"What are you hoping for???"

It's the most asked question of us right now. I suppose that it's a question birth parents get asked also. Our question feels much more loaded though: boy or girl doesn't even scratch the surface! There's a 3 page list of characteristics wit "yes, no, & will consider" check boxes beside them for us to fill out: ranging from "wears glasses to problems at home or school to animal cruelly to arson to how much contact with birth connections (parents, grandparents, etc) are you willing to maintain."

I think the most shocking one on that list is "publicly and openly masturbates." It must have happened somewhere for it to be on the list!

While I won't share all the gritty details of our "yes, no, will consider" list, especially because we're still working on it, I will share some basics with you.

Generally speaking we are comfortable with:

• children 0-7 years old 
• boys and girls 
• a single child or small sibling groups (2 children) 
• children that are not medically fragile
• more info on what that means on this link
• any race, ethnicity etc 

As far as our schedule at this point, we're going to do our 1st of 5 family profile meetings (the "home study") in early December then I'll have my one on on meeting in January while Paul is at BCT. Once Paul returns in March he'll knock out his one on one and then we'll get our last 3 together meetings done (including the home walk through) before he heads to OCS in April/May. 

While he's at OCS I'll start looking at potential matches on the Pennsylvania Adoption Exchange website and hopefully we'll start looking at matches and begin the courting/matching process with children once he returns. 

It's all very exciting for me! 

Classes are done!

Since Classes are done now, which is a huge sigh of relief we had a "let's touch base" meeting with our caseworker the other evening.

It went well! We are going to start the 1st of our 5 case study meetings in December! Which is SOOO EXCITING!

We have some paperwork that we need to get finished up and I need to get to the doctors for a physical which is no big deal at all.

This thanksgiving I am going to be thankful that our family is one step closer to having small humans as a part of it!

Grief and Loss

Tonight was our last Class!! It was about Grief and Loss and how children cope with their losses. It's hard being a kiddo in the child welfare system, and the more I learn the more I am prepared for their onslaught of STUFF. But that's all ok. That is all going to happen, because this kid needs love, stability, support and help. And we're going to offer it to them.

Update otherwise: Paul is going to Basic in January so we're hitting the pause button for now until we start our 5 meeting home study in the spring. Looking forward to it!