Milestones and Home Studies

Our kiddo has marked quite a few milestones in her time with us, but none of those have prepared me for her to move out on her own.  I know it is time, but I am still feeling the mommy blues.  She is moving to a cute little 1923 bungalow house about 20-30 minutes from us but very close to the college she attends.  The landlord will let her paint and she's already plotting what color schemes will look good in which rooms.  It's exciting and scary and sad for me all at the same time.  I am sure I'm not the first, nor the last parent to experience this array of emotional pulls, but it doesn't make it easier.  Mama S is very accepting and fine with the idea of our little girl getting her own place, so she doesn't really understand why I feel the way I do.  That's ok though...I guess we all adjust to our child's nest flight differently.

On a completely unrelated note, we received confirmation yesterday that our home study update meeting is a week from today.  I have SO MUCH TO DO (but yes, I'm sitting here blogging instead)!  We need to clear out the stuff that has accumulated in the other guest/potential kid's room, set up the bed, clean the house, take the cats to the vet for updates on shots, and I need to work on my final exams on top of working weird hours at my school.  If all goes well, I'll be able to sleep sometime late in the week next week.  We shall see...after all, sleep is overrated when you are a parent, right?

Keep Calm and Fill Out the Next Form

Picture stolen from Pinterest...pretty much sums up the home study process.  We found out today that we are going to be assigned a case worker to update our home study on Monday and will be given a call that afternoon to set up an appointment.  So here we go...on to the next step of our journey.

We have put in inquiries on a couple of kids, and have heard nothing back with the exception of one, who is aging out in less than 90 days (the required time frame after placement to finalization).  One is an ADORABLE little 12 year old boy, who our kiddo picked out for us.  He loves food, football and fun.  The other child is a BEAUTIFUL 15 year old girl that is caring and compassionate, who wants to be a midwife when she grows up.  The boy is local to our area, but the girl is from the same area our kiddo comes from.  The worker from the area our kiddo is from is eager to work with us again, so we shall see what comes of it, as we haven't heard back from her about the girl.    

In other news, I have to find time to prep the bedroom.  We had given away the twin bed that was in there previously and just got a double bed, which is MUCH better for a teenager anyways.  Going to leave the paint as is because our rule is that we let the kids pick their furniture and room color because we want them to feel like it's really their space.  I'm always curious to see what the room will end up decorated like.  Our kiddo chose white furniture with a fun black/white/purple splatter paint design in her room.  Totally fits her too! :)  

The scrapbook is slowly coming along.  I figured I could balance a page a day (good in theory) with my final exam schedule.  I didn't have a chance to work on the book yesterday, as I was on call at work and the kids were being squirrelly, but this weekend will hopefully leave me time to work on it some in between studying for/working on final exams.  I'll post some pictures to my Facebook as the pages come together. 

And so it goes...

Well, unfortunately for us, the kiddo we were looking into is aging out soon and has no interest in being adopted.  It is what it is and I wish them all the happiness life can bring.  Now it is on to the next kiddo and all that goes with foster adoption.

We found out that we definitely need to have our home study updated, so we are patiently waiting for a case worker to call us regarding that.  All of our critters should be up to date on everything, and G-d knows we both are thrilled about needing physicals again (not).  This means that we can't really inquire more about kids until we are done, which is kind of disappointing, but anything worth doing takes time. However, I did post an inquiry prior to finding out we needed to update and was emailed by the agency adoption rep today.  Oddly enough, it's the same agency we worked with when we got our little girl.  The rep sang our family's praises and told us that she would be happy to talk with us more as soon as our home study was up to date, so that's a good sign. :)

Now it just means time to prep the bedroom for a kiddo and work on their scrapbook.  I made a rather detailed one for our girl when we were waiting to become parents, but I don't know that I'll have the same time to devote to one now that I am in school as well as working.  It may be time to lessen my school class load a bit and not take so many courses over summer.  

I have to say, it's great to see our kiddo enthusiastic about the idea of getting a sister or brother.  She even has put in her two cents when it has come to looking at kids. (She likes a younger kid versus an older one.)  It's nice to see that we are making this journey as a whole family and I look forward to seeing where the journey takes us. :)

Pins and Needles

Life has been incredible as a parent to our kiddo, absolutely incredible.  There is nothing in the world like being a mom. :)  That being said, we are on pins and needles for a specific reason...we are looking at potentially adopting again.

It all started with a dear family friend telling me about a child she worked with who was Deaf that might be available for adoption.  Being an interpreter I would LOVE to have a Deaf child, but that was not meant to be, as the child wasn't available.  Then I found out about another child through the school I work at, only to find out that the child was also unavailable.  It was at that point that we said something to our kiddo.  She was THRILLED with the idea of having a sibling.  While searching online for the Deaf child I thought attended my school, I came across another child.  She appeared confident and cool and struck a chord in me like our kiddo did when we first saw her profile online.  This prompted a call to our local adoption agency.

You must know that we haven't kept up with our home study.  I would venture a guess to say that it was last updated 2-3 (closer to 3) years ago and it hasn't been updated since we got our kiddo.  That being said, I had to call and find out about updating our home study.  The referral specialist I talked to said she doubted that we needed to update our home study (which still seems CRAZY to me because we now have two additional cats, AND A DAUGHTER).  Maybe their standards have lowered since our last home study was conducted...oy...anyways, I digress.

So the referral specialist sent our information over to an adoption specialist but given the fact that the child we are looking into is already 17, she recommended that we go ahead and contact their caseworker.  I did just that and got a call back TODAY from the worker requesting our home study.  I sent the old one over and am now waiting to learn more about the child we are curious about.  All I can say (as I did before we adopted our beautiful little girl) is that I hope this child finds a family even if that isn't with us and that she is happy in life.

But for now I sit on pins and needles, waiting for the phone to ring...

Long Time No Blog Post

So I realized that it has been ages since a blog post...that being said, here's one now.  Forgive me if I repeat myself, but tons of things have happened and I want to make sure I capture it all. :)

To begin with, our kiddo is thriving!  She is now in college, about to complete the end of her freshman year.  It is so hard to believe that we have a kid in college!  I have been bad about posting, mainly because she is not the only one in school.  We are all in college at the moment, which means that there are occasional family study sessions and not a lot of time to do much else besides study.

Over the past few years here she has made friends and had a few romantic interests.  She has acquired not one, but TWO cats.  Our kiddo has worked for the same company for over a year and a half, as well as kept up with her school work.  She has learned to drive (I think Mama S has a few more gray hairs after teaching her. hehe) and has her first car.  Her graduating class was massive, but the smile on her face knowing she has achieved something great could have lit up the world.  The years have been full of joys and sorrows, milestones and ordinary days, hectic schedules and times when we can finally put our feet up and relax.  All in all, though, the years have been INCREDIBLE and I look very forward to many more with our girl.  <3