**bump in the road** lets try this again… August 28, 2008

I decided to take down the last post I did.  (in case anyone read this in the last few days).  Posting when you’re really frustrated just makes you look bad.

 

A lot of people have asked us where we are in the adoption process.  We appreciate the concern and love that people care enough to be interested and ask… but.. Honestly, we just don’t know how to answer this question right now.  Things tend to be up in the air lately.  We are both very frustrated with the adoption system.  At no fault of anyones or our own.  The process is just crazy.

 

We are hoping to adopt children from 0-12, hopefully sibling set of 2.  Since we have no parenting experience it makes it even harder for us to adopt.  The children we would like to adopt have dozens of wonderful potential parent candidates, most with several well adjusted children at home to prove their parenting skills.  It makes since that the children’s social workers would place children with experienced parents over people without children.

 

I spoke with a wonderful woman named Emily from CHSFS yesterday and she encouraged us to complete the special needs questionnaire and send it to her for review.  This questionnaire lists basically every behavior or “special need” a child may have in this program.  Potential adoptive parents complete this form listing on a 1-5 scale how acceptable each behavior or need is to us as parents.  Thus, letting the social workers know what type of child(ren) we would consider parenting.

 

We will most likely have meeting with Emily in the weeks to come to see if the MN waiting program is the right program for us to match us with the child(ren) we hope to adopt.

 

I also am waiting for a call back from a woman from Dakota County to discuss their Concurrent Planning program.

Adoption Classes August 7, 2008

We attended the MN Waiting Child Adoption Classes last week.  They were a full two days of classes totaling 16 hours, plus we have another class on 9/29 for 3 hours.

I have had a hard time figuring out what to say about the classes. 

They were intense, sad, scary, but had small shimmers of hope introduced here and there if you were really paying attention.  I had expected them to be boring and clinical.  They were informal and packed with so much information that it was hard to swallow it all.  By all means, they were not boring for even a minute.   The majority of it felt like a question answer session with a good friend.  CHSFS made sure to answer every question completely honestly and fully.

I was aware that the classes were known to focus on worse case scenerios and tell you about almost every possible issue a child could have.  Even knowing this I was surprised at how negative feeling the classes were.  The presenters warned us in the beginning that we would feel that way about the classes but felt it was better to over prepare us for possiblities then not to. 

We still believe that this program is a good match for us.  We are not looking into adopting children with the extreme behaviors/severe needs that they discussed a lot through the classes.  

From what I hear the classes for international and domestic adoption are very similar. 

We decided to meet with a Social Worker for a 1×1 visit to ask some additional questions we have thought of since the classes. We should be meeting with her in the next couple weeks.  

While we wait we are working on our Personal Essays which are part of the Waiting Child application.  We have to write an essay answering 3 pages worth of questions about beliefs, social styles, hobbies, discipline styles, how we grew up and live experiences.  They use this to help write our home-study and match us with our children.

A True Honda Family August 7, 2008

We finally traded in my 9 year old Nissan Citrus that I hated and got a new reliable car.

Introducing our newest addition my 2008 Honda Civic LX in Black.  I love it!  I’m finally in a car I love and my 2 hour drive just doesn’t feel that bad anymore.   AND!!! I get better gas mileage!  Even my almost freakishly tall hubby can sit comfortably in the backseat, so we know whatever children we have will enjoy it too.  (I couldn’t get photo’s to post so here is a link) 

http://automobiles.honda.com/civic-sedan/exterior-photos.aspx

We bought my car three weeks ago today.  I’m still really mad at Walser Honda and will be mailing off a letter soon about our experience but in the end… I LOVE MY CAR! I also love that I don’t have to worry about it breaking down (like my old car) and the payments are very reasonable… Just a win win situation. 

Jason’s car is a 2000 accord but still in perfect condition and will probably run another 100K miles.

We are now a true happy Honda family… Bring on the cheese factor.. but it’s true..