since we're also looking at out-of-state adoption, I worry about the impact of removing an already-wounded child from everyone that's familiar to them. When I moved to NY it was by choice to an extended (married in) family that loved me, but no one really understood me at all; the only evidence of my past was my stuff (which many adopted kids come without), and even though I was an adult who had control over the situation it took a long hard time for me to get through it. I can only imagine what it would be like for a 5 year old kid feeling that kind of thing. I think having a brother or sister along for the ride would be a major benefit for them in an out-of-state, too-far-to-visit-often situation.

Oddly, I'm also finding myself drawn to pre-teen girls. Yes, I know, pre-teen girls are traditionally crazy even when they're not adopted kids. What in the world am I thinking?? Yes, older kids have gone through a lot, and there's a lot of physical risk when older kids decide to throw some kind of fit or something. Yes, there's hormones and other random stuff that comes with that. But we have five pre-teen/teenager friends (kids of friends, and other kids who show up to play games at the game store, some from crazy broken up home lives) who we get along with really well. We seem to really understand issues facing them (these specific ones, anyway) which even a lot of traditional style parents don't. We obviously wouldn't take just anyone, but according to what I've been reading, there are some older kids out there who are aware of their situations, able to reason and (within age-appropriate limits) make reasonable choices, want to work with the therapists and take their meds, who really just want to succeed, but nobody wants them because of their age. Yes, of course it'll be hard, but they're kids... all kids are hard, just in different ways at different stages. I feel like, chosen carefully, we have something to offer.

So all of this is to say that I'm very unsettled! None of what I've written here actually fits the paperwork we filled out. And obviously we don't want to get in over our heads; we must be able to provide for all the needs of whatever children we have in our home. But I feel like 'one toddler boy' could maybe not be the direction we're meant to be gearing up for.

When we pray for guidance, make choices based on the options available and then pray for peace, and peace is not forthcoming, doesn't that mean that perhaps we should reevaluate the choices?

Conversation with Bert

Bert is our Social Worker, Yolanda Roberta. I sent her an email last week with some questions, and she called last night to discuss them. This is part of the whole process of her getting a feel for who we are as individuals and what we want as a family, so it's a pretty important thing! I thought it was pretty cool that she called instead of emailing, except for the fact that I now have nothing in writing. So I'm going to put it here so that I have it written down, also because I think they're good questions and may clarify some things for friends and family about how this system works. These are in no particular order, except that I tried to put first the ones that I'd already mentioned elsewhere in the blog.

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Question: Can we have a checklist from you of what kinds of child proofing we'll need to do for the inspection? I tried a google search and found everything from just outlet covers and keeping a close eye, to chaining down the toilet and padlocking the refrigerator and installing nearly every bit of furniture four feet up. There's just so wide a range, I'm not sure what detail they'll be looking for.

Answer: All we need to do for the inspection is to get locks on the cabinets and drawers and any closets that might have chemicals or medications in it. We have to put covers on the outlets, and move anything that's obviously a danger, like scissors or knives in the bill desk, that kind of thing. We will also need to get those hook things that you spool curtain strings around so the kids can't hang themselves. We also have to get the smoke detectors to have the installation date written on the outside, be sure the fire extinguisher is current, and put the step stool away when they come. Oh, we also have to make sure our hot water doesn't come out above 120 degrees and our fridge is cold enough to actually keep food safe to eat. Pretty basic stuff.

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Question: Inspections: Will we have warning or are these surprise inspections in order to capture regular living conditions?

Answer: They are done by an outside company, who will call and make an appointment.

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Question: When can we safely start looking at photolistings? Will you provide additional photos and information aside from what we can find online?

Answer: We can look any time we want, but we won't be able to do anything about it until the home study is completed, and there will be no guarantee that the same children will be available at that point. She recommends we wait.

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Question: You explained about how SC agencies aren't... licensed...? to do stuff past a certain point because the state saves money by doing it themselves. At what point do we stop working with you and start working directly with them? Will you go alongside us or will our "case" be turned over to someone else?

Answer: I actually had the terminology wrong here; Bethany is licensed, it's just that the SC office does not fulfill the same kinds of services in SC when adopting a child from SC. Basically, when a family is found for a SC child within SC, SC government does all the finalization themselves instead of paying an agency to do it. Make sense? SC state will work with Bethany Virginia, or Bethany NY, but wouldn't finalize with Bethany SC because it's cheaper for them to do it themselves within state.

If we decide we want to adopt a child from SC, here's what will happen: Bert will put together all of our records in a presentable book form, and go with us to a meeting with state people, including the Social Worker for the child, and present us as an interested family. We will all talk, we will have a book about us and our lives prepared that will go to the child, and we'll set up further appointments. We will also receive a binder with every possible thing there is to know about the child, from med records to school records to a history to notes from foster care. At that stage, Bert will no longer work with us, but she is available as a resource for questions or advice. Once we leave that meeting with our binder, we have a week to look over it and decide if we want to proceed. Next we'll meet the child in the foster home, somewhere on their own turf, just chat, get to know each other. Then we'll spend a day visit, a little later have a week-long visit, then they will be able to move in if everyone's cool with it.

