Expanding Our Options

Well, we lost another potential child.  It’s now a joke that if we actually pursue further processing with a child, they will be adopted by someone else in the meantime.  Most of the time the foster parents or someone from their past steps up when the case worker notifies them of an interested family.  4.  It’s awesome that the four young ladies have found forever homes and families, just makes it hard to keep hope alive.

Since there are no others in Kansas at this time that sound like a good fit, and we don’t want to just sit and keep refreshing the site every day to see when a new girl gets added (which isn’t all that often really), I did some research (imagine that lol).  I am in the middle now of working on our national profile and once AdoptUS sends it and our KS Social Worker verifies the accuracy of the form part (not the narrative), we can then request profiles for girls in other states.  There are actually several in neighboring states that seem somewhat promising so far, but who knows when the verification will be done and who will be available at that point.  At least we’re not just twiddling our thumbs and waiting for a miracle, though, and it helps me feel like I’m actually still working toward our dream.

The other states require that out-of-state adopters have a completed homestudy all ready, which we did back in September and are just waiting for the last corrections to be finished, so that we get the official version of our homestudy profile.  They also require completion of their own forms, not that different from the tons of pages I did for Kansas, but they also require a narrative to be written.  This allows the caseworkers to actually get a brief “getting to know you” view of us, instead of just stats.  There are sections for general description of where we live, community activities, what type of child we are looking for, our joint interests (I couldn’t resist doing some of our separate interests too, since we each have a lot of hobbies and interests that aren’t shared by the other), any activities that interfere with routine (such as his scout meetings or work events), and what experience we have with children.  If it was free form it’d be easier for me, I think, since where we live and the community feel like the section our interests and hobbies should be with, instead of elsewhere.  And it is incredibly hard for me to “sell” our qualities to such a wide audience.  I can rock a resume and have actually done that for some extra money in the past, but talking about personal stuff instead of business, and within their guidelines, is so hard for me.  Talking with a friend helped me think of writing a resume-type narrative that I could then copy and paste into this narrative, in the appropriate areas.  

We also have to do a lot of what would we be able to handle or prefer for tons of conditions I know nothing about.  I realized that our homestudy worker had talked about the issues, and got a feel for what we can do, but didn’t name all of the things she was actually asking about.  I never even realized that, even with turning in hundreds of corrections.  *laugh* And for me to not know medical conditions is so irritating to me, since I like to think I’ve educated myself really well in that area.  The thirty five shortcuts to descriptions tells me otherwise.  *grin* 

I really hope that I’m making the right move in doing this.  I feel so helpless and useless right now; four is enough to really knock the wind out of the sales.  I have an incredible support system that is helping me keep working, even when I don’t feel overly hopeful, and have all given pep talks to keep me motivated to not give up.  It doesn’t make sense, but I feel kind of like I’ve failed, and I’m not used to doing that, and I definitely don’t handle it well.  I am so very thankful to have incredible people in my life to help me learn how to handle this. 

So I am down to two sections left of the narrative and then back to finishing the “what can we handle” sections, especially now that I know what the definitions are.  *grin*  I’ve had a hard time deciding what to call Kiddo in the narrative, since I’m not really sure what the case workers would prefer, so it’s varied from “our daughter”, “the child”, “the young lady”, and Kiddo.  I have all of the preferences covered, I suppose.  *laugh*  I get to next complete the section about her Godparents and even write about how we hope to travel out of state for Kiddo to meet her other set of Godparents, as soon as Kiddo is settled and able to handle it (and we can budget it). Leah has been such an incredible part of our support system that I can’t wait for Kiddo to get to meet her, along with her husband and children.  Extra bonus is I get to meet my honorary nieces in person, too!  So although having another “paperwork pregnancy” kind of bites, there are some great reminders of the dreams and goals we have for parenting and bonding.  I don’t know how many times we can travel to meet any of the potential kids out-of-state, so I’m going to set up a family Skype account just in case most of our contact is via that or group texting.  Prepare to hear about all of the differences between attempting to adopt locally vs out-of-state.  We’re starting a whole different path and learning as we go.  If you are so inclined, a little prayer for this would mean so very much to me.  And thank you for bumping along this wild ride with me.  We were hesitant about talking about the adoption at all, but writing about the journey has been very therapeutic and empowering, so thank you for taking the time to read and for all of the well wishes you’ve sent.

By the way, I actually got some new business items to get the inspiration percolating again, so look for an actual business post soon.  I know that some subscribed for the business aspect, so I hope you’ve stayed along until I could get back to it!  Happy pampering!