When We First Met...

Though I only posted a few days ago, I wanted to go ahead and blog right after the Match Staffing and adoption event to make sure that everything is still fairly fresh in my memory.  Mama S and I have been on an emotional roller coaster this week, and now that the anxiety has mostly faded, I felt it would be a good time to tell you all about our joys without that tinge of panic in the background.  :-)

So our Match Staffing was on Wednesday, and I don't know how to put into english the anxiety this basic little meeting held for both of us.  As per usual, Mama S was more even keeled, but even she said she was nervous and ready for it to be over.  From what we can gather (we were represented by our family worker and not allowed to be present) the meeting went a little less than an hour and a half.  We got one email in that time frame from our kiddo's worker asking clarification on something, but otherwise we had no idea if things were going well or what was going on.  We finally got a call 2 1/2 hours after the meeting had started from our godsend saying that we had been matched!  We were completely overjoyed and relieved and all those other complicated emotions that come from something that can have such a profound affect on your life.

We only had a breather for about a day before the nerves crept back in, as we knew the weekend was fast approaching.  Translation: we would get to meet our girl.  We had been told by all her workers, as well as our worker, not to let on that we even knew who she was.  We were to just interact with her, just like we did the other kids, and that was that.  I think their plan would have worked out rather well, except that someone spilled the beans...No one actually fessed up to spilling the beans, but we have our suspicions as to who it was and are FOREVER grateful for their actions.  

I guess detailing the events of the entire morning would be better than the bits and pieces I seem to be telling.  We arrived at the venue for the event about 45 minutes early.  (Poor Mama S has learned after being with me for so long that if I'm anxious about an event, I will completely freak out if I'm not there at least 20 minutes early, so she humored me.)  We went through registration feeling as though EVERYONE worker wise seemed to know who we were, even though we had never been to anything like this with anyone from there before.  As we were going into the building for orientation, our kiddo's friend-worker came up to us and gave us a big hug.  She told us later that she recognized us from the pictures in our homestudy (apparently the kiddo's worker showed them to her).  

Fast forward now to the beginning of the orientation.  The head of adoptions for the area stood up and said a few words and then said something to the effect of "there is a family or two here who has come to see a specific child, you know who you are....make sure you see us at the end of the event today", and looked dead at us.  Once orientation was over, we broke into groups and went off to interact with the kids at the event.  As we were walking to meet the first group of kids, we happened to pass our kiddo and her friend-worker, who waved feverishly as we walked past.  We were pretty sure we knew what she was doing, so we played along and waved back.  A little while later, the head of adoptions came up to us and said that our kiddo turned to her on the drive there and said "I know I'm going to meet my family today.".  We felt a little better knowing that she knew, but were still apprehensive about how to interact with her when the time came.  About 3 activities into the day, the friend-worker found us and said that our kiddo was bouncing from group to group trying to figure out who/where we were, because she knew she was matched with us.  Not too long after that, the two of them came walking up and we spent the rest of the activity time getting to know each other.  She is such a neat girl!!!!  Seeing her smile, hearing her laugh, listening to her talk about her interests....just thinking about it brings tears to my eyes.  The rest of the day she kept coming up and finding us, introducing us to her friends who were there, checking over her shoulder to make sure we were still there.  At the very end of the event, we hugged and told her we look forward to seeing her again.  

We're sure that she's going to need time to process and she may have a ton more questions the next time we see her.  Mama S and I are hopeful that she will be open to having us as her family after she's had a while to process.  Her friend-worker said that she was very open with us, which was a very good sign.  We hope that openness lasts.  

As the kids and prospective families were leaving, we caught up with her worker and managed to smuggle out her file, without her noticing.  We brought the worker our scrapbook, journal (I made for her) and some fun colored pens we got her, so hopefully our girl will get them soon.  We now are charged with the task of reading through the file, which is easily the size of a phone book (remember those?).  Mama S started reading it outloud on the drive back, and we've since been working through it, highlighting and marking things we felt were important or we have questions about.  Now, we just have to prepare for our Full Disclosure meeting in a week or two. We both are thrilled to know that we're finally moving forward and can hardly wait to see our girl again.  

Match Staffing and Meeting Our Kiddo!!!