If we decide to adopt a child from another state, Bert will be with us to the very end, as Bethany will be the organization doing the finalization instead of the state.

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Question: We have found in the past when making large decisions that ask us to delineate guidelines (such as house-hunting search criteria) that we have a tendency to get frustrated, and then wander out to search on our own, and what God points to (so far) has always been outside of the bounds set by the stated criteria. In other words, I'm afraid that the child He has for us may be outside of the terms set on our paperwork, simply because that kind of thing seems to often be the case for us. My concern is whether or not that will affect your opinions and review of us, if we have to stick to what's on the paper... or not. If we must stay within the bounds on the paper, we may think about broadening them slightly, but if we have flexibility I won't worry about it.

Background: Unfortunately, there's a great deal of the home study process that feels very similar to the process of buying a house. When we bought our house on Edgemont in NY, our realtor had taken us to see a lot of houses in the suburbs, as we were afraid of living in the city and had excluded it from our search criteria. However, while out on our own on a Sunday, we saw the Edgemont house and fell in love with it. We honestly didn't realize it was within city limits at the time, since it was in the cute little University area bordering a suburb. Our realtor was very indignant that she wasn't given the opportunity to find it for us because "We weren't looking there!" The last thing I want to do is torque off our Social Worker, which is ultimately why I asked this question.

Answer: The entire process of the home study helps her clarify what we meant when we marked things on the paperwork, and what areas we would be flexible on. The paperwork is always able to be altered, addenda added, as we learn and process and think through things. We are required to take 14 hours of classes, and she says that sometimes people will learn something that will really alter their ideas and they'll call and write up a change to their search criteria. No big deal. We'll be doing this kind of thing anyway every six months; just a check in on the paperwork to see if anything's changed in our family needs or desires. We are not locked in to what's on that paper.

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Question: Being new at this whole adoption thing, I had been encouraged to seek out other people who have adopted as a kind of support group. I've been chatting online through two different adoption Yahoogroups, one of which I joined last week specifically regarding adopting older children. Unfortunately, what I'm hearing is overwhelmingly depressing! While a few have had good experiences, the loudest people are the ones who have been hurt, which makes sense. But the overall opinion even with happily finalized families is that social workers hide things about the needs of the children because their main purpose is to get children into a home and off the state support system, and that the purpose of agencies are to make money. What are your thoughts to this kind of a response? (Bert took this really well, actually, so that's good.)

Background: This question was based on the area of behavior and development issues. Many older children will apparently be placed with a foster-adopt family who appears not to actually meet any of the requirements set forth by that family.

Answer: There are many reasons why situations like this occur, and unfortunately there's sometimes not much to be done about it. There's only so far that delineating paperwork can take you. One problem is that many times Social Workers don't have all of the information. This happens sometimes because of the high turnover rate of Social Workers (some kids can have a new one every six months), sometimes because of poor documentation, sometimes because Foster Families are not of good quality or don't feel some behaviors are unusual enough to write down, and sometimes simply because in cases of abandonment there's just no one to tell them anything about the child. Another reason is one that comes up in child development with any child who's been through a tough situation, fostered or not. Every situation is new, and comes with new struggles. Many of these children will suddenly find themselves not knowing how to behave and fall back on unhealthy survival techniques. Sometimes behavior may escalate due to emotional triggers like smells or sounds that may have been present during abuse and never existed during foster care. And sometimes, there's just the bottom line fact that when a child doesn't trust anyone, they often just don't tell anyone what's happened to them. There have been many instances where a child will be adopted, and after a year or two of growing trust in the parents and finally starting to feel safe, will open up and talk about some horrendous abuses that no one had any idea had happened to them.

The bottom line is that there's no guarantee. We will be focusing on knowing as much as humanly possible about a child's history, collecting it from as many sources as possible, praying as hard as we can and being open to His leading, and going with our gut upon meeting the child.

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Question: I have an elderly friend from church whose grown children agreed to foster-to-adopt through the state. They have been "waiting" for many years now with a string of kids going through, because they are continually given children who end up going back to family or have needs beyond what they can handle. They were told that they would only be given children they would adopt in the end, but it seems as though the state is using them as a regular fostering family. I'm very concerned about that possibility; I understand the role of foster-to-adopt for states that don't legally release their children until a family is found, but what prevents our being taken advantage of because we checked 'yes' on the foster option? We don't feel we have the emotional ability at this stage to serve as regular full-time foster parents.

Background & Answer: There are three choices of how to participate with waiting children: foster care, foster-adopt, and adoption. When you are a foster family, children don't stay, they just come and go, but while they're with you, you have to be their 'parent' without becoming too attached. We've decided we don't have the emotional capacity for that right now. Adoption is just that; you go through the process, find a child, adopt them. Seems simple enough, but the problem is that many states never list their waiting children as legally available to adopt until a family has been identified for them. I have no idea why they do it that way. However, these children must remain with foster care until they are legally free... which could take a long time (years) depending on the situation. So we could feasibly find our child in one of these states, but not get to have them even visit until the legal stuff was complete. The middle option is kind of a go-between option: being foster parents long enough to find your child and adopt them.

