Interesting Conversation

I met a woman whom I barely know at the grocery store the other day. I know her because her daughter and mine took dance classes at about the same time at the same place for a period of time.

During this time, she started fostering. She fostered a little girl who was something like 8 years old. At the time, Davan was 6. The foster child (who's name I do not remember) signed up for the same dance class Davan was in.

Anyway, we met at the store. She recognized me and said hi. Then we figured out where we knew each other from. We chatted a while and then I asked if she was still doing foster care. She said no, that it was taking too much from their family to be foster parents. She said the needs of the foster child was just too much. There are too many things outside of the norm that they need (therapists, social worker visits, parental visits, ect.), which caused her to be just too busy.

I said that we were in the process of adopting. She was somewhat alarmed by this and thought that we should really only consider babies and toddlers. This was somewhat distressing to me because she's actually had experience with a foster child! Of course, I feel like we'd be okay with some amount of running around. I figure that happens with any child. And there's a lot less in the way of social worker visits and parental visits when adopting. After the adoption is finalized, there are no more social worker visits, in fact.

So, I said that I felt like adoption was a different deal and that was part of why we weren't going the foster route. Also, we felt like the child would really be ours, so we'd feel it was worth it to put the time in. She said, "Yeah, when you adopt, you're hands aren't tied in regards to discipline like with fostering. I mean, you can't do anything!"

This is where I started to feel like I didn't need to worry about anything this lady told me. Anthony and I looked at the long list of things that you were not allowed to do to foster children (in the name of discipline) and thought, "Well, yeah, that's abuse. Of course you wouldn't hit them. put them in the yard and turn the hose on them. use showers as punishment. withhold food. speak nastily about their biological family."

Apparently, though, this lady looked at the list and thought, "Well, there goes all of my discipline options." I imagine she did have a hard time with a foster child.

Moving On, But Feeling Discouraged

I wonder how long it'll be before we do finally adopt. I wonder if we should keep going with it. I wonder if we should just give it up and be happy with the family we've got. I wonder if no one (that we feel capable of parenting) really needs us, as there seem to be so many people out there who want to adopt. It's hard and it's so much up and down. I'm really tired of the process.

Barbara, who said she'd make inquiries Tuesday afternoon about the many kids that we're still in limbo on, hasn't. She says she's been busy. I feel like we're missing chances that we wouldn't be if we were allowed to contact case workers. This is an aspect of Oregon's system that I don't care for.

There's a lot I don't care for, actually. I think that the system of 3 families needed to go to committee causes a lot of delay, for example.

Wednesday evening, though, I took home the two (one for single children and one for sibling groups) books of bulletins. We found 9 single children and 2 sets of 2 sisters each to inquire about. Four of them are babies less than 2 years old. Two more are 2 year olds.

It's amazing to me how many babies are available for adoption. In our informational class, we were told that if we wanted to adopt a healthy, single under 3 year old child to not bother, as there was a 3 year waiting list to adopt kids like these through the state. Gee, what they didn't tell us is that there seems to be a 2 year waiting list to adopt anyone, but back to the babies. It seems that there are more babies than any other age and most of them seem healthy. We usually pass them over, thinking they'll be snatched right up.

The four babies we are inquiring about, though, have all been waiting for months. I suspect that they aren't really available anymore and it just hasn't been updated, but if they do still need homes, we're open to the idea.

The other single kids are 3 year old Tyler and 6 year old Robert. One set of sisters are 4 and 3 year old Khalaysia and Kenya. The others are 6 year old Kyra and 3 year old McKenzie.

Shortly after I dropped the books back off on Thursday, Barbara called to say that some new bulletins just came in and did I want to look at them? I did, so back to the office I went. And added three more possibilities to the mix. There is 6 year old Tanner, 5 year old Shyloe and 4 year old Shawn.

The other two "new" single kids are actually Elijiah's brothers, who are being placed separately now. The bulletins say that their needs are such that it would be hard for one family to meet them for both boys. They do not sound like a good match for us, due to their needs, so I see their point. It's too bad, though, as they seem close.

Again, I'm at a loss to figure out how they decide who's going to be put on the web and who isn't. Robert doesn't seem particularly difficult to place. I don't really get it. "Our" kids who are currently on the web site are: Robert, Robert, Savanna, Kamau, Tamia, Thorn, and Elijah. There are, of course, lots of others who supposidly don't need the extended recruiting.

It's Staph! No, Strep! No, Both!

Thanks to Anthony's urging, I took Davan into see our family practitioner today for some sores on her face. At first, we thought they were just pimples, but they hurt her and no longer really look like pimples. Turns out that it's good that I did because she's got a staph infection and is now on antibiotics.

While we were there, I asked our fp to take a quick look at my throat to see if I should be checked out and, yup, she sent me for a culture and I've got strep. So, I'm on antibiotics, as well. Good thing I cancelled our activities for tomorrow.

I also had to cancel Davan's dentist appointment for today due to the staph. She was supposed to get some sealants. We ended up running around way more than I was up for. We went to the doctor, to the pharmacy, back to the pharmacy to pick up and back once more because I'd forgotten to take my debt card for our health savings account. And I picked up the books with bulletins from Barbara. In addition, we did make a quick stop at the grocery store to pick up some fruit, some peanut butter (because that's how Davan will be taking her meds) and a few things for easy meals like chickenless nuggets.

I'm home and planning on resting and napping all afternoon/evening.

The Outcome

No more waiting, but it’s a sad thing. We were not chosen. This time I cried. I’m really disappointed, but I rather expected not to be, also. I’ll get over it, but I’m bummed out. We weren’t even selected as the back up family.

Part of what counted against us was that we never contacted the foster mom to talk about the boys. We weren’t given her information by Barbara, which made it difficult to contact her. Barbara did claim responsibility for that, but it still didn’t look good for us. The other issues raised by two different workers were:

1) Davan might feel disappointed about not being the youngest and with two younger, that was a concern.

2) There might be too much stress on me, personally, and I might have a relapse with depression.

For those who don’t know, I had a brief bout of depression after being injured in a car accent about 5 years ago. I got some therapy and, between that, and regaining my health, was fine again in less than a year. And this was a pretty mild depression. I was functional the whole time. It makes me regret being upfront about it, though. I could have hidden it, as we have a new doctor (due to a change in insurance) and none of our references would have mentioned it, if they even knew about it.

Also, Davan would be the most excited about an older sister, but she is very open to younger kids and was very excited about the possibility of having two and one of them being just a toddler.

Apparently, the family who was chosen is some particular experience and education (What exactly? We don’t know.) which is particularly applicable to parenting these two boys.We did get a whole long list of positives and some are different from last time.-Anthony and I are both calm and even tempered.

-We’re patient.

-We have a sense of humor.

-There is good communication between us.-We have a strong marriage.

-We have good experience with parenting Davan.

-We’ve demonstrated our ability to research and meet any challenges that come up.

-We’re comfortable with adopting children who have had exposure to prenatal drugs and alcohol.

-We individualize children.

-We’re respectful of birth families.

-We’re involved parents.

-I’m an at home mom.

-We’re an active family in regards to camping, hiking, and other physical and recreational activities.

-We have friends who have adopted.

-We have a good support system.

-We’re actively involved with our group of homeschoolers.

-We’ve (I in particular) have had involvement and success with counseling.

-We’re open to contact with the foster mom.

-They really enjoyed our video and got a good feel for how comfortable we are in our home and how child friendly it is.

-We’ve involved Davan in the adoption process.

Lots and Lots of Waiting

I’m writing this in Word so I can keep my phone line free. I’m waiting, waiting, waiting for Barbara’s call. Last time, it was 2:00 when she called and we’re expecting that again. Anthony is on his way home (it’s 1:22 as I type) and should be here to get the news. However, I haven’t spoken with Barbara in over a week. I was laying off last week because it seems like not much happens when you’re waiting for committee. I think case workers are reluctant to send adoption child summaries. It also seems like they just don’t schedule you for committee, even though this isn’t supposed to happen. So, I didn’t call last week. In retrospect, I think this might have been a mistake.

Here it is, 1:25, on the afternoon of our committee and I have no real idea about several things. One is, how is Barbara going to notify us? Last time, we talked about it before hand and worked out a plan. This time, a couple of weeks ago, she said that she’d talk with my when we were closer about how we’d like to find out. There’s been no talking.

Another is that I didn’t get a morning phone call this morning. I expected one. Even though I felt like crap yesterday, I read through all the information we have about Zach and Kohl so that I could answer the, “What about these kids makes you think you’ll be able to parent them well?” question. But, no morning phone call. What does all this mean? Maybe it means that we are a filler family and Barbara knows it, so she didn’t bother with those sorts of questions. Maybe it just means that Barbara’s a bit of a flake. Who knows?

I’m still sick today, as well, although, I’m not as sick as yesterday. My throat is still sore and I have a low energy thing going on, but I’m not feverish and I’m able to be up and about doing mild activities for periods of time. I took Davan to Target this morning because she wanted to buy herself a black leotard with a skirt attached for her gymnastics class. We also went up to the farm (a day late – I was so sick yesterday that I just forgot) to pick up our produce. I was pretty wiped out by those events, though, and laid down for a bit after we got home.

