Quick Decisions

After our recent decision to attempt to adopt out of the foster care, I did some research and have made some calls. For the most part, those calls were dead ends. While the agencies/contacts I spoke with deal with foster adoptions, all of them are approved to handle adoptions for children older than 10, which doesn't fit our criteria since we want to keep Nate as our oldest child.

After playing phone tag for a few days, I got in touch with Hampton Social Services today. They do agree that finding a child younger than Nate makes the search a little more difficult, she was very excited to get us started on our journey. Besides the home study process and the background checks, etc, they require that we take a 9 week class, meeting on Tuesday nights, that would teach us more about the process and how things are handled. Unfortunately, this class has already started and is in its 3rd week and they won't have another class starting until late fall.

Bummer, right? Well, after getting some information about us and learning more about our adoption background, she would like for us to join the class, something they don't normally allow, THIS Tuesday, as in April 9th. She put a package in the mail for us this afternoon and we have to give an answer asap after the package arrives. If we say yes, we will officially start our foster adoption classes in less than a week, meaning we have to schedule childcare and find a way for Dave to change his work schedule (he currently works on Tuesday nights).

Needless to say, my head is spinning. Lots to think about and many decisions to be made. Will you join us in prayer as we make decisions?

A realization

As you may have noticed, the blog has been kind of quiet lately, part of that is due to the busy season that we've had. We recently had a trip to Florida, a birthday, and now Easter is quickly approaching.

Another reason that I've been kinda quiet is because I was really unsure as to what to do next when it comes to another adoption.

I know that we need a homestudy, no matter which route we take, but beyond that, I was honestly torn. I would love to have another infant, another baby that we bring home from the hospital. I love the newborn snuggle stage and from our experience with Nate, we know how "easy" it is to bond and feel like normal parents. While all of those things are wonderful, I worry about moving forward with another private adoption. I feel like we got so lucky with Nate's situation. Everything went so smoothly and I worry that our next experience would not be that way. On top of that, the money is a big issue. We don't have $20,000-$30,000 to put towards another adoption.

While watching the fireworks at Disney, I looked over at Nate and it hit me. While I would love to adopt another baby, my heart really wants to adopt out of foster care, even if that means that our next child will be older when he/she comes home. This trip to Disney was his third trip in three years! He is so spoiled and loved and I can't imagine what his life would be like if he were in foster care. It's hard for me to justify spending a ton of money on an infant when there are children waiting for a Mommy and a Daddy. They may grow up without ever experiencing stability and a place to call home.

As the realization hit me that night, I got scared, mainly because I didn't know if Dave would be on board. I worried that this was something that was on my heart and mind, yet not on his. I held onto this realization for a while before expressing it to him. I needed time to think about it and prepare myself for his reaction.

When I finally got up the nerve to talk to him about it this week, I was pleasantly surprised that he's okay with it as long as we stick to our original plan and adopt a child younger than Nate. That might mean that our wait time is long, but we're both okay with that.

Got might surprise us and "drop a baby in our laps" through private adoption, but at the moment, I think we're ready to really open the door to adopting out of foster care. :)

Realistic Excitement

I am so very excited about starting this adoption process, but unlike our last journey, I am trying my best to be realistic. Yes, I am ready to add to our family, but having Nate makes the wait easier to deal with. We have a lot to do before we're ready to bring another child into the family and I don't want to let my heart get too far ahead of my head.

I haven't made any more calls since I made the last post. I have plans to call Hampton Social Services (when I called earlier, they had just closed) and I look forward to what they are able to tell me. Most of the agencies that I did call will provide a home study if you join their agency. I'm just not sure that is something that we want to do. Why? If we do join an agency, most of them require a large sum of money up front and then that money is tied up into that agency. That is all well and good if you do adopt from that agency, but if we were to "find a baby" from another agency or attorney, we lose the money that we put into the agency. Just one of the many decisions that we will have to make in the following months.

**We "found" Nate through a connection with a friend and ended up not going with the agency were were using.**

I know there are some blog followers that are just joining us and I wanted to include this blog link for anyone that wanted information about what a home study entails: http://home-study.adoption.com/nuts.php  While it is much more complicated than what is posted here, this will give you some idea of what we will have to do in order to be ready if a situation comes along.

Again, thank you so much for your support and prayers.