Progress!

We had our first home study visit yesterday.

We cleaned and cleaned on Sunday to prepare, knowing that they aren't going to do the white glove test, but I just couldn't relax with the house not in order. So, we did some organizing, dusting and cleaning. It looked great!

The visit went really well. We both liked the adoption social worker, and I felt that she liked us too (yay!). And that is really good, because she is the one that helps match us with a child. We spent about 2 hours with her on this visit. She went over the process from here on out, asked us some very personal questions about past relationships, why we want an infant (instead of an older child) and how we would feel about parenting an adopted child vs. biological child.

There will be 3 more visits in the next 3-4 weeks, and then we'll be licensed! It's looking like we'll be done around the middle to end of October.

Home again, home again...

Still trying to catch up with everything! It's weird being offline for a week. Our vacation was just what we needed.

We headed up to Victoria the first day. Took the ferry over and got there in time to check in at our hotel and head out for dinner. We ate at the BEST italian restaurant. They had the freshest pasta I've ever had. YUM. The next day we walked all over downtown. Checked out Chinatown and all the shops. They had an open market where we found some cute things and had some organic fudge. YUM again.

Then we drove North to Qualicum Beach. We stayed there for two nights. Looked around town, ate at one of my favorite breakfast places (Lefty's) and rented Kayaks. WE LOVE KAYAKING. It's something we've been meaning to try, but never got around to it. We're hooked now! SO FUN. After a couple days there we took the ferry from Nanaimo to Tsawwassen and drove up to Vancouver.

We had the most fabulous hotel in Vancouver with a kitchen, dining, living room and bedroom. On the 16th floor one street off of Robson (the shopping district). We walked an entire day in Vancouver, all the way from our hotel, over the bridge into Granville Island area. I'm not sure if it's actually an island - I need to look at a map. But they have the COOLEST public market ever. It's a 1000 times better than Pike's Place Market in Seattle. If we had a cooler, I'd have brought back a ton of fresh food. DOUBLE YUM. We also stumbled on a TV show filming on our way to the market. We watched for a little while, but I have to say, TV filming is REALLY BORING. They stand around 99% of the time waiting for everything to be ready.

Then we had 4 days at home and got a ton of little projects done! DH got a couple new light fixtures up, one in the "baby room". And I am almost done painting some trees and owls on the wall in there. It's looking really cute!!! I'll have to get some pictures up on Flickr soon.

Crib is up!

We went to IKEA on Sunday and purchased our crib. It's our first real baby purchase! It's already set up. I just need to wash the sheets.

I've compiled a list, mostly in my head, of things that we are going to need. I thought I'd share it here. What do you think?

Crib & crib sheets
Baby blankets
Changing pad (we are putting it on top of a dresser)
Diapers (we are going with cloth)
Wipes (also cloth)
Diaper bin w/liner
Moby wrap
Bottles & formula
Car seat - I can't decide what to get. Still researching.
Baby wash cloths
Baby towel
Kiddopotamus
Variety of clothes up to 2 years (not sure what ages we will have)
ETA: Swing!

I might have to add to this list, but this is what I could think of right now.

Getting ready

We turned our paperwork into DSHS a few weeks ago to get our foster parent license. Thanks to the speedy responses from all of our references (THANK YOU!) we are now waiting to get the call from our licensor to begin the homestudy process! Eeek!

Our intent is to foster infants and possibly toddlers that may become available for adoption. We are prepared for a rollercoaster ride as many of the little ones are (rightfully) reunited with their birthparent(s). But until then, we will be caring for the little sweet peas.

So, right now we are frantically trying to get ready for the homestudy, which means get ready to have a baby in the house. Not an easy task when you only have a couple weeks! We'll be doing some garage sales and shopping at 2nd hand stores. But...I'm trying to put together a list of must-have items for children under a year old.

For those of you that have/had little ones, do you have any suggestions, or things you couldn't live without?

So far...

When we decided to pursue foster to adopt at the end of November, I called and requested the application packet and we attended an info session to find out more about the process and requirements.

The packet is pretty intense and we are still trying to get organized with that. It’s a bit overwhelming. We have to complete a really long personal history form with lots of questions about how we were raised and our plans on raising children. This is what I am most struggling with. When you give birth to a child you don’t have to articulate all of your rules, how you will discipline, what values you plan to instill in them, etc. And especially not months before they are even born! And since we don’t already have children, it is very challenging to imagine how we will handle some things down the road.

Some other things that are required include a background check with finger printing, a TB test, fire evacuation plan and financial review. We had to take a 30 hour class, called PRIDE Pre-Service training and a CPR/First Aid class. Once all that is complete we can turn in our paperwork, which must be turned in all at once. I think we are still a couple months away from having that ready to go.

After the paperwork is complete they will do a home study where a licensure comes out to make sure we are in compliance with all the minimum requirements. These can vary depending on what age group we wanted to be licensed for. We are interested in infants, but would be willing to take a sibling up to 2 years old as well.

The class we just finished was the Pre-Service training. It is an intense 30 hour class that we took over 2 weekends. Our instructor was fabulous. He was a social worker for DCF prior to becoming a trainer. His knowledge on the system and the psychology of children that have abuse/neglect backgrounds was incredible. I could have listed to him for weeks. I’m hoping to take more classes with him in the future.

They covered a broad range of topics like anger/pain, grief, discipline, attachment, sexual abuse as well as prepared us for visitations and having relationships with birth parents. A lot of what was talked about in relation to behavior was invaluable and I couldn’t help but think that all parents should take a class like this. I could see on the faces of our classmates with children that they wished they had learned some of these things while their kids were young. So, I feel fortunate to have had this experience. I think it will help us if we are able to have bio-children too.

The thing that has most impressed me about this process so far is the amount of support in the foster-parent community. I always expected them to just through us to the wolves and we’d be on our own. But that’s really not the case. They encourage you to make friends with other foster-parents and have support groups that meet on a regular basis. They provide respite care to all foster-parents so they can take time off. And there are organizations that provide support in various forms. A very unique community and we are really looking forward to being a part of it.