Our license is being sent in!

After almost a year of calling around to different agencies, gathering paperwork, filling out various forms, submitting to fingerprints, personal references and background checks, taking CPR First Aid and CORE classes, as well as the homestudy, our Placement coordinator (a real prince of a guy) called today to let us know that our foster family certification paperwork is being submitted to the the state. He said that for some reason, it takes them about four weeks to turn the application around and issue a " provider number" but just to hear that he is sending our license in today brought tears to my eyes (which was followed by deep sobbing that I was not at all expecting). It is as if I have finally been told when my baby might be born (in general, just like a real due date, with no guarantees). I feel nervous now, waiting to find out if we will be finally approved by the state of Colorado, but I can't imagine why we wouldn't be approved.

I have no fingernails left to chew, but I haven't smoked a cigarette! Time to start knitting?

Mike is on a field trip with Hammy. I have to go shower and get ready with Moose and am looking forward to telling Mike and Hammy that we are getting closer to bringing a baby/child home at last!

Throughout this process, I have questioned so much and done a lot of growing and soul-searching. I feel like my relationship with God/my Higher Power has deepened and is stronger now, and now I truly know the freedom of trusting in something greater than myself and my will. I sincerely believe that everything is unfolding just as it ought to be, and that every step of this journey has been purposeful in our preparation. I also see that this is only the beginning!

Last night, as Mike read a "Help Me Be Good" book to the boys, I listened in the next room and just beamed, realizing what a cohesive family we are and how we really are ready to welcome a child who needs to be loved into our home. And without being negative, I hope to candidly and honestly address in this forum many of the questions we have asked along the way, in hopes that it might also help to answer some of the questions that family and friends have been asking, even if it not directly of us! (E.g. Why we don't we just "make" another baby of "our own"?)

So stay tuned and feel free to comment. It's my hope that someday another momma who is trying to get her head around foster-adoption will stumble upon this little blog, find that she's not alone on her path of love, and maybe even find some answers to some of her questions about how foster-adoption works. The most important thing to know, and the greatest lesson I have learned so far, is that every single requirement is in place for a reason, and is for the protection of the very children we hope to help. Trusting in the process isn't easy, and patience is indeed a virtue; but in the end I think that the fact that it can take several months to a year to have a child placed in ones home is part of the plan. If it happened too quickly, surely it would fail or be very difficult on the family that must be stable for the child in upheaval.

A Blessed Foster Momma-to-be

We've come a long way, baby!

I haven't posted here for such long time, although I have been journaling like mad elsewhere. I will try to include what I've journaled (that's not too personal) here, but for now, a quick update:

We're completed our CPR, First Aid and CORE classes (we even attended our two, day-long CORE classes *together*, thanks to my wonderful sisters and their amazing husbands!); we've had our home inspection (and we passed with o corrections needed, so at least our house is certified!); and we've had two of three home studies.

Tonight was the particularly painful personal/family history, done individually. I felt like the black sheep of the family, checking more boxes than I wanted to check, and then discussing in detail my personal and family history of emotional, physical and sexual abuse, alcohol/drug abuse, mental illness, et cetera. As our Placement Coordinator Lance puts it, he has to ask us questions he doesn't want to know the answers to...but I got through it with only a few tears.

I can honestly say that I am grateful for everything in my life that has led me to this day, for I would not want to give up a single part of my life as it is today-- and I appreciate that this wild ride I call My Life is the sum of all my experiences, mistakes and unpleasant times included.

We will visit with Lance again early next week, and I think that is when he will talk with the boys without us present. What I would give to be a fly on the wall for that conversation! I can only imagine the things the boys will say, and I am sure that Lance will enjoy their answers. I won't be coaching them on what to say, but when I asked them tonight what they would do if they found a gun (we don't have any guns in our house), Moose said he would "shoot it up in the sky". So we had a talk about gun safety, LOL! (And drugs and private parts while we were at it..

Anyway, after our home study is completed (and we get to come out from behind the looking glass), it may take as long as 3-4 more weeks for the paperwork to be finalized and for us to be certified as a Therapeutic Foster Family. Then we could (hypothetically, and it does happen) get a call the very next day, asking us if we are ready/willing to have a child placed in our home!

We.are.so.ready. Even the boys are dreaming about having a little girl in our home! Hammy had a dream that we had a little girl who was one year old placed with us, and she kept running away from him, and she had 18 dads and 60 moms (then he changed the part about the 18 dads to 2o dads when telling Mike his dream). Hopefully, our daughter-to-be will not have had that many placements-- but if so, all the more reason for us to give her a "forever family"!

Alas, that's all I have for now as it's 2:35 a.m. and I am utterly exhausted.

Ariel

I keep meaning to post the link to the agency we are getting certified through, Ariel Clinical Services. It just so happens that they are the first one in the Foster Care section of the phone book, and it turns out they are a small agency with a nice family feel.

http://www.arielcpa.org/

Getting down to the CORE of foster parenting

Mike and I have had something come up every.single.time. we were supposed to attend a CORE training class for the foster-adopt program. Illness, injury, and other plans have gotten in the way for two months now. I'm supposed to go to CORE training tomorrow and I have done something to my neck- I think I slept on it wrong- so I am debating whether or not to go again tomorrow. I could send Mike but then I would have to suffer through another day of "Mommy can't play, bend over or get up and down quickly" which doesn't seem fair to the kids.

And I am going first because Mike is chicken, bok bok bok. He says it's because if he goes first I will just grill him for details of the training and it will be like going through it twice, but I think it is because he needs me to go first because I am a classic firstborn and he is a classic middle.

I want to share our home with a daughter, so I want to move forward in this process, and thus I will probably suck it up and go tomorrow even if my neck is still hurting like it is today. I can always slap on a pain patch and take acetaminophen, ibuprofen *and* naproxen sodium...

I wonder what CORE stands for?

It's Only The Beginning

of what I want to feel forever...

We finally turned in our bulging file folder of paperwork. We picked up the forms on Halloween (I told the Social Worker we don't normally all dress in black, just me) so let's see...it took us about two months just to get our paperwork filled out. We may be subconsciously stalling for time, for better days when Smooshie isn't two and a half. At any rate, we've lept over the first hurdle in style and now we wait.

It's like waiting to hear that the blood test is positive only we aren't having a baby, but a child.

Sometimes I can't sleep because I am thinking about how strange it will be to have a child living with us without her parents and who is already potty-trained, sleeping through the night, dressing herself and probably capable of making not only her own PB&J sandwich but a couple for our boys, too.

It's weird.

Exciting.

Suspenseful.

Nerve-wracking.

And I have heartburn.