Davan got invited to her friend, Laurel’s house to play this afternoon. Luckily, Laurel lives close. We usually walk or ride bikes over, but today I threw her in the car and practically kicked her out moving so I could get back to man the phone in case Barbara calls. Okay, not really. I walked her to the door and chatted with Laurel’s mom, my friend Katie, for a few minutes before I dove back in the car and high tailed it home. Pretty much, I’m feeling anxious, sick and ready for Anthony to be home. Oh, also, it’s my FIL’s night to come to dinner and, in a fit of feeling somewhat better this morning when he called, I said he could still come. I’m rather regretting that now, but maybe Anthony will be able to make dinner. I wouldn’t say maybe except that there’s not much in the house and what I was going to make will be challenging enough for him that I might as well just make it instead of sitting there, answering questions. So, perhaps we’ll just take my FIL out to eat. Maybe there will be something to celebrate. We actually decided after the last committee that we’d eat out every committee day, as it’s such a stressful day, but weren’t going to today because of the combination of having my FIL over and our Tai Quan Dou class. That might be scrapped, though. Or, even though Anthony picked up a pizza last night because I was too sick to cook (and we don’t have much in the house – time to go grocery shopping – or at least it will be when I’m well), maybe we’ll just do that again.

Okay. Off to sip tea and get what rest I can while I’m so busy waiting, waiting, waiting.

The Black Bomber is back in the hanger

Tomorrow is the big day - committee! However, I've had a lot to distract me from thinking about it. Saturday was a busy day of Girl Scout scrap-booking, a company BBQ for Anthony's office and an evening with my parents.

Sunday, however, really gave me a lot to think about. Around noon, I called about the tandem and offered the seller a finder's fee. His story was that he bought it from a guy at a swap meet for $600 because the guy was desperate to make rent. He called in the serial number to make sure it was clean both then and when he went to sell it. I told him that I'm sure it was clean because we had never written the serial number down, and, therefore, the numbers would be clean.

I offered him $200, but he said that he couldn't take that much of a loss on it. So, I upped it to $500. This is where I think I went wrong. I should have stood firm. However, after a few hours of back and forth, we arranged a meeting time with his "lady friend" because he was "at work". It was definitely his home number that we called, though, so the whole story was more than a little fishy.

We got to a park that they'd picked to do the exchange. The woman was an obvious druggie, making me know that their story was a bunch of BS. She was all twitchy and nervous. It was like doing a drug deal. He was standing off to the side with her puppy (not at work). I'm guessing she wasn't supposed to acknowledge him, but she messed that one up.

They had our bike locked up and the money was exchanged for the key. They just gave us the lock, rather than sick around. It was all very weird. Sadly, the handlebars now turn to the right if you don't hold on to them, but Anthony (who's good with bikes) can't figure out why. The rear handlebars were not attached because they'd stripped the screws that attach it. Anthony was able to get it back on, but he says, "It's not pretty."

I'm regretting that we did this deal and, particularly, that I went up to $500. I should have left it at $200 and let him call me back if he changed his mind. It'll cost us to get it back in shape (if we can even figure out the pulling issue). We need new pedals and crank extenders. It'll cost a couple hundred, I'm thinking.

I rode the bike home and then made dinner. I'd been so stressed all day about the bike - calling, waiting for call backs, picking it up, riding it home (wondering if I was being followed or anything - I don't think I was), figuring out that there were things that were wrong - that we considered going out to eat. I decided to make something, though, for our financial sakes. Not to mention that we have fresh produce to use up.

However, as soon as I sat down to dinner, I started feeling sick. After eating, I thought that I was maybe going to throw up. I went to bed and stayed there from about 7:00 last night until 7:00 this morning. I was a little sick at the end of last week - a bit of a sore throat and some body aches - but had felt fine all weekend. I think it was a stress induced relapse. Or maybe not relapse - I'm a lot sicker now! I'm so achy that I couldn't really sleep, even though I was exhausted. I had a fever of 101.4 this morning.

I've taken acetaminophen this morning and that and a warm bath helped some. I still feel very poorly, though. I hope it passes quickly. Tomorrow is committee and I want to be well if we end up starting transitioning!

Less than a week to go

Kohl and Zach's committee is less than a week away now. I'm working on that balancing act of trying not to get too involved, but also mentally preparing myself for the possibility that we will have two sons.

We haven't spoken with Barbara in a while. I think I'll just let things rest until committee, then start badgering her again. While we're told it doesn't happen, I do think that multiple committees are not scheduled for a family, so probably nothing will happen until after this committee one way or another.

We had a quiet 4th of July by ourselves. It was nice, though. Anthony took a 50 mile bike ride with tons of hills in the morning while I prepared a picnic lunch. We had rutabaga, carrots and sugar peas with a parsley pesto dip, cherries and cornmeal fritters with key lime cupcakes for dessert. It was yummy, but Anthony was jonesing for a hamburger when we smelled all of the bbqs going at the park. We spent about 3 hours picnicking and playing at our near by park, which we just walked over to.

After coming home, we did an activity we enjoy. The game changes depending on how much time we have, but the basic idea is that each of us comes up with a set amount (3 last night) of activities that we'd like to do with the family. The activities are written down and then picked one at a time until they're all done or we run out of time. Last night we skated around the park, played sock wars, played Shrek Super Party on the Playstation, went for hamburgers (Anthony's idea - we went to Burgerville where Davan and I got fries and milkshakes. Usually, we do free activities), shot a few hoops in the driveway, rode bikes "in the ditch" (just up the street from us, there's a ditch which Davan enjoyed riding in), went for a walk, did "Popits" (those small fireworks you throw on the ground), and did Yoga Pretzels (chose a few cards from a yoga deck for families to do). By the time we were done, it was dark enough to do fireworks.

We did a small assortment (about $30 worth) in our street. Davan just loves doing this - much more than going to a big display. We do mostly ground flowers and other small fireworks with a couple of fountain. Neighbors in streets all around, though, were doing some pretty amazing up in the air firework. People must spend hundreds!

Our Crazy Weekend

I did not obsess about the committee very much this weekend, even though I was fully expecting to. There was just too much else going on to obsess about.

Thursday evening, Anthony mentioned that he'd seen a tandem for sale that was just like the Black Bomber (our stolen tandem). I asked him if he thought it was ours, but he said no because it had different tires and different saddles and such. We talked briefly about buying it and I fell asleep thinking, "Does it have a rear seat shock post?" The reason for this thought is that a rear seat shock post is standard on this model of bike, but we took it off of ours so that we could put the seat low enough for Davan to ride it.

Friday morning, we discovered that our neighbors were having a garage sale and decided at the last minute to put some stuff out ourselves. We didn't do well at the garage sale and should have saved ourselves the effort, but oh well. We also spent the morning getting ready for an overnight bike trip. Davan had been wanting to do a bike trip on her own bike, so we planned a ride out to my MIL's place. The route out ended up being 8.6 miles and back was 7.5.

Anyway, just before we were going to leave, I decided I'd better check my email and see if Freecycle needed any attention (I'm a moderator on a Freecycle board). Anthony decided to take another look at the tandem for sale, as I was online already. We discovered that it's our tandem. It is missing the rear seat shock stem and, even more importantly, it has our trailer hitch on it.

Anthony called the guy, pretending to be interested in buying the bike, and the guy didn't know a thing about it - age, size, nothing. He claimed to have bought it used from "some guy". Anthony set up a time to go see the bike, in his effort to make the call seem real. Then he called the police who said that they could do nothing for us without the serial number, even though there are distinguishing characteristics which let us know for sure it's our bike. I doubt there's another bike of this type and size in Oregon, much less with the modifications we made. Anthony also sawed off the ends of the handle bars to make them fit Davan better. It's possible that the thief changed the handlebars, but you wouldn't know unless you took the grips off.

Once the police said they weren't interested, we decided that maybe we should keep the appointment Anthony had made with the guy, take $200 with us and tell him, thanks for finding our bike - here's a finders fee and just leave with the bike. However, Anthony had made the appointment for 4:00, which is well after we were supposed to leave on our bike trip. He called back to change the time to 2:45 and we made arrangements for Davan to go to a friend's house.

On the way to drop off Davan, though, Anthony realized that he'd actually said 3:45 on the phone, so, after dropping Davan off, he called back on the cell phone to try to reschedule again. The guy couldn't make the changed time. After some deliberation, we opted to just pick Davan back up, proceed with our bike trip and try to come up with a plan.

We had a nice trip and Davan did really well on the ride. We had her two older cousins camp out with us in the yard and a good time was had. Then we came home Saturday morning and it was time to tackle the bike issue.

My MIL had the idea to look at other things this guy is selling, so we did. We did a search on his phone number and discovered that he's selling three other bikes - one other is particularly high end. Now, seeing as how he knew nothing at all about our tandem, he's not a collector. He's just plain stolen these bikes. It was our hideous bad luck to have the tandem out in front of the Winco when he was there shopping and he took advantage (is my theory).

I opted to call the police again with this new information. The officer we spoke with did take more information from us, but after having to respond to two different emergency calls during two different phone conversations, finally called back to say that we were pretty much out of luck. He did say that he'd talk to his supervisor to see what could be done.

Meanwhile, we called Anthony's friend, Matt, whose cell phone Anthony had used to call the previous owners when he first bought the bike. We're trying to see if Matt can get the phone number record so that we can call up that owner and say, "Hey, by any chance do you have the serial number off of that tandem you sold us?" If we can get the number, then the police will intervene.

Also, in the meantime, we formulated tons of different plans, ranging from confronting the seller to just taking off with the bike during a test ride. On Sunday, Anthony even called the seller to set up a time to see the bike, planning on just taking off, but ended up talking to his wife. After that fiasco, though, we were both so worried and keyed up that we changed our minds. A few issues...

1) We might be on fine moral ground by stealing the bike back, but we wouldn't be square with the law. This could put the adoption in jeopardy.

2) It puts Anthony (and all of us, if the guy manages to figure out where he took the bike to) in danger's way.

3) After stealing it back, even if we painted it, would I ever feel comfortable riding it again? I don't feel like I would.

