Parent Autobiography

as part of the adoption process, we both need to write up an autobiography detailing our childhood: how we were raised, who raised us, what they were like, how they disciplined, how they fought and settled disagreements, etc. if you know me, you might have an idea as to how difficult writing this has been for me. i never thought i was the type of person to hold a grudge, i always said i wasn't. then i read over my writing to do some edits. it wasn't the writing itself that got me thinking, but my thoughts to myself as i did the reading. i thought, with a wry grin, "should i die soon, this should be read as my eulogy, as a reminder to the people who would be there to cry for themselves and their guilt. a reminder of the harm they did me and that they have only themselves to blame for that deep guilt they would be feeling." thats when i caught myself. maybe i am the type to hold a grudge, after all.

"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.

i think we have an agency

on tuesday night we went to an info meeting at an agency in the city. it was good, lots of info was given. lots of focus on who the children were and the experiences they have been through. it was a little emotional for me because i am well aware of what the kids have been through, though i did manage to keep it together just fine. we walked away feeling excited about this new road we are about to go down in our journey. i didnt feel like there was anything "wrong" with the agency, it wasnt screaming"no!" at me, but i figured we would figure out along the way which agency was right for us. we wondered how many agencies do you look at before you pick one? was it a matter of looking at three and pickingt he best one? did you wait until you just "knew" it was the right one? i decided we would figure out along the way.

so last night, wednesday, we went to another info meeting for a different agency. this one is quaker-affiliated, which is why it stood out to me. he talked about how our life's challenges are not looked at things that will count against us, but rather, things that add to our strengths. they have these guides for writing your autobiography, and its very detailed. i liked that. i felt like we would be taken by the hand every step of the way. also, while both agencies have a state requirement of 20 hours of training, the one we saw on tuesday spreads it out in little sessions over two months, meaning we would be running into the city all the time. last night's agency does it with two week nights and two extended saturday sessions. i prefer that! and its not in the city, so we dont have to worry about traffic or paying 16$ for train tickets every week, or walkign through some shady streets in philly in the dark! by the end of the info session, i was feeling pretty excited about them, and i was wondering how Hubby was feeling about it. he felt the same way as i did, he said just what i was thinking, that the vibe was right. another thing i thought was a bit of a benefit over the first one was the number of references. we just need a total of four for the both of us as a couple. thats a little bit easier than getting three separate ones for each of us. one thing that added to the good vibe was how much they stressed that having a non-perfect life adds to your strength because you have had to overcome challenges, you have had loss, you've had to grieve as a child. that made me feel really good.

the training session starts in two or three weeks. thats coming up fast! so we need to fill out the parent application form and get that to them soon. we also have a list of the thigns they will check when doing the home study, so we know what we need to work on, specifically, other than just "straighten up and put together a baby-room." we were going to spend some money on a patio out back, and also new fencing, this was going to cost us a lot of money and have to be spread out over the next couple of summers. but the ultimate goal is to get out of norristown altogether, so we decided to cancel the backyard plans, its good enough, if not better than it was when we got there, what with the flower beds that are practically self-sufficient now. instead, we are going to put our money towards the kitchen. we need new cabinets and counters. if you have been in our kitchen, you would know that it looks like some guy got a table saw for xmas and a gift card to lowes, but not enough to pay for good wood, but cheap flimsy particle board, and decided to make his own kitchen cabinets! i mean, those draws are child hazards with their metal edges and inability to close all the way in. the doors are so flimsy we couldnt put a child safety thing on their if we wanted to! so, we are going to focus on doing that this summer. i wanna see what it would cost to have lowes come on in and just do it for us, easy and done.

writing this autobiography is going to be a massive undertaking for me, looking at the outline of the stuff we should cover. its going to require time that i am not goingto have until the school year is over. but hey, thats what the summers are for: stuff you dont have time to do any other time of the year!

finding the agency

i called the office of family and youth during my spring break, thinking i would use the time off to search for adoption agencies. they said they would send me a list of agencies in the mail that day. they are located around the corner from us in the same town and yet it took two weeks for that list to get there. so that was annoying. the list has about 15 agencies listed on it, and nothing to describe what kind of agency they are. so i start calling at random, starting with the ones that sound familiar. i had enough time to make 6 calls, i left three messages, one agency told me they work mainly in matching you to birth mothers and new borns, another agency told me they deal mainly with the phillipines. niether of these help us, we are looking for sibling brothers under the age of two and we want to start with domestic adoption. another agency apparently had its number changed to an unpublished number. yeah, cause that makes a whole lot of sense, having them listed on the the paper with the wrong number and all!

the one agency that deal with newborns directed me to adoptpakids.org, a website that is ill-coded and does not work.

this is already frustrating!