No Steps Forward and About Six Steps Back

I wrote a short post yesterday morning, but Blogger ate it, it seems. When I went to post it, the screen went blank and froze up until I finally had to force it to close. Anyway, all I said was that I hadn't heard back from Barbara and was feeling unsurprised, but still annoyed by that.

However, she did call yesterday afternoon. Right in the middle of game group. I try to take the phone calls when I can, though, as who knows when she'd get back to me if I didn't take them. We had to go over pretty much all of the kids yet again because she seems to need that every so often. I guess that, even with the new system, she is still overwhelmed. I wonder if this is part of the trouble. There are so many kids that we've put in for that she's having a hard time working the system for us on all of them at the same time, so, instead, we just end up falling through the cracks. I don't know.

What I found out, though, was that Jordan, Cayla, Kamau, Tamia and Robert K. have all either had committee or have had families chosen for committee and that we're not one of them.

In addition, Barbara spoke with Elijah's case worker and, even though Elijah's case worker thinks he would be safe for Davan, Barbara is strongly recommending that we not proceed. Anthony feels that it's risky, as well and I'm sort of on the fence. This poor kid hasn't demonstrated any behavior that would make him unsafe for Davan. We're just judging him based on what's happened to him. On the flip side, though, is that we certainly don't want to put Davan in jeopardy at all. Right now, our priority has to be the safety of our already existing family. So, I guess we'll be passing on Elijah, but it makes me feel sad.

The whole conversation yesterday made me feel sad. That makes six kids that are out of our mix and no ray of hope by getting another child's adoption child summary or anything. The two sort of positive things (maybe three, but I really doubt it) were that Megon's case worker was interested in us a few weeks ago. Megon used to be on the web site, but was taken off, so I assumed she was adopted, but apparently not. Barbara is supposed to contact her case worker again and see what's going on there.

Thorn's case worker says that he has a new evaluation soon and Barbara wants us to see what it says before proceeding. I can respect that she's looking out for us here, but I also want to say, "Don't make us miss this opportunity by being overly cautious!"

In addition, there's no word yet from Savanna's case worker. While this could be seen as a hopeful sign, I'm thinking it means that we weren't picked for committee for her. I just went to look at her page to link her name and she's not listed on the site anymore. This is even more indication that her committee has been scheduled. And, as we've not had word yet, that we're not a part of it.

I'm not feeling positive about all of this. I'm wondering if we should even keep trying. It's just so hard to look at these kids without feeling some sort of attachment to them and then to not be chosen is rough. It's hard not to feel rejected. I (probably concededly) think that if they could just meet us, they'd be happy for us to raise pretty much anyone. However, probably all of these other adoptive families out there feel the same way. And, of course, I have the opposite moments - those moments when I am less than patient with Davan and I think, "Maybe I shouldn't be parenting anyone else!"