What happened with this family from church is that they decided to foster-adopt through the state, without an agency. So the state is doing this, "Oh, here's a kid you might want to adopt..." and sending them a high-legal-risk foster kid, and then removing them right away to go back to the family, basically using them as traditional foster care. They've been foster-adopting for three+ years now, and have had about 8 kids go through their home. We do not want that to happen.

Right now, here's what we're doing: We have checked off willingness to foster-adopt if we locate the child we want to adopt and they come from a state wherein they will not be legally freed until after a family is found. Because of this, the child could come here immediately with us as their foster family until the paperwork for legal freedom is complete and the adoption paperwork goes through, without waiting. We don't intend to have multiple children come and go, and can dictate that by stating our willing level of legal risk (high-moderate-none) and under what circumstances. Again, like the behavior issues, we're dealing with people who are unpredictable, and the state really does want the families reunited if the birth parents prove willing to put out the required amount of effort, (not so common); there are no guarantees. However, we've been assured that if we choose carefully, look at every scrap of possible information on the child and the situation, and remain clear on what we want to have happen, we can have a pretty high expectations on the process. We are also protected by Bert and Bethany, as we're not dealing directly with the state ourselves unless we decide on a child from SC. But the bottom line is that we set the rules.

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OK! Is that enough information for you? Don't worry... if you're itching for more, I'm sure there'll be some soon enough! For me though, I know my brain is full and my typin' fingers are sore. Tune in again later.

Inspective To Do List

Things we're pretty sure we need to do for the inspection:

1. Clean the garage. This is scary, cuz it's still crowded from moving in. Even though we won't really do stuff in there, fire code needs an obvious and unimpeded path from the kitchen door to the exit.

2. Organize and bin up extra crap around the house, especially stuff being stored in our child's room.

3. Childproof the house. Now I'm sure the first thing you think about are locking cabinets and plugging outlets and putting up baby gates. But remember, I'm the height of a 5 year old, so almost EVERYTHING WE OWN is in my reach. Including scissors, knives, heavy and/or fragile objects, china dishes, cleaning supplies, medications, cat food... you name it, they can get it. This prospect frankly terrifies me. We haven't even got the proper kind of furniture to put a lot of this stuff out of reach and have me use a step stool, since we buy furniture that's me-accessible. If we had that I'd feel a bit better. I may just choose to bin everything until we can budget for more lockable or tall furniture. We also need to replace or add locks to the outside porch door and maybe the front door, since those are very easy to open as well.

4. Make a decision about the play structure in the back, and then do something about it. Some of the higher pieces of wood are splitting and the top level is really rickety and missing some side slats. We could A) fix up what we have, B) remove the scary top level which a kid the age we're looking for shouldn't use anyway and leave the short level with the slide and trap door and then do lots of TLC to it, or C) just take the whole thing down and use it to heat the house in the fireplace in January. Considering January cost us $200 more than any other month last year in heating, that actually is more appealing than I want to admit.

5. Clean up anything scary around the shed like broken glass or boards with nails in it. The shed itself is barred so I can't even get in, so I don't think we'll have to do stuff there. Some day soon we want to tear it down.

6. Do some weeding. Seems weird, but we have spiny vine weed things crawling along the front walk and coming up between slats in the porches and trying to eat the house. We try not to feed the weed plants. No one named Seymour lives here.

7. Maybe replace the carpet in the back rooms. If we don't have dad come and steam clean it again the day before inspection, we may not pass the health bit. Cats don't like that carpet; rather, they like it TOO much.

ARGH! At least we have about 6 weeks before we could be inspected.

Announcement

We drove to the Bethany office in Columbia, SC, today to check in and see how much we had to start over from the move, and where things stood. After a long meeting, we can now announce:

We're "pregnant". :)

We have no more paperwork to do. We have to take 14 hours of training in special needs kids, because it covers things that happen in foster care, and our house has to pass inspection. Then we're free to find our child. I'm pretty sure (though not positive) that we will be parents within the standard 9 months. Plus, SC completely subsidizes and gives us stipends for waiting children. Amazing. I can't describe how we feel right now.

Anyone want to come help us fix our house so we can pass inspection? :P

Progress

We meet with Bethany Christian Services tomorrow at 1:30 for our first SC informational meeting on adoption. We'll probably leave around 11:30 to give us time to get there and other unexpected things, and be a little early. Finished up some paperwork today.

We started this process three years ago in NY, and had to put it on hold when Lanse lost his job and we moved. Now we're settled and officially picking it back up. We're hoping to adopt a child between walking and age 5. I prefer closer to preschool, Lanse prefers closer to infant, so we're open to agency input. Prefer racial characteristics as close to ours as possible, but also open to agency input.

Honestly, as far as I'm concerned, we can bring someone home tomorrow; I'm tired of waiting. But our homestudy's not approved, so I highly doubt that's legally possible.

More information will probably follow after the meeting.