So, we're back to:

A) Seeing what the police can do. We still haven't heard back from the cop after talking to his supervisor, so something may still happen there. Plus, we have the serial number plan in the works.

B) If plan A fails, we're thinking of calling him up and playing it straight. "That tandem is our bike which was stolen from Winco. We are offering a finder's fee of $200. Let's meet and make the trade." Chances are that he'll say no, but at least we'll have tried and then it's all on the up and up. Also, we're thinking he'll have a hard time selling it (due to it's size and special nature - tandems that are more in the main-stream size-wise, often take a month or more to move off the boards and even then, we don't know that they've sold). So, we'll also tell him that the deal stands and give him my cell phone number if he wants to get something out of it.

Plus, both of these plans are ones that we can share with Davan. This is also a moral guidepost for me. If I can't tell Davan about it, then it's dodgy. Also, we'd already written off this bike as a loss. Even though it would be ideal to get it back, free and clear, I don't feel happy with paying for it or with stealing it. I'd rather it go to someone else if those are our only options. We've been saving up for a new one anyway.

So, it was a weekend of a lot of pacing and worrying. Anthony and I were both quite drained by last night.

That wasn't all, though. On top off all of this, Davan's mouse, Suzie, had to be put to sleep yesterday. Suzie sustained an injury from one of the cats a few weeks ago. It was a fairly bad scrape across the back of her neck. The cat had gotten to her through her cage bars with her claw while visiting Davan in her room. We applied Neosporine a few times in the first few days.

At first it looked as though it was healing up alright. About a week ago, though, we realized that it wasn't healing anymore. Suzie had taken to scratching at it and was actually opening it back up with her claws. It was wider than it had been when she first was injured. We debated what to do, but Suzie is not a young mouse and we did feel comfortable with a large vet bill for her.

I opted for all the first aid I could do. We decided on buying some NuSkin - a liquid bandaid sort of affair, which is water proof and lasts for days. It was hard to get it on her, but we did manage it. By the end of the day, though, Suzie had cleaned it off herself. As she was eating it while cleaning, we opted not to put it on again. At this point, Suzie was still very animated - eating, drinking and playing.

However, this weekend I started noticing a distinct lack of energy on her part. When I finally got her in my hands and looked at her closely yesterday, it was obvious that something needed to be done. She was oozing blood and there was blood on her claws from scratching. The cut was much worse - deeper and going down her side. Her eyes looked like they were swollen and, after first, I thought she was unable to open them. She did open them as I was holding her, but things were bad. Davan tearfully agreed that the best thing to do for her was to not let her suffer anymore. It was a sad thing to do.

Davan spent the afternoon grieving on and off. The first hour or so, she spent laying down, crying off and on while being cuddled by her dad (I had the duty of taking her to the vet). We had a memorial service for her, where we talked about her and then had ice cream (because you always eat at memorials). Every so often, Davan would say she was thinking of Suzie and she'd be sad or crying. She ended up sleeping in our room last night because her room was too quite with Suzie gone. She spoke of her again this morning.

Between all of this, she's been playing normally. She's happy that the cats can come into her room now, and has made a few places for them to sleep.

All-in-all, it was quite the weekend. Although we're still in some limbo about the tandem, we're glad the weekend of high stress is over and we're comfortable with the decision we've come to regarding the tandem.

Tomorrow is the 4th and then next week, we're on to committee for Zach and Kohl! Speaking of Zach and Kohl, we tried to show Angie (SIL) their pics on the site this weekend, but they've been taken down. Zach and Kohl are on their way to being placed. With us? We'll see....

Additional tidbit about yesterday's bike scare

Davan was telling the story to her dad last night and mentioned that she stopped so as to avoid hitting the truck, as well as the truck swerving. Looking back on it, she's right that she did also take evasive action. Just a detail that shows she's paying attention and reacting out there, too.

Today's Barbara Conversation

I called Barbara today to let her know about our decision regarding Colin and to see if there were any new bulletins.

There were a couple of new bulletins, but none that were a match for us. There were either babies or 8-9 year olds, which is the exact range that we have blacked out.

I did ask finally ask her if she knew what the average length of time was for a family to have a placement after having completed their homestudy. She said that she didn't have any statistics like that, but that, in her experience, it's longer than we've been at it. She said that another family she's working with who were looking for a child in more or less the same age range as ourselves just got a placement after going to 4 committees and waiting (from homestudy completion) for one and a half years. Yikes! That's a long time.

Barbara also said that I was much more active and involved in the process than most families that she works with, so she thinks that we might get a placement sooner. With our second committee coming up, she feels like we're average to faster than most families that she's worked with. So, that's that. While it feels like a long time, it doesn't seem to actually be the case. I do know that it's much faster for some people in other states, but have also communicated with people for whom the process is longer in other states.

Davan and I rode bikes to a program at the library this morning. Davan almost got hit by a truck making a left hand turn! It scared me near to death. Davan was crossing with a green light maybe 20 feet ahead of me. It was an intersection where the left turn doesn't have an arrow. This pick up truck came whizzing through, not looking at all. I yelled out "SHHHIIITTTT!!!!!!" Which did seem to get the truck driver's attention, as he did change course at the last minute. They passed within a few feet of each other. I then yelled after the truck, "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU THINKING!?!?!?!" There was a guy in the open back of the truck who kind of shrugged apologetically at me and they were off. Obviously, I'm very eloquent when scared.

Davan and I stopped just past the intersection and hugged for a while. She was trembling. Then we agreed that it was good that no one was hurt and both thought about all the many times we've ridden our bikes without any such thing happening to us. We rode on.

The performer at the library was a ventriloquist/illutionist who was somewhat entertaining, but, as Davan said afterward, "All of his puppets told the same sort of jokes and they were a bit mean." So, it wasn't a great hit.

Afterward, we went to Toy Bear, which is a really great toy store in Gresham. Sadly, they are closing. They're having a closing sale, so we stocked up on some gifts. I think I've got Christmas and birthdays covered for the rest of the year for children we buy for other than Davan. We also picked up a couple of Gamewrite games for ourselves because we love them. Davan picked out a set of new doll house people. At some rash time in her past, she decided to pass on the boys from her doll house family and is now regretting that. Her families are now meshing. I think the older doll house mom might be being passed on, though. We'll assume that's not a commentary on what she'd like to see happen with me...

On the way home we stopped at a cherry tree that doesn't seem to belong to anyone, as it's standing in an empty lot, climbed up and procured ourselves some cherries to go with lunch. We didn't get a ton - there were many, many more up higher than we could reach - but we got plenty to have with lunch. At also turned out to be just as well that we couldn't get more, because they were only so-so. Not as sweet as we're used to in a cherry. I don't know why.

We'd talked about maybe going swimming again this afternoon, but we didn't get back from our morning adventures and done with lunch until about 2:30, so we've opted not to swim. I do have a date to jump on the trampoline with Davan shortly, though. We've talked about putting the sprinkler under it for hot days, but I don't think it'll be necessary today. It's not burning hot and there's actually a bit of a nice breeze, as well.

The latest kid news

Over the weekend, we decided that we would go ahead and proceed with Thorn. We have a few more questions about Elijah, as we're trying to be pretty careful there. He is an older (than Davan) boy that we'd be bringing into the family, so we want to be pretty sure before we move on. There is a lot about Elijah that appeals, though, so we don't want to pull out of the running for him at this point.

We did, finally, get the adoption child summary for Colin in the mail today. Unfortunately, we were scared off. I don't think we'll proceed. I hope that the right family for Colin is out there.

I asked Barbara today if there were any new bulletins in. She told me that the person who was organizing the bulletins is no longer employed there. She doesn't know who is looking after the bulletins or if any new ones have come in, but she said she'd try to check that out for me. She did also tell me, though, that she had a very busy afternoon in front of her. In other words, who knows if there are new bulletins or when we'll find out. Or something like that.

Committee for Zach and Kohl is two weeks from today. I'm already feeling somewhat keyed up, which isn't a good sign. I think I'll need to stay busy for the time to pass without undue stress. I'm both very excited about the possibility of these boys being our sons and very nervous about the possibility of two.

In other life, Davan started a gymnastics class yesterday that seems a bit boring for her. She feels like it's below her level, but wants to stick it out for another week or two to see if it gets more interesting.

Davan bridged from Brownie to Junior in Girl Scouts at an event at our local park last night. Even with temperatures above 100 degrees yesterday, the park was shady and relatively cool. We had a nice picnic dinner, joined by my MIL and the girls had a good time playing at the park. I also owe a big thanks to my friend, Carol, for sewing on Davan's insignia and patches at the last minute so that she could change right into her junior vest after crossing the bridge.

This morning was homeschool park day, which wasn't well attended today due to a mixture of events (soccer camp for three families, sickness for one, dentist appointment for another, ect), but was still nice. It was nice and cool in a shady park this morning. I'm glad it's not so hot today!

It was still warm enough for Davan and I to enjoy a couple of hours at the outdoor pool this afternoon, though. We got in some diving and general playing. It even felt cool to be wet out on the deck when there was a bit of a breeze.

After dinner with my FIL out back this evening (lovely evening for eating outside), Davan, dh and I ran off to our first Tae Kwon Do class this evening. It was interesting. We all enjoyed most of it, although each had a bodily complaint afterward due to the different styles of standing and sitting. Davan is feeling motivated to earn a headband. We were told that we could earn headbands for mastering 4 kicks and/or for learning the first 8 steps in the simplest form. Once one earns both headbands, one can move on to intermediate. I'd be interested in continuing, but right now we're driving kind of far and I'd rather find someplace closer. What we like about this, though, is that we can all be in class together.

