Spreading the Word

Dinner with my in-laws went well. Really well. After asking the initial questions of why we weren't going to have biological children (I don't think my In-Laws knew how much my neurosarcoid effects me) they wew totally excited. Their main concern was becoming attached to children who might have to go back to their biofamilies and how hard that could be.

My sister in law was really excited about possibly becoming an aunt. She told us she was proud of us and expressed her desire to do the same thing we are doing. So maybe we aren't nuts. Maybe the initial feelings of fear was just fear of taking a different path. Or it was the fear of becoming "instant" parents. LOL We were discussing the number of children (we will be licesnsed for 3) we would want to take and we never got to a answer....

We also got finger printed today and will have our medical stuff all done by next week. The finger printing process was actually pretty cool as it was all digital. And we know that our references were all sent back. Which reminds me that we need to send out some thank you gifts.

PRIDE Sessions 1&2

So we had our first PRIDE training today. It was an all day class as it consisted of 2 sessions. It was a lot to take in. I'm not sure what I was expecting. I'm trying to keep somewhat of an open mind and so I didn't have too many pre-conceived notions. I was really surprised by the diversity in the room. There were some couples older and younger, some with biological children, a few single Moms, a few with kinship situations, and one family looking to do traditional foster care and not foster care to adoption.

We talked a lot about the birth parent perspective and trying to keep that at the forefront of our minds as well as what kids feel coming into foster care. I guess I wasn't expecting to be discussing emotion - but of course that's what we are talking about that's what families are! Our instructors seem very nice and have a lot of personal knowledge as they have all been foster parents and have adopted children.

We are going to my husbands Parent's house tomorrow to tell them what we are up to. I'm not sure what the reaction will be. In the end I'm sure it will be supportive but I've never heard my Mother-in-law's opinions or experiences with adoption of foster care so I really don't know. My Father-in-law is always bugging us about babies so he might be the happier of the two but he is definitely a character and sometimes what comes out of his mouth surprises me. But we need to tell them first as we need to tell his siblings as well in order to vacation plan for the next year.

I did tell my Aunt today as we were trying to make plans and the classes conflicted. Her response was "Right On". And I didn't expect anything different from her. My Aunt is pretty laid back and is very accepting of the non-traditional.

And now comes the hard part deciding if we even want to open ourselves up to non-pre-adoptive placements. Or go with only kids who are available for adoption. And this is the hard decision I think we'll have to make. I rely on my faith for stuff like this and take the what's meant to be will be attitude and my husband does not. So we will see where this goes.

Well our first visit went well. I don't know why I was so worried. Well OK I do....My home was being judged, my competency was being judged, our ability to be good parents was being judged on a 1st impression. And I HATE that. But CW was really nice and laid back and she came in. Looked over our paperwork. Looked at the house and then told us our room was big enough for 3 kids.



And somehow in the course of an hour we redefined what we were willing to foster and it became 0-13 and any gender. As lately they have had sets of 3 siblings come into care. So now its hurry up an wait. Well that and somehow furnish a room for the unknown. Could someone please tell me how to do that? Right now we are looking for bunk beds. Is it better to buy a less expensive frame from Ikea or go all out and get a substantial set at 10 times the cost? I think we are going to go with less expensive but it feels like throwing money away. We shopped all day saturday looking at different places trying to get an idea. It is now August. We need to get something in place for October. And I'd prefer a room that wasn't thrown together. (This is something I feel about the majority of our house EXCEPT our basement which is beautiful.)

So after all of this my husband and I told my Mom about our plan. And she took it much better than I thought she would. She had some concerns mainly about the issues the children may come with but told me she understood our reasoning behind our decision. And while she wasn't over joyed about the news she wasn't negative about it either. She even confessed to wanting to adopt children from Romania at one point. I guess I've always had the dream of a big family in common with my Mom. My Mom told my Dad and his big concern was cultural differences and babysitting. We made plans to see my husbands parents next weekend. I'm not sure what they will say. My father in law has been bugging us about kids for a while so I'm hoping he'll be our champion in all of this.