"See you in September..." and adoption stuff

Today i have everything finished, the room is cleaned, the books are put away and covered, all my resources are taken home so i can work on the lessons for next year, my paperwork is in and things are signed off. the only thing i have left to do is turn in my keys on Monday. the only thing i am debating now is whether or not i should take home my plant. frankly, i think the plant stands a better chance here all summer than it does at home with the cats. then again, i could just put it out on the porch... hrm. yes, i think i will do that.

Hubby Bear's playing wing man tonight for his friend, and i am planning ... *PLANNING*... on mopping the floors at home. this warm, muggy, rainy weather is nasty and brings out all the yucky smells in things. everything just smells really stale and gross. not pleasant at all.

we had another adoption training on Wednesday night with current resource parents. if you are the caretaker of a child who is in the system (not adopted yet), you are a resource parent. it was good to hear about their experiences. it really made me feel a lot better about the possibility of doing foster-adoption. there's still the "legal risk" that they will be reunited with their bio parents, but it rarely happens. the main benefit is that there are less moves for the child. if you do straight adoption, where you wait until a child is free for adoption before being placed in your home, not only do you wait longer and have a harder time finding younger children, but that's at least one more time they are being uprooted. the only benefit to it is that there is no legal risk. i personally think the benefits of fost-adopt outweigh the risk, i think Hubby Bear is there with me. i also feel better about keeping our age range lower at 5 and under. i would consider older children if we go through this again, but for right now, as first time parents taking on two at a time (and possibly more, depending on the sibling group), i feel better looking for younger children.

i got an invitation the other day to a baby shower for Hubby Bear's cousin who's expecting this fall. i got a little sad because i thought "gee, there's one bit of normalcy we wont have." i mean, so you're a new parent for the first time, so it makes sense to have a baby shower. but somehow you get the feeling that adoption just isn't the same, and they wont be new born babies (not likely), so does that make it even less of a thing to get excited over and have a baby shower for? i talked to a coworker and he said we could call it a "toddler shower." i kind of like that idea, actually. initially i thought maybe calling it an "adoption shower" would be nice, but then i thought that would be another label that would put them in a different category other than "your children." another thing i wondered about was timing. you get placed, you're still dealing with visitations with the original parents, and it could be some time before the rights get terminated. so WHEN do you do a shower? i see it as something that is supposed to help you get started with the stuff you'll need as parents, so it wouldn't make much sense to have it two years later, when you are finally a family legally, but is it too presumptuous to do it early?

at the meeting, i asked one of the parents if they had a baby shower, and she said "oh yes!" she said that the other resource parents did too. they had theirs a week after placement.

so, now i feel better about doing things just like you normally would do it. having a baby shower is OK, and having it soon after placement is pretty much expected.

today, since i have nothing to do but still need to be here until 2:40, i am going to work on that novella called a resource parent autobiography. i am sure i will be utterly depressed by the time the day is over.

adoption/parenting classes

hubby bear sent in the adoptive parent application to the agency last week, so we are all set to start the classes this weekend. this saturday will be an 8 hour class (i think), next wednesday a couple of hours, another 8 hours the following saturday, and a few more hours the following wednesday eveening. so the next two saturdays and wednesdays, we are going to be in parenting classes. its a lot all at once, but i think i prefer to get things done more quickly, rather than dragging things out. i am not sure what to expect, with the exception of being overwhelmed with alot of info that will not make any sense until we are actually parents and the situations arise. i am sure that if they ask any "what if" questions, my answers are all going to be "i call the doctor!" isnt that what all new, nervous, first time mothers do, after all?

as for getting the house ready, we still need to finish finding new homes for stuff from the study, then we can start setting up a bedroom. i am taking things in stride now, i feel better, not so baby-crazed as i was before, since we are actually taking the steps necessary to get started.

as far as our finances go, well.... they arent that great, but it isnt that terrible either. its like a roller coaster. we go from "oh my god! we are doomed!" to "hey, look at that, a little extra money, we can pay someone something this week!" i put together a list of debts that need to be paid off, its about 9 people long before we get to things like the car loan and the mortgage. most of them are things that could be paid off with one check, if we have enough left over after a pay check. there are a few things that will require a payment schedule of some sort, but most of it is little stuff, its just a lot as a whole. but you know what? you can only do one thing at a time. it turns out that doing one thign at a time works really well when it comes to getting your money situation squared away. sometimes i freak out and think "my god! we cant have a family with this situation!" then i remind myself that when you are expecting a biological child through birth, you dont get to put off gestation until your savings account is favorable for it. you just kind of figure it out as you go. and we're pretty good at that.

plus, thats probably something that will come up in these classes.