New Link

I added a new link this morning. It's my friend's blog. "ami" is short for am I mental, so that gives a clue. (Insert your favorite deity) help us. This "lady" is my daughter's Girl Scout troop leader.

A couple more thoughts

I forgot to mention that, even after this overhaul of her system, Barbara forgot to put Colin's adoption study in the folder she left for us. I called her later, and she said that she'll put it in the mail for us. With luck, it'll be here tomorrow. I could have picked it up, but we won't be able to get back to her until Tuesday anyway, as she doesn't work on Mondays.

One other thought I was having...perhaps you've looked through the waiting children on the web site and you wonder why we haven't gone for others. The reason is usually one of four.

A lot of times, it's age - we are looking for a biologically feasible gap between Davan and "Sam" if "Sam" is younger. If "Sam" is older, we're looking for at least 2 years older, more if "Sam" turns out to be a girl. This is to reduce competition for place in the family.

Another common reason is the issues a child is dealing with. We don't feel like we can handle a child who will be dependent on us for life, for example. Also, though, certain issues seem incompatible with our life style. We don't want to give up leaving the house, for example. One child didn't do well whenever he had to leave home, for example, as we discovered when we read his adoption child summary.

The third reason is a stated interest in a child being the youngest or only child. Only obviously won't work and youngest doesn't work if he/she is older than Davan.

The last major reason is if there are more than 2 siblings or even more than 1 child, if their issues are not minor. Space-wise, we only have room for two more, as Davan's major request throughout this whole process has been to have her own room still and we have small bedrooms. Also, regarding the attention a new child will need, if there is more than one with major attention needs, that would be unfair to Davan (as would even one who's needs were so sever that Davan would be neglected).

A peek into our criteria.

A long conversation with Barbara

Barbara called this morning. She stayed in the office until 9:00 last night, working on a new system for us. She says that we've expressed interest in so many more children than her usual families that her previous organizational system just wasn't working. She developed a whole new one for us. All I can say is, "It's about time."

We went through every child that we've expressed interest in but has not been resolved in some way, either through the child's case worker or us saying no at some point. She had an adoption child summary that had not been sent our way yet to give us. She also had three children we were interested in that did not make the list she created last night. One of which is Kamau. Two others are kids we've expressed interest in but she didn't have in her file. One of those two was Megon, who I suspect is placed anyway.

The good news is that we were put in for Savanna, after all. She just hadn't done the follow up with the worker when we expressed our serious interest. The situation with Savanna (gleaned from a voice mail recording specifically regarding Savanna due to the high interest) is that 10 families have been picked out of all who've applied for her. Out of those 10, the case worker will narrow the field down to 3. We do not know if we're one of those 10, but we do know that we were amongst those considered.

Colin's adoption child summary was the one that Barbara had, but hadn't gotten to us yet.

In other Oregon Waiting Children web site news, Robert has shown up and he is one of "ours".

Also, we received new information on Thorn. Thorn is a child who's case worker asked us to take a look at him. At the time, we felt unsure, but a new evaluation was to be done. Today, I picked up the new evaluation information and I'm interested in moving forward with Thorn. I haven't spoken with Anthony yet, though, to get his take, so it's not a for sure thing.

And, drum roll, please.....we got a committee date for Zach and Kohl! It's not as soon as I'd anticipated, given the situation and what we were told about moving forward quickly, but it is sooner than most committees would be scheduled for. It's on July 11th in the morning.

An interesting statistic. Barbara discovered that we've indicated interest in 35 children (or sibling sets) since being paper ready in November of 2005. That's a lot of kids. One wonders why one of them hasn't worked out yet. Perhaps, though, the time is soon.

I’m feeling very fed up. Barbara called today. She hadn’t had a chance to really go through our files and update yet, but she said she would today and call back. Guess what? Yeah, no call back.

Also, she told us that there was overwhelming response for Savanna and that Savanna’s case worker would be deciding from the homestudies she already had. Well, okay, then, as we put in for Savanna within days of her bulletin coming out. At least we’ll be considered, right? No. Barbara says that she never sent Savanna’s worker our homestudy. Just missed it, I guess. So, we won’t even be considered for her. She’s the one we’re most excited about and we won’t be considered for her because Barbara never sent in our homestudy.

As of tomorrow, it’ll be 3 weeks since we asked Barbara to let Savanna’s case worker know that we were really, really interested in her and much longer since we indicated our original interest. To add insult to injury, Barbara didn’t even actually talk to Savanna’s case worker, just heard about this through the grape vine.

I’m so mad and frustrated. I’m sad. Who knows how many kids we’ve missed because Barbara hasn’t been on the ball. At first, we missed kids because it took her so freaken long to get our homestudy done. Now we’re missing them because she can’t be bothered to follow up with case workers. I know that’s a little unfair because she is really busy. I know she’s had to go to court more than once and has had several committee meetings (one for us) in the last several weeks. However, why didn’t our homestudy get into Savanna’s worker to begin with? It was sent to the other kids we asked about then – Elijah, for one. We inquired about them on the same day.

Between this and how many people seem to put in for kids, it makes me think that maybe we should give it up. Kids who we’re interested in aren’t lingering in the system. Or, more exactly, they're not moving out any faster because we're around. There's a lot of interest in them. I’m getting tired of all the emotional ups and downs. I feel like we’re getting nowhere. We’re at the mercy of this overburdened, disorganized system. Who’s benefiting from this?

Picnic and Phone Message

We had a great time at the picnic. There was a good turn out and lots of playing, both on the playground and at games. Some people left around 8:00, but the die hards were there until 9:00, just before sundown.

When we got home, there was a phone message from Barbara. She'd called pretty late, but I don't know what time for sure, as our time stamp is messed up on the answering machine. She hadn't had time to look at our file for her notes, but said she'd do that in the morning and call back. We shall see.

I'm off to bed where we'll see if a day of roller blading with Davan (read, pulling her around on her roller blades until she gets comfortable) twice, swimming and an evening of fun and games at the park wore me out enough that I'll sleep like a...well, not a baby, as they wake up a lot...hmmm....I guess I'll go with: like a log.

I finally spoke with Barbara...

And she had nothing to tell me. Sigh. She's been emailing with the committee scheduler to try to find a date that works for everyone for Zach and Kohl.

She didn't have her notes about conversations with Elijah's, Ka-Mau's or Savanna's case worker. She had to go to court this afternoon, but said she'd get back to me this afternoon with her notes in hand. Not only am I not holding my breath about this, but I'm also thinking that she probably hasn't spoken with them at all yet, as she's been very busy.

Picnic preparation calls, though, so I'm off to do that and have a fun evening.

Waiting, waiting, waiting…

I haven’t heard from Barbara yet this week, in spite of calling her twice yesterday. I’m anxious to know when Zach and Kohl's committee will be because it might be quite soon.

Also, there are two other kids that we should be going to committee for; Elijah and Ka-Mau (I went to link for Ka-Mau and his page is gone. Perhaps because his committee has been scheduled?). I want to hear about them, too.

In addition, I asked Barbara to let Savanna's case worker know that we are very interested in her and I'd like to hear how that conversation went.

It was over a week ago that we said we were still interested in Elijah, Ka-Mau and really wanted Savanna's case worker to know of our interest in her. I know that, as of Friday, however, Barbara hadn't moved on any of that because she was asking me some questions to clarify some notes she took during that previous meeting. Sigh. I hate having to depend on someone else for such an important thing.

I haven’t called yet this morning because I want to give her a chance to call me so I’m not being too pushy. If I haven’t heard from her by this afternoon, though, I’ll call again.

Today is the summer solstice and we’re planning a picnic dinner at the park this evening. Some friends will be joining us, with others chiming in as a maybe. We’re looking forward to it. Also today, Davan’s been anxious to go swimming for a while, so I think we’ll hit the pool.

Interesting Day

It's been an interesting day or so, thinking about what might be and all the changes that might happen. I wish Barbara had called back yesterday evening to say if the committee had been scheduled yet. She was supposed to talk with the boys' case worker after speaking with us yesterday. Now we have to wait until Tuesday to know if a committee has been scheduled yet, as she doesn't work on Mondays.

In other news...I made muffins this morning as a special breakfast for Father's Day. Yes, you might well notice that it is not yet Father's Day, but tomorrow DH is off to the races bright and early with his dad, so we did it today instead.

A couple of weeks ago, some friends handed down a pair of in line skates to Davan. Actually, it was two pair - one that fits now and one to grow into. Anyway, yesterday, Davan put them on and did a little skating in the kitchen. DH got excited and suggested we all skate a bit this morning. We tried, but it didn't go well. Davan was really scared and said she wanted to quit. When I offered (repeatedly) to take her home, she said she didn't want to go home. Sigh. It was a rough outing.

After coming home and recuperating, Davan and I rode bikes over to the library so that she could pick up more books and get her summer reading program game card stamped. The program just started on the 1st. We picked up the gamecard on the 2nd. She finished the bonus path today. All done. She did a half an hour of reading for each space (the recommended length). We talked about reading longer for each space, but she seemed really excited to move through quickly.

After lunch at home, Davan and DH went over to his mom's house so that Davan could get in some playing time with her cousins. They're all very close in age, coming in at 9 months older than Davan, almost exactly a year younger (we had to reschedule her first birthday party...) and 3 years younger (again almost exactly).

While I had the place to myself I messed about on the computer, went for a skate and mowed the lawn. Once we were reunited, Davan and I got in some jumping on the trampoline before I got dinner going.

Dinner was a yummy creation of carrots and broccoli sautied with a little olive oil, whole wheat rotelle pasta and a mix of marinara and homemade pesto sauce. The pesto sauce had been pretty strong when we made it, so the marinara sort of thinned it out a bit, but it still had a nice kick. Yummy. Davan, though, just ate the carrots, broccoli and plain pasta.

