Wow! Things sure have changed since my last post! I will try to catch up in the next few days. Maybe months, who knows! :) When I last posted we were in the process of becoming Foster parents. We had started the classes and started our home study. We were moving right along, or so we thought. We were supposed to be approved as Foster parents no later than December 15th, 2011. When we asked, "What happens if we aren't approved by then?" the answer was always, "You have to be. You WILL be approved." We had finished our classes and finished our paperwork by November 15th. We knew that we wanted to be on the ball. The sooner we could get approved, the sooner we could start getting "babies". Our case worker kept assuring us that we were on track. The beginning of December came and went. Nothing was happening. We were trying to be patient. We were aware of the fact that we were dealing with the government and it probably wouldn't be done early, but we hoped that it would be. December 15th came and went. My friends sent me flowers in congrats, but still no approval came. We waited another week. No word. Christmas came and went. Then New Years. We were almost finished with January when we FINALLY got the news that we were approved as Foster parents. We would love to start out with itty bitty babies, but we knew that being willing to foster sibling groups would get children in our home sooner. After six years of marriage, we were ready to have a family. We had hoped to start receiving calls right away, but for some reason it did not happen. January ended, February came and went, March came in like a lion as always. No calls! How does this happen? I was always told that there is always a great need for Foster parents.
When we were taking classes and getting our home study complete, we asked our Case Worker if our home study could be used for a private adoption as well as state. We let her know that we were not using the services of an adoption agency, but that we did have friends in the adoption world and sometimes we would get calls about children needing to be adopted. Our goal is to help children. It didn't matter to us if they were children in state custody needing a temporary or forever home or if they were children needing a forever home that came to us in another way. We asked about this several times because we didn't want to be unethical in using a state funded home study if we MIGHT someday adopt privately. Each time we asked, our case worker assured us that once our home study was completed it would be ours to do with as we will.
By March of 2012 we were starting to wonder if we would EVER be parents or Foster parents. in mid-March we got a call from our Case Worker about siblings that were outside of the ages we were comfortable with. It was the only call that I said no to. It was the only placement call we had gotten. Also in mid March we got a call from our adoption friend, let's just call her Dana. She told us that there was a birth mom pregnant with triplets due in August. Were we interested? Uh, YEAH! I know some people would think this crazy, but I have always WANTED multiples. She submitted our information to the birth mom and we waited. There is nothing like waiting to hear if you have been chosen by a birth mom. It is not easy! I am sure that it's not easy for her either. Well at the end of the month we found out that the birth mom had chosen another family. It was hard to hear, but we were still waiting on being Foster Parents, so it wasn't as hard as it had been in the past when we weren't chosen. About that same time we got a call for two little girls in our age range needing Foster Parents. We said YES! The next couple of days rolled around and it was decided that these two girls would live with a grandparent instead. This was our only acceptable call and only the second that we had the whole time we had been Foster Parents. This was hard!
To be Continued...
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