As you can tell by the title of this blog MANY things have happened in the course of the last few weeks.  I've been too busy to post until now, and this post is serving two purposes:  it's being informational for those of you who read but are not on my Facebook, and it's being therapeutic for me.  For those of you who have already seen all of this on Facebook, just stop reading here unless you want a repeat of everything I've been randomly posting when I had a second or two to spare.  :-)

My last blog entry mentions waiting to see if Mama S and I could get a family worker in order to be able to get the Child Study on the 16 year old we inquired about.  As I have said before and will continue to say again, the people who are working with us on our adoption are INCREDIBLE!  The supervisor and the worker who did our Homestudy (we'll call her our godsend for purposes of this blog) decided that our godsend would be our "family worker" for the rest of the process with this kiddo.  We. Are. Thrilled!  Not only does she have a good handle on who we are and all that other good stuff, but she also KNOWS her stuff and we trust her judgement completely.  All of this being said, we were scheduled for our Match Staffing before even getting set up with our godsend to go over the Child Study.  We have since gone over the Child Study, and we both felt it would be appropriate to move forward.  That being said, our Match Staffing will be taking place some time on Wednesday!!!  Mama S and I both thought we had to be present for it, but instead we can stay home (work really) and have our anxiety attacks from the comfort of our own place of employment.  Instead, our godsend will be representing us to the Match committee.  From what I've gathered, the committee is made up of the kiddo's workers (2 that I know of), and a number of other important people.  We will hopefully know the same day what their decision is, as they may take longer that the set meeting time to determine if we're a good match (lots of factors play into that).

All this Match Staffing business is exciting and stressful and amazing and all that rolled into one, but couple that with the fact that we have been invited to an adoption event where we get to MEET THE KIDDO, and well, you have both of us pretty wild eyed.  One of the workers involved with our kiddo invited us to an adoption event this coming weekend. We were told that the kiddo would be in attendance and that it would be a good opportunity to interact with her.  The only catch?  We can't tell her we were matched with her, as she won't find out until after we receive "Full Disclosure" roughly a week after our Match Staffing.  This means that we will get pretty much all her information and have a short period of time (as in days) to review it all and decide if we still want to move forward with the process.  After we say "yes", they tell her that a family is interested in her and give her time for it to sink in.  From there, we shall see what happens, but we're hopeful that all will go smoothly and we will be this much closer to being her parents.  :-)

The rest of the process will still take time.  Months and months to be realistic, but at least she may get a family out of the deal and we may get a daughter.  I just hope that she is placed with the right family, even if it isn't us (though we both really want it to be!) and that she can be loved for who she is.  All I'll say is this, she's an INCREDIBLE girl who has some potential to do amazing things, and hopefully we can be the family who gets to watch her do nothing but succeed. 

Slow and Steady

The past month seems to have gone by slowly as far as adoption progress is concerned, though slow and steady isn't necessarily a bad thing.  As I had mentioned before, we have submitted several inquiries, waited on more info and made some decisions regarding our family being able to fit the needs of a kiddo.  It seemed as though we were in a perpetual limbo of submitting inquiry then waiting for more information.  However, I am now pleased to report that we are finally moving out of the inquire and wait phase! 

My last post made mention of submitting inquiries about a 16 year old girl as well as a 14 year old boy.  Oddly enough, the worker for the 14 year old hasn't been in touch with us since receiving our homestudy.  This is strange considering the fact that she sent us several emails asking us questions and had us fill out a questionnaire.  In a way, I feel that it happened this way for a reason, as we have gotten much further in our process with the 16 year old girl, and perhaps the boy found a potential forever family while they were waiting for our homestudy.  Either way, everything seems to be happening the way it should be, even though we've had a few bumps along the road.

We did get more information on the girl (I feel like she needs a nick name, but haven't thought of one yet).  The worker-friend was so sweet and talked to us for over an hour, giving us as much of history as she could from memory.  We did still have some questions based on what we heard (and still do), so we have been trying to get more information.  Unfortunately, we've run into a bit of a road block at this point, as the agency who did our homestudy does not provide family case workers...and the agency handling our potential kiddo's adoption won't release information to the family without a family worker due to HIPPA regulations.  So we now have an email out to the supervisor of the case worker who did our homestudy to see what our options are as far as acquiring a family worker.

The good news through all of this is that the kiddo's worker feels that once we have a family worker arranged we can get the last bits of information we need and we can have a MATCH STAFFING!!!  She feels we're a good match for the kiddo and wants us to move forward! :-D  Now, we just have to find a family worker, and then we can move on to the next chapter of our adoption story!  It's truly an exciting time, we just don't expect it to move much faster than slow and steady.