Exciting Developments

We found out today that we're going to committee for Zach and Kohl. And, the committee will probably be soon. Their case worker is trying to schedule it, but hasn't found a good day yet. They are having an expedited committee if at all possible due to (sad but not mean or criminal) circumstances in their foster home.

Their case worker is hoping to have them placed in their adoptive family by mid July! She's going to try to get a slot for committee which may end up being volunteers so that they can move more quickly. Part of the hold up, though, was that we couldn't be scheduled because our paperwork for our new criminal background check hadn't gone through yet. It did come this morning, though, and has been faxed out to the committee scheduler.

It would really be something to have two boys join the family in a month or less. Kohl, at 2, is still in diapers! What a change that would be. And how different from if Megon were placed with us at 14 years old.

I just went to look for Megon to link her name to her web page, but she's missing from the Oregon Waiting Children site. I haven't heard from our case worker that she's found a home, but that's probably what not being at the site means. I hope that's the case for her and that she's happy.

Both boys birthdays are in June, so they will be 2 and 6 (or already are). Davan's excited about two kids joining our family and is hoping that Kohl will let her read to him and maybe Zach, too. She says that it's best to help as many kids as possible. DH is nervous about two and not looking forward to diapers again, but pleased with the descriptions of the boys and willing.

I'm a little worried about the changes it'll mean logistically and financially (a tandem and a triple eventually? two tandems and a trailer with Davan moving to her own bike by the time Kohl moves to the back of a tandem? a minivan? naptimes? impact on game day?). Just getting used to having a 2 year old around again will mean some changes, much less having two children come home to us! However, I'm really very excited about the possibility of these boys being ours. Some things about a larger family really appeal to me.

So, we shall see....

A Couple of Updates

We received from Barbara not just Kamau's adoption child summary, but also Eric's and Elijah's.

As well as Eric comes across here, reading his adoption child summary left us feeling too overwhelmed to proceed for Eric.

We did decide to proceed for Kamau and Elijah, so there's a real possibility we'll go to committee for them.

We also decided to put in for Megon. I'd seen her a while back but we were focusing on younger kids and passed her by. However, she's stayed on my mind, so we looked again and decided that we wanted to inquire.

Kamau

I'd meant to post this link earlier, when I spoke about the boy we're getting an adoption child summary for. I've posted this link before, but as we're getting his study, I thought I'd share again.

Kamau

What's Next?

This is a question I've gotten. Now that we have not been chosen for Alexis, what's next? Well, the answer is that we're back mid-stream so to speak. While we were waiting for Alexis' committee, we were also continuing to look at other kids. Just last week, as you know from this blog, I picked out 3 children from the bulletins to share with Anthony and discuss.

As I've been doing this all along, even with the committee in the works, we have 12 children who's case workers have asked for our homestudy to check out after we've expressed interest. Two kids (well, actually, a sibling group and an individual child) have the same case worker. She and Barbara have been talking back and forth about our family, so we'll see if that leads anywhere. Another case worker for a little boy, has asked to set up a phone conference with Barbara to share information before preceding. And yet another has just sent Barbara an adoption child summary for us to look over. This is a definite sign of interest in our family. It indicates that we're a family she's considering for committee.

We go on. My mom said that all the positives the committee came up with about our family that I shared with her made her feel optimistic. It does me, too. It seems we show pretty well, so I have high hopes for future committees. I thought I'd share what I can remember of the list here. It was a long list and, even though I was taking notes, I didn't get them all, but they still sound good.

I'm an at home mom.

We're an active family.

We have some experience with special needs.

We have a strong marriage.

We have realistic expectations.

If anything comes up (special needs-wise), I can be counted on to research it.

I've used counseling in the past, so it's clear that we're open to counseling if necessary in the future.

We're accepting of the unknowns.

We're experienced parents.

We have a strong support system.

We have a comfortable and child-friendly home.

We seem to be at ease in our home. (We submitted a video.)

We have a sense of humor. (This, apparently, came across well in the video. Strange. We just felt dorky!)

We are very welcoming of a new child.

It's a nice list and bodes well for the future. Now we just have to make it to committee again.

I've also been asked how am I doing? Well, actually. I'm tired of the waiting and I'm disappointed, but I really feel okay. I am just plain tired, too, as I was wound so tightly before committee and now I just kind of feel drained without the adrenaline of a coming child to sustain me. But, a couple of good nights' sleep should fix that. I did fall to pieces over a very minor disagreement with dh last night, so that is some indication that I'm not sailing smoothly, but I'm certainly not down for the count, either.

The Verdict

Barbara finally called at 2:30. The committee lasted longer than she anticipated and then she had to get back to her office before calling. The hour and a half longer to bear was hard to handle!

We were not chosen for Alexis. Barbara tells us that we came off very well at committee and they had a difficult time deciding between the family that was chosen and us. She gave us a long list of strengths and only two wonderings. She said usually they'd say negative, but that they weren't really negative, just possible concerns. One was that Davan and Alexis are close in age - Alexis is just over a year younger than Davan. The other was that having two very physically active kids at home might be a challenge for me. That one seems quite silly to us, as we want a physically active child! We don't want someone who just wants to sit around and prevents us from being out and about. Ah well, though. They had to decide somehow.

I asked Barbara about children in the other family and, while she said she couldn't tell us if there were kids or not, let us know that one of the committee's reasons for going with the other family was that they felt that Alexis might need more one on one attention from adults, so it sounds like there are either no other kids or maybe teenagers.

We are disappointed, but not devastated. Anthony says he's actually a little relieved, as Alexis was very bonded with her biological mother and he felt that might be challenging. I have mixed feelings, but really am trying to believe that the right child is out there.

We were chosen as a "back up family". This means almost nothing, but, should the other family back out at the last minute, Alexis can come right to us without recruiting again and holding another committee meeting. We'd even be offered a direct placement if, for some reason, she moved in and the adoption was disrupted. Usually, it's right in the beginning if it's going to happen, though. The chances of this are quite slim.

So, there it is. We've decided that every committee meeting we go to is a cause for dinner out that night for either consolation or celebration. Mostly just because we know it's a stressful day! We're trying to decide where to go this evening.

Quick Update

Barbara called this morning before the meeting and asked me two questions. One was how available we could be for the transition weeks with Alexis living in Polk County. We might be making some evening trips down the first week or so.

The second question was what was it about Alexis that made us feel like she'd do well in our family and made us think we could parent her well. This was a hard one to answer on the spur of the moment, but I ended up saying that I thought she was a good match for Davan, which would make incorporating her into our family easier, and that I found the description of her personality appealing, even the wanting her way part, because I felt like that made for a strong personality. Oh, I also said that I found that her attachment to her biological mom was a very good sign for attaching and that we were certainly willing to facilitate continued contact between Alexis and her mom.

She might call again inbetween the child presentation and the family presentations if more questions come up.

Just One Tight Nerve

That's what I've become this evening - one tight nerve. I don't even want to think about what my blood pressure is doing this evening. At least I didn't start getting too freaked out sooner. I was able to stay pretty low key all and all until about a week or so ago. Then, slowly, my nerves started kicking in. Until tonight. I have no idea if I'll even sleep.

I'm thankful to my friends, Emily, Carol and Benjamin, who've agreed to come over and help pass the time tomorrow morning. Emily and Carol will play games with me and Benjamin will play with Davan.

Barbara called this evening to see if I'd be available in the morning. Apparently, she usually has last minute questions when preparing for committee. I'll be here, so we'll see what questions she comes up with.

Tomorrow!

Tomorrow is committee day. I've been trying to think, "We will be chosen if Alexis is the child of our hearts." As opposed to thinking either we will be chosen or we won't. I don't want to think we will and then have the crash or think we won't and have my negative thoughts be self fulfilling.

So, if it's meant to be, it will be. Otherwise, we're obviously meant to have someone else. We'll see tomorrow afternoon if I'm successful in this thinking.

Waiting Mode

When Barbara was back in the office on Thursday, I went over and looked in the bulletin book, which did have some new entries. Barbara was in a meeting when I was there, though, so I was supposed to call her back with the bulletin numbers of the kids I was interested in.

Three kids caught my eye: an 11 year old girl, a 2 year old girl and a 4 year old boy. However, I couldn't get myself into the spirit of it, thinking about Alexis' committee coming up on Tuesday. Not much would happen regarding these three kids before Tuesday anyway, as Barbara is out of the office on Mondays. So, I opted to wait and see.

I'm feeling very much like I'm just in waiting mode right now. Up until now, I've been able to focus on picking new kids and such, but I seem to be done with that. At least I waited until the committee was close before feeling this way.

Yesterday I got to see an old friend - Trista! She, Connie and the previously mentioned on this blog, Chris and I were all friends in high school. Chris and I are still very close. Trista and Chris still spend time together, as well. Connie is in sporadic contact with all of us - we each get a Christmas letter, pretty much. Trista and I are pretty much only in contact through Chris anymore. However, she had a wedding to come to in the Portland area. Her brother is marrying a young lady who grew up here. Yay for me.

We had a nice lunch with dh and Davan then I went on a drive up the Gorge with her. It was great to see her and talk. It's amazing that even with our different life paths we still have so much in common and to talk about. It was really good to see you, Trista! Thanks for making the time amongst all of your family obligations!

Davan had a birthday party last night for her oldest friend. She and Laurel have been friends sense they were babies. Laurel goes to school, so her friends were all school friends except Davan. Davan was nervous, but ended up having a great time. It was a slumber party, but Davan's not doing sleep overs right now, so we picked her up at 10pm.

