We Received A Referral

We received a referral the other day for two children, a twelve year old girl and a four year old boy. We were extremely excited at first, but then we began to read more of the referral. We were very upset upon reading the medical reports. It was difficult to learn about the kids’ history, no child should have to endure such pain. The little girl had been sexually abused by her father for years, prior to being placed in an orphanage. We thought long and hard about the children and decided not to accept the referral. It is difficult to look at pictures of these children and learn about their history and not want to adopt them. It truly is heartbreaking, but I guess there are children out there that are a perfect fit for our family and we have to trust that we will know when we see them. Until that day comes, I’m certain that all these children we are learning about will remain in our minds and hearts for quite some time.

No news...

Well, we are still waiting. We have yet to hear anything. We called the agency last week for an update, but they have yet to call us back; ah, the world of adoption. Sorry for the short post, but there really isn’t anything else to say…

Un Uneventful Day

Well, the social worker has come and gone, without falling off the railing I might add. It was a pretty uneventful meeting, but it was productive. We learned that we should have had this discussion months ago. We didn’t realize that we were supposed to tell the social worker that we had changed adoption plans from a single child to siblings. So now she must make an addendum to our home study prior to sending it off to the agency, which then gets sent to the Taiwan courts. The day itself though was a little frustrating. We were told, or asked rather, to remove some of our plants because they are too low and remove the other plants because they are too high, hence we might not have any plants, ah, who needs oxygen anyway. We were also directed, asked, or suggested to possibly nail our floor lamps to the hardwood floors so that they won’t tip over on the children, as if we would let that happen. We purposely bought extremely light floor lamps so that they wouldn’t leave too big of a mark if they hit the kids (Just kidding Taiwan!). We do understand all of these requests, but I have to say, I draw the line when we are asked to put nails in our new hardwood floors! Just a question, for all of you who have had children naturally, did someone tell you where to place your plants or to nail down your floor lamps? Did our parents get the same requests? It’s a wonder that any of us survived our childhoods, I mean with playing outside until it got dark (no supervision), without electrical socket covers, lead paint, eating honey, no stove guards and of course no rubber barriers on any hard, sharp corners. I am proud to say that we did survive and we do have the scars to prove it! When we read about children being abused or left on a hospital’s doorsteps, or even when we read about parents killing their own children, I would like to know why they don’t have a social worker coming to their home asking them to move plants and lamps. Then I come to the realization, we have no say in the matter and we must keep quiet and play the game because it is the end result that matters.
*Sorry if this was a Debby Downer of a post, but sometimes things need to be said. Until next week…

The Waiting Game

Well, another week has passed and we are still waiting to hear word. We even called the agency this week to ask them a question about our paperwork, as we secretly hoped they would tell us that they have two children who are up for adoption, but no such luck. It has been about six weeks since our agency told us that paperwork is in the process of being prepared for two sets of siblings who are up for adoption. They also told us that it should be a few weeks, and here we are six weeks later. I think their window of time is worse than the cable company. Apparently, we are the only ones who seem to be in a rush. Well, there isn’t much more we can do besides wait. As for what we have already done: we have completed our parenting classes, have been finger printed four times, by countless government agencies, which was a little nerve racking with Jen’s history and all, she did sneak through the system though without anyone finding out about her aliases (To our agency, just kidding!). We have read about eight adoption books and wrote reviews on them for the agency, we have taken our CPR and First Aid classes, we wrote our wills, received our physicals to prove our health (it was a little touch and go with my health for a while. The doctor said I am a little over weight, but then we found out that I was just big boned, so all is good). So now we are working on getting Montana (our black lab) used to having kids around. She continues to play with all the neighborhood kids and at night we take out cardboard cutouts of kids and strategically place them around the house. At first she was just chewing on our kids, but as of late she has learned to just lick them instead, I think smearing them in peanut butter has helped!

This Friday we do have the social worker coming to do an inspection of our new home. There are still a lot of things that need to be done, but we are hoping that we can fix most of the problems before Friday. Tomorrow, Tom, who is doing the work for us, will be working on that tricky railing. We figured that was of high importance and that it might be a deal breaker if it’s not fixed. We also had another thought; we might bring the social worker to our neighbor’s house and pretend that it’s ours. But that is only reserved for last resorts. Other than that we continue to wait. Who ever thought that silence could be so loud, to the point that it is deafening.

Where Are We?

Again, sorry for all the posts in one day, but we are trying to play catch up. For those of you who may not know, we sold our townhome in Beacon and moved to Gardiner, it's next to New Paltz. Well, we bought a house that needs a little work or at least we thought. Once we began demo, we kind of fell into the moment and ripped everything out, from the floors, to the kitchen and even all the bathrooms; we even decided to knock down a couple of walls. We are finally at the end of the renovations, but find ourselves in a time crunch. Part of the adoption process means that we must be interviewed by a social worker, which we already did in Beacon. I guess they want to make sure that we are or will be good responsible parents. So we cleaned our house, decluttered and even hid poor Montana (our black lab), but she's used to it. All we need to do is give her a treat and all is forgotten. So during the interview we had to pretend we never fought and that we knew what we were doing with kids, as if you have to prove that in a hospital after you give birth. Jen did great and I managed not to drool on the table, so things went well.

Anyway, since we have moved the social worker needs to inspect this house as well. So we are rushing to put things back together. We have a feeling that open light sockets and exposed wires probably aren't a good representation of good parenting. We also have a very loose railing on the second floor, probably not good to have, but the social worker won't know unless she leans on it. If she does, I suspect that we will have bigger problems then just being fit parents.

Well that's enough for now.

We received word....

This post is late since we just started our blog, but we thought we should add this information. We heard word from our agency about a month ago, end of August. We were sent information on two brothers, ages 2 and 4. Once we received all the medical records we sent them off to the adoption doctor. Sounds weird, but the purpose of the adoption doctor is to review and decipher the medical records of the children. Well, just before we were about to decide on the adoption, our agency told us that the kids were adopted by another couple. It was tough news to take. We try to stay as positive as possible hoping that we will be flying soon to Taiwan.

The second part of the story is that the agency told us that they had a few other siblings that they should be receiving medical records for, hopefully in the next couple of weeks. Well that was a month ago, so we are still anxiously waiting. It is hard for anyone to put a timetable on the adoption process because we are dealing with a different country with different rules and laws. So for now there is only silence as we wait for the phone to ring.

If anyone is interested, here is the website to our agency.

http://www.journeysoftheheart.net/