For dh and my's evening free? We went to Trader Joe's. Wild and crazy us.

Grrr!

Barbara is out of the office again until Thursday! She must have had this job a long time and has lots of vacation stored up, but it's frustrating to me not to have things moving along. For a couple of weeks now, she's been trying to get in contact with two case workers to talk with them about us and their kids that we've expressed interest in. With her never in the office, this just isn't happening and that's annoying to me. It's hard when it's just a job for her, but it affects our lives for my family.

Less than a week to go for Alexis' committee. I'm just counting days and trying to wait without a preconceived notion of how it'll go.

Meanwhile....Davan and I got a little bit of yard work in this morning, including planting a tomato start that we got from our CSA on Monday. We'll see how it does. I tent to not do well with gardening, but...

And now we're off to the library.

Bike Tour Report

We're home from our first bike tour! We did make a change due to the inclement weather.

We were supposed to do a three day loop and had originally picked a loop around Mt Hood which involved three 25-30 mile days. However, we had to change that plan when Anthony checked with the ranger and discovered that one road was still snow-bound! We then chose a loop of three 33 or so miles days which went down part of the coast. However, the weather sucked on Saturday - cold and rainy with some wind thrown in for good measure.

We considered canceling altogether, but Davan was pretty disappointed, as were we, so we picked a last minute two day trip. We drove down to Salem and rode up to Champoeg State Park. The trip was a partial loop and partial there and back for a total of 65 miles (at least the way we did it). Sunday was still cloudy, cool and occasionally very light rain. We ran into some bad rain on the way to Salem in the truck (borrowed from Tadku, thanks!) and had our doubts, but the weather wasn't too shabby.

The trip was a success, except we got the hairy eye ball from another camper at the hiker/biker campground because we'd driven down to Salem and then gone up to Champoeg, as opposed to just going down to Champoeg from Portland. However, we figured what we could at the last minute. Maybe next time we'll make it from home.

Also, I had some knee trouble. For some reason, my left knee occasionally gives me trouble when I bike ride. It feels like a repetitive movement injury to me - some sort of tendon thing, but I don't know for sure. I've had it checked out and was given some exercises to do by a physical therapist. I do them regularly, but it still started hurting about 2/3 of the way through the first day. The second day, then was pain with every leg rotation. :( When I first got on the bike, I doubted my ability to gut it out for the whole ride, but I made it. I was even cheery about it.

But, as I said, the trip was mostly good and we want to bike tour again. We averaged about 10.5 miles per hour both days over quite flat terrain. Davan and dh were faster on their tandem than I was on my mountain bike, but they rode just behind me so as to not out pace me. We found a very nice spot to stop for lunch yesterday and ended up stopping there again today. It was an iris farm with a picnic area, restrooms/outhouses and a flower garden for viewing.

Davan, who did not get enough physical activity in during the bike ride, talked us into racing, playing sardines, and other active games at camp. We also got in a nice stroll around the campground.

We came home late this afternoon to unpack, shower, throw dinner together and make our first run up to our CSA farm - Dancing Roots - to pick up our share this evening. It's a smallish haul, but only the first. There were even a few precious strawberries and they were so yummy that Davan and I finished them off in less than 5 minutes on the way home. Lucky for us, dh doesn't care for strawberries.

A Bit of a Surprise

I was surprised to see these two show up on the Oregon Waiting Children site.

Zach and Kohl

It also might be a surprise to most of you that we've put in for these two boys. The rest of our kids are all individual. However, we decided to look at the sibling book and just see what there was to see. We ended up inquiring about 3 different sets of two brother groups. One was already adopted, one had already had their three families chosen for committee and then Zach and Kohl.

Of course, with Alexis's committee coming up in just a little over a week, I've got mixed feelings about other kids. I want to keep looking because what if we're not chosen for Alexis? However, I also feel nervous about feeling like I'll have some grieving to do to let go of the idea of any other kids if we are chosen. I feel like I'm walking a tightrope with my feelings regarding the committee and the feeling is becoming more pronounced as it gets closer.

Elijah, but in a different spot

Well, Elijah is on the Oregon Waiting Kids site, but for some reason chronologically earlier than Savanna. This is odd because their bulletins showed up at the same time at our office.

Another Listing

Yet another of "our" kids is up on the Oregon Waiting Children site.

Savanna

The fact that she showed up there doesn't surprise me. In fact, I expected Elijah to show up, also, as they are both in a harder to place age (being older than 10). Also, Savanna had a distrupted adoption, which actually kind of chaps my hide. When we were first looking at adoption (before we were paper ready), we saw Savanna on the site and were very interested in her. However, we weren't able to put in for her. I can't help but think that if we had been able to, her distrupted placement might not have happened.

I saw Barbara today and gave her our family book. She seemed pleased by it, so that's good. Also, she gave me more paperwork to do. It turns out that sense it's been a year sense our criminal background check, we have to do one again. If they'd just move faster, they'd save themselves a lot of paperwork! If we have to wait much longer, there are more things that we'll have to redo, as well.

Less than two weeks till Alexis' committee...Anthony's decided that he wants to be home to get the news, so he's coming home at lunch time on that Tuesday. I feel very up in the air about it, with not wanting to get too excited, but also not wanting to be totally unprepared mentally if the placement does happen.

Out Again

I called Barbara this morning to let her know that I finished our family book last night, but she's out of the office until Thursday. I'm sure she must have some normal amount of vacation time, but it seems like she's out of the office a whole heck of a lot. Sense December, I can think of two full weeks and many, many days here and there. It's possible that some of it is work related. I don't know where she might have to go for various committee meetings. Although, I do know that Alexis' committee meeting is here in Portland, even though she lives about 3 hours from here.

To finish the family book, Davan and I did go out yesterday evening after her play date left. We hopped on our bikes, as I wasn't sure how far we'd have to go. However, I thought that I remembered a camera store quite near here and, sure enough, it was there. So, that was great because not only did we not get into the car again, but we supported a local business. Not to mention that it was quick, as well. I won't be developing pictures at Target again!

Weekend in a Blur

Our weekend passed in a blur of mostly small things to do. We got the last few pictures taken for the family book (expect for swimming, which just might not make it in).

We preped the bikes for our up-incoming three day bike tour. This included a trip to the bike store to purchase necessities such as new tires for the tandem, a couple of new water bottles and a handlebar extender so that Davan doesn't have to reach so far to get to the handlebars. It's seems like everything costs money, even a supposedly cheap bike/camping trip. Ah well. We should more or less be set up for a summer of bicycling now.

Davan also went on a flight with the Young Eagles program. This is really cool and if you have a kid, you should check it out for your area. Kids can go up in a personal plane (usually a 2-4 seater) with a pilot. Depending on age, the child is usually given control of the plane for a short period of time while in the air, as well.

Anthony took Davan to that on Saturday while I went to a book group meeting. Sunday found Davan and I spending 4 hours, incongruously, in a Catholic girls' school. Davan was in a Peter Pan play and her class was invited to perform select scenes from their show at a student dance showcase. The facility where it was held was at St Mary's Academy in downtown Portland. What with getting there early for multiple run throughs and staying through the end to watch others and to take a bow, we were there quite a long time. It was fun, though, for the kids to get up on stage again and we enjoyed the other dances. We both particularly liked a troop of boys - about 25 or so - who did a group dance.

Over the course of the weekend, we did manage to get the bikes almost ready (the tandem still needs a new tube in the front) and to do a trail packing. As we haven't done multi-day bike tours before, we weren't sure how the packing would go. Anthony was particularly worried about not having enough space. However, all the bulky stuff (tent, sleeping bags, therma rests) plus his and Davan's stuff sack of clothes fit on the trailer he and Davan will pull with the tandem.

I got almost all of the food ready (we aren't going to buy our bagels until the day before we go so they're fresh) and packed it up. It fit neatly into my trunk and one panier with room left over for most of the kitchen (stove, dishes, ect). My second panier will hold my own clothes and a few more kitchen items (water filter and pot). So, it all fits and we're excited about the trip!

My goal for today was to get four pictures printed out (not at home) for the family book. Barbara wants to see it before the committee. I assume so she can make suggestions if she doesn't approve or thinks we should add something. So, I'd wanted to get it done today. However, I had a very annoying time of it at Target. First, there was a couple who were trying to use the machine, but having trouble with it. So, they needed help from a store employee. Davan and I had stopped off on the way to her Girl Scout meeting just to put the pictures in for developing, but ended up not having time to finish. So, I took Davan to Girl Scouts and came back.

Sadly, when I came back, a lady was using the machine to make copies of 10 photographs. For some reason, she was having to start the whole process over at the beginning of each picture and, at the end, needing an employee to come over and punch in a code. Also, if a picture wasn't right, the process had to be started over again. I left when she had 3 remaining pictures to copy.
Luckily, the library is close by, so I went over to pick out some books for Davan, as she's just flying through books right now. 2-3 chapter books a day! When I got back, she was just finishing up. I finally get to the machine. It doesn't have an USB port. Grr. I know that Walmart has a machine with a USB port, but I really don't like Walmart and I was getting fed up with the process by then. I gave up and joined Davan at the Girl Scout meeting.

So, this afternoon, when Davan's friend (who came home with us from Girl Scouts) is picked up, she and I will have to venture out to get these pictures developed.

My Water Bottle!?!?!

A strange thing happened to me yesterday. Someone stole the water bottle off of my bike. I didn't notice at first because I often (accidentally) leave the water bottle on my bike after a ride. However, yesterday evening, after riding Davan to her friend's house for a play date, riding to the library, riding to Barbara's office and coming back home, I was preparing to ride over to Mt Hood Community College to play racquetball.

Now, before you get all excited about how far I'm riding, you should know that the library is only a mile and half away and both Laurel's house (Davan's play mate yesterday afternoon) and Barbara's office are more or less between here and the library. Mt Hood Community College is maybe a mile and a half away as well. So, all that riding totaled maybe 6.5 miles.

Back to the story. So, I realize my water bottle isn't sitting on the counter. I check my bike in the garage. Not there. I expected it to be, as I didn't remember bringing it in. However, I also checked my backpack and various other potential locations. Gone. The only thing I can figure is that it was stolen either at the library or at Barbara's office. Both high foot traffic areas. I remember it being on my bike when I went into the library, as I debated bringing it in, but just took a drink instead.

Anthony's answer to all of this is, of course, that I shouldn't be leaving my water bottle on the bike in the first place. That's just inviting crime. My thoughts were, "Who'd steal my waterbottle anyway?" But, I guess someone would. Sigh.

Anthony and I did talk about the kids I got bulletin's for yesterday. We decided against one little girl because she's less than 9 months younger than Davan, which seems too close in age. However, we are putting in for the other three, which include 3 year old Chase, 10 year old Elijah and 12 year old Savanna.

Savanna, interestingly enough, was a child on the Oregon Waiting Kids page back when we were first contemplating adoption and I liked her at the time. However, she was placed for adoption. The adoption disrupted and she is being recruited for again. Maybe it's meant to be. Savanna has also said that she wants a sister of any age. Davan, while open to a lot of different possibilities, says she'd be absolutely the most excited about an older sister.

Anthony says I just want a big kid to help me peddle my tandem. We're planning on having two tandems when we have two kids - with a parent captaining each - so we can do longer bike rides as a family. That was the purpose for our purchase of the sadly stolen Black Bomber.

In regards to Elijah, we feel that he'd be a good match personality-wise. He's a little close in age to Davan, but with him being a boy rather than a girl, we feel it might work out. We had said we wanted an older child to be three years older and, for another girl, we'd stick with that.

Somewhat Disappointing News from Barbara

I went to look at new bulletins today and had a conversation with Barbara. It turns out that we were the 4th family Hunter's case worker wanted for Hunter and all three of her first choices wanted to go to committee. Sigh. It's the same thing that happened with Ashlee.

We are still on for Alexis. I need to finish our family book for that committee. I have a couple more pictures I want to take. Then one more print making session and I'll put them in the book. We also made a 5 minute video of ourselves. These items will be presented at committee, but are really for Alexis (or whoever we adopt). It's to introduce the child to us.

I found out that we were not chosen for Jacob, who was one of the kids listed on the Oregon Waiting Children's site, but is no longer there. His case worker stated that she was looking for a different situation for him, but that she wanted to keep our homestudy at the office for other case workers to see.

I picked out four new kids to inquire about. Although, two of them are in the 10-13 age range we were originally considering, so Anthony and I need to talk about it before we pursue those kids.

Yet Another NWAE Showing

We've had another of "our" kids show up on the Oregon Waiting Children's site.

Kamau

I have yet to talk to Barbara this week, but I am planning on calling her tomorrow (as that'll be one week from my last call). I'm sure there'll be updates then, as usual.

Meanwhile, we're having a hot week here in the Portland area - quite unseasonable. I don't mind low 80's, but the 90+ days are too hot for me. DH came home hot, sweaty, tired and windblown from his 15 mile ride home from work yesterday. Wind and heat do not make a good combination for bike riding.

We're Survivor watchers, but did not watch the finale on Sunday because we were playing D&D. We recorded it, though, and watched tonight complete with a TV watching sort of meal. Big salads for everyone followed by cheesy bread (pizza with a drizzle of olive oil, Italian seasonings and a sprinkle of motz cheese) and/or pesto pizza (pesto sauce, thinly sliced garlic, toasted pine nuts, red onions, olives and a sprinkle of motz cheese). Then, as when I'd told Davan we were going to have a Survivor party she'd suggested cupcakes, vegan lemon cupcakes. Everything was too yummy and I over did it a bit. :/

I did manage to get out for a walk after the TV marathon.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there. I hope you've having a good one!

It's a funny thing, but Mother's Days really only started being good for me when Davan was about 5. Prior to that, it was a day of wondering if I'd really made the right decision being a mom. Most days I was happy, but on Mother's Day, I always felt very introspective about being a parent at all. It was a day to be doted on, but Davan still just needed me all the time and couldn't set it aside at all at that time.

Anyway, these days I like Mother's Day, although, if I don't want to be disappointed, I have to spell out exactly what I want. Davan will always make me a card or two or ten. Anthony's willing, but doesn't ever do any planning. Last year I just asked for him to take over the kitchen all day - make all the meals and do all the clean up. I still did the meal planning and shopping, though.

This year, we have Dungeons and Dragons this afternoon, so Anthony made breakfast - pancakes and "sausage" - and then we went to Saturday Market where I picked myself out a shirt. We were going to have lunch there, as well, but no one was very hungry yet after our big breakfast. Except Davan. She had an elephant ear. We opted to just head home instead and skip the eating out. We'll have a big dinner with our D&D potluck, so we'll just have something small for lunch.

I'm making bread for D&D, but Anthony's doing all the dishes for me.

We had a disappointing thing happen yesterday afternoon, when we went to volunteer for the post office food drive. We were checking in and they said that Davan couldn't help because she was too young! I thought that was just silly, as they were loosing not only her help, but mine as well. Anthony chose to go ahead and volunteer, although, later he said he wished he'd just left with us. We were not close to come (about 40 minutes away), so Davan and I needed some entertainment. We found a Goodwill, where I'd been wanting to go to look at shirts and pants anyway, and spent some time there. I found a shirt I really liked, too. There was a school with a great playground right next to the Goodwill, and we spent the rest of our time there, playing. So, it was a nice afternoon, but not what we'd planned.

Lovely Weather Weekend

We had a nice start to our weekend with a picnic dinner at the park yesterday evening. I packed us some BBQ sauce marinated fried tofu, biscuits, corn on the cob and pb chocolate bars (recipe from Vive Le Vegan). It was a yummy dinner, but I still couldn't convince Davan that tofu is a good thing.

Although, the other night, Davan did like the Vegan French Toast I made, which did involve tofu, just not blocks of it.

The weather was sunny and mild, as it is again today. Although, this morning was whiled away in a non outdoorsy activity. Davan had never watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, even though she's a die hard Harry Potter fan (who's listened to all the books innumerable times and is now working through reading them herself). She found the previews for Goblet of Fire too scary. However, she recently announced that she wanted to watch it after all. A friend lent us the DVD for the weekend and it was decided that we should watch it as far away from bed time as possible. So, it was a breakfast event for us.

She watched the whole thing, snuggled up with her dad for safety. I, meanwhile, couldn't get myself to watch it again, so I cleaned up the kitchen from breakfast, folded and put away laundry and did some yoga with my new Rodney Lee Yoga Card Deck.

It was my first work out from that deck, and it was okay. I've used two other decks which belong to friends of mine and I haven't decided which I like best.

This afternoon, we're off to volunteer sorting food for the post office food drive that happens today.

Maybe we can fit in a bike ride, as well.

Latest From Barbara

I spoke with Barbara this afternoon. We have a date for Alexis' committee! It's June 6th in the morning, which is less than a month away. I'm trying not to get too excited, as it's still a one in three chance, but I can't help but have a little excitement.

We still don't have a date for Hunter's committee....

I found out that two kids we inquired about are spoken for - one's adopted already and the other has had his three families picked out for committee already. The second is fine - there's only so much updating you can do - but it annoys me when the child is already placed and their bulletin is still hanging around.

I also found out that three other kid's case workers are having some discussions with Barbara about us. I hope that's a positive thing - at least it means that their somewhat interested. So, we'll see where that leads.

So far there's been no word about any of the three that showed up on the web site, but the wheels do seem to turn slowly.

I don't have anything new to share on the adoption front. We're still waiting to hear the committee dates for Alexis and Hunter. I'll have to call Barbara tomorrow and check in. It seems like most of the time when I "check in" she has something to tell me. However, it's rare that I get a call from her with new information, so I just keep "checking in".

Davan and I had a very nice afternoon at homeschool park day today. We had lovely weather for it - sunny and warm, but not overly hot. We got in a lot of running and playing. Davan and I also spent some time drawing pictographs on the large rocks at the park with sidewalk chalk.

We were inspired by both Kaya and the River Girl (an American Girl Short Story) and our tour from this weekend.

Davan decided about a month ago that she wanted to be vegetarian. She's been vegetarian before for about a 10 month period, but slipped back into eating meat because she missed some foods that her dad and I were still eating. Well, after I shared a story about eating cats and dogs from the Shmoo Blog (I couldn't find the actual story, but this is a link to the blog), she decided she wanted to be vegetarian again. This time, I decided that I'd join her, mostly. We've both decided that we'll eat some seafood (so, yes, I understand that this isn't truly vegetarian) and I'll eat meat if it's served at another person's house.

DH, meanwhile, is fine with being vegetarian at home, even vegan, but will look forward to having his meat when eating out.

I also decided, however, that I wanted to lean more toward being vegan because I think it's unhealthy to eat a ton of cheese, which is what seems to happen when we cut meat around here. Thus, I've been experimenting with some new recipes. We've never been huge meat eaters, but cutting the dairy is harder for us. Tonight I made vegan French toast. I had my doubts as I was making it, but it turned out really yummy. I got the recipe from Dreena Burton's Vive le Vegan! which is my favorite vegan cookbook to date. The link is to Dreena's blog.

I've eaten vegan all day both today and yesterday, so I'm pretty happy about that. I'm not ready to take the plunge entirely, but we'll see.

Another one of "our" kids showed up on the Northwest Adoption Exchange web site.

Colin

We returned today from a two night camping trip up on the Washington side of the Columbia Gorge at Maryhill State Park. It was a nice trip, but very, very windy.

Actually, Friday was nice, weather wise - sunny and not too windy. We got into Maryhill State Park around 1pm, had a bite to eat and then went off to look at some property. We've been thinking about trying to buy some property where we can build a small rustic cabin for weekend/vacation get-a-ways. We were disappointed by what was available in our price range (very low).

With that done, we spent the rest of the time site seeing and hanging out. The best part was probably the tour we did at Horsethief Lake of the pictographs and petroglyphs. They only do two tours a week, on Friday and Saturday mornings at 10:00 which you must register for.

We were glad to come home again, as always, but spent the evening planning a three day bike tour/camping trip that we're going to do later this month.

Our big adoption related news is that we're going to committee for another child! His name is Hunter and he is 5 1/2. We don't have a date yet for either Hunter or Alexis, so we don't know which will come first. The way it works in this situation is that you are scheduled for both committees, but if the committee you are scheduled to go to first picks you, you drop out of the second committee.

Sigh.

Barbara called this morning to let me know that Ashlee, whom I was supposed to pick up some additional paperwork on this morning, already has three families for committee. Apparently, we were on the B team. If one of those families doesn't end up going to committee, then axle's case worker would like to take us. It seems that two of these other families have other up-in-coming committees, so it was possible that they'd already have placements by the time Ashlee's committee came up. Now, however, Ashlee has a committee date and it looks like all the A families will be going.

We are still on for going to committee with Alexis, though. And Barbara said that we now have an adoption child summary (the first of any additional paperwork when a case worker is interested in your family) on a little boy named Hunter. Davan and I will be off to pick that up after we finish up our morning routine of reading, chores, breakfast, showers, dressing and such (not necessarily all in that order).

We're also hopeful about getting an adoption child summary on Austin, another little boy, soon.

Two of the kids we've inquired about have just shown up on the Northwest Adoption Exchange web site. Usually, this site shows harder to place kids, but I'm not sure why these two are harder to place. Sometimes the call doesn't seem to make sense to me.

Tamia

Jacob

Tamia is African American and that may be the reason why she made the site. It's a sad thing, but race does matter. As a family, our idea is to just ignore coloring of any sort and look at the person, but when adopting a child of an obviously different race, you are taking on an extra challenge. You are not seen immediately as a family, for example. Will an AA child feel like we've taken away their culture when she gets older? Color blindness would be ideal in my opinion, but we aren't, as a society, so it is something to keep in mind.

Meanwhile, I don't know why Jacob made the web site. Maybe just because he's a boy over the age of 4? Although we've seen lots of other boys around his same age who haven't made the site. Jacob seems like a good fit for us, so it surprises me to see him there.

As you can see, even though we're going to committee for Alexis, we are still keeping up with "our kids". As the committee isn't a guarantee, you are encouraged to keep making progress with other kids just in case. I spoke with Barbara today and it looks like we'll be getting adoption child summaries for two other kids - Austin and Ashlee - tomorrow or soon there after. She already has Ashlee's and just needs to prepare it for us. So, there are two more hopefuls. Austin has had a special place in my heart sense we first got his bulletin months ago, so I'm excited to get more information about him.

Nothing is for sure in this whole process and it's difficult to be on pins and needles the whole time!

Meanwhile, we go on with our lives. Today, Davan and I read together, cleaned her mouse cage, played with the cats, made oatmeal bars for breakfast, engaged in separate activities for a while (Home Education Magazine and a book I needed to finish for tonight's family book group reading for me and a long photo session plus journal writing for Davan), ate lunch together, walked (me) or Wheelied (her) to the library (1.5 miles), read/choose/put on hold books there, saw friends and visited with them there, stopped at Goodwill on the way back (the best place to buy games at $1.99 a pop), went over some bulletins (at Davan's request), made dinner (me), played in the back yard (her), had my father in law over for dinner, welcomed dh back from his overnight business trip, had our family book group (this week we discussed "The Gifts of Wally Dad", which we all liked), played outside until twilight and bed time, got ready for bed (her), played around on the computer (me), read in bed plus had Daddy read (her). It'll be bed and reading for me when I'm done playing on the computer. A day in the life.

I had a scary thing happen in the middle of that last long paragraph. My computer locked up on me and than gave me a strange and new to me error message saying that Windows had to shut down. I rebooted and logged back on, worried about my post, but thanks to the "recover post" button here in the editor, almost all of it was saved. Nice function! Whew!

Grrr. I just spent a long time writing an entry all about what happens with adoption here in Oregon after a family gets paper ready, but it won't post! I keep getting errors. Very annoying. So, here's a test post.

So, more on adoption. We had gotten up to looking at kids and what happens next, I believe.

Back in early November, we were paper ready and started looking at available kids. This is done by going into the office (or, as we've mostly done sense then, bringing the book home) and looking at a three ring binder filled with bulletins on available kids. The kids each have a picture, a birth date, first name and last initial, race, ethnicity, if they are legally free and the date of the release of the bulletin on the first page. Then, there is a page or 3 with descriptions of the child - interests, strengths, issues, basic reasons for being in foster care and such.

Mostly, the ethnicity is in regards to if the child is Hispanic or not. African American heritage is indicated under race. We're open to any race or mix, so, although we look at this out of interest, it's not a decisive issue for us.

The birth date is decisive, however. Originally, we'd thought that we would adopt a child younger than Davan but 3 or older. At the time, Davan was 7, so we were thinking 3-7 year olds. Then we decided that we wanted to consider older kids. It's highly recommended that you not disrupt birth order, but Davan was interested in an older sibling and DH and I like older kids, so it seemed like a good idea. However, we wanted to make sure the child was 3 years older than Davan so as to minimize issues with rivalry. So, we decided 10-13 year olds were our main focus, but we'd be open to 3-7 year olds as well.

When we finally looked at the bulletins, though, we were surprised to discover that very few 10-13 year olds were available for adoption here in Oregon - at least as individual children and not as part of a sibling group. In fact, in the whole book of hundreds, we only found 5 kids in this age range. We decided to put in for 3 of these 5. Meanwhile, though, there were lots of kids in the 3-7 range we'd originally thought about, so we put in for 4 of these kids, as well.

I went over the bulletins with Davan when we got home, sharing with her the pictures and the appropriate parts of the bulletins. She surprised us by being most excited about the younger kids! After mulling this over for a while, we decided to go back to focusing on younger kids. Thus, we were sticking with the birth order advice and going for the group that seemed to have more need, as well.

Now, Davan is 8 and we're still mostly looking at 3-7 year olds. Although, we've actually put in for a couple of 2 year olds, as well. This was a surprise to us - how many kids under 3 are available. We'd been told that if we wanted to adopt 0-3 year old individual kids that we shouldn't bother to try to go through the process with the state, as these kids were gold and there was a 3 year plus waiting list. This was fine with us, as we were looking at older kids anyway. However, the book is full of young kids! Most of them have some sort of medical issue, which I guess makes them less appealing. Most, though, seem to only suffer from the possibility that prenatal exposure to drugs/alcohol will have future repercussions. Thus, we opted to put in for a couple of 2 year olds, as well.

By now, we've put in for well over 20 kids and haven't made it to committee yet. What happens after we express interest is that our case worker contacts the child's case worker. Barbara (our case worker) tells them a little about us and asks if they are still accepting homestudies. While they try to keep the books up to date, we've had it happen frequently that we've inquired about a child only to learn that either they'd already been adopted, already had their committee meeting or already had the three families picked for committee. If the child's case worker is interested in us, Barbara sends them a copy of our homestudy. The child's case worker reviews all the homestudies that are sent and decides which are good matches.

Once the case worker thinks that we're a good match, we're sent more information about the child. If we are still interested after all the information has been divulged and we're still interested, the child's case worker is informed of our interest. At this point, we may become one of the families that goes to committee.

In Oregon, an effort is made to find three potential families for each child or sibling group. A committee is convened to decide which family is the best match. The families are represented by their case workers and the child by his/her case worker. 5 case workers who are unbiased (no special contact with child or families) hear the information and decide on the best match. Actually, the 5th case worker, who presides over the meeting only votes if there is a tie amongst the other 4.

The families are all informed after the meeting and a one week waiting period ensues. During this week, anyone who was involved in the process can appeal. This is, apparently, a rare occurrence, but it can happen. Once the week is over, the child's case worker lets the child know that there is a family who wants to adopt them and shows the child a family book that the adoptive parents have made. The family book has pictures of mom and dad primarily, but also siblings, pets, home, regular activities and such. This is the beginning of the transition period.

Over the course of the next (usually) three or so weeks, the child is transitioned from the foster family to the adoptive family. The adoptive parents go to meet the child for a short time one day. Then they spend more time with the child another day. Then they have the child overnight, then for the weekend and finally the child moves in. Or something similar. The child's case worker is the primary planner for the transition. As different kids have different needs and as some adoptive families live further away from the child than others, it's a flexible process.


Whew - that's a lot of writing for this session. One parting though, first. We just discovered last week that one of the kids we put in for - a 5 year old little girl - had 70!!!! families inquire about her. And here we thought adoptive families were in short supply. Perhaps that goes to show why it hasn't happened for us yet. There are just so many people out there willing to adopt the same sort of kids that we are. While we need to do what is right for our family, it does make me wonder if we're doing the right thing by adopting one of these kids that so many people seem to want.

Meanwhile, we are still waiting to hear about a committee date for Alexis.