On the list

As of today I am officially back on the list!  I am a licensed foster parent again :)  It only took about a year, 8 home visits, and 3 safety inspections, LOL!  My licensing worker came out today to have me review and sign off on the home study.  He also had a placement of a 13 year old girl.  I had to turn it down because she needed transportation to her school in another county every day. I don't think it would work out timing wise between Matthew catching the bus and the other two needing to get to preschool.  Hopefully this is a good sign and Ill get a call for my age range soon.

My private homestudy came in the mail today, woohoo!  The entire process took 4 months start to finish, which is much quicker than my foster homestudy/license has taken.   I am irritated that the homestudy only "approved" me for a single child or possibly a sibling group of two.  There is so much more to say about the bias towards large families and single moms, but Ill save that for another day.

Homestudy....yep still talking about that

The homestudy worker called this afternoon.  I started getting really nervous because he started off the conversation saying he needed to schedule another visit to come out. We scheduled the visit for Friday and I thought for sure that meant I wouldn't be presented to the committee for licensure this month.  The "committee" that approves foster parents for licensure only meets one time a month, this month they are meeting tomorrow.  It seems like every month since May my worker has told me he is almost done putting together my homestudy and will present it next month.  At this point it is pretty ridiculous.  Ive given them every document and made myself extremely available so this should not be taking this long.  Every month I heard about how he was backed up with kinship studies that he had to get done first, which I get, but really his story was constantly changing so I don't think that was a valid excuse.  Oh well, hopefully everything will go smoothly tomorrow and we will move on to whatever the next step is!  I remember getting so frustrated and anxious when I was getting licensed the first time, but in the end all that waiting was just God's plan to put the boys in my life.  If I had been licensed earlier I may have never had them in my life.  Im praying that God will use this delay to place a child in our home who will be a perfect fit and the wait will be worth it! 

Homestudy....still waiting

A few weeks ago I called my homestudy worker to check in with where we were at....and ask him about the fingerprint registration I still had not received.  He mailed out my paperwork that day and left me a message saying that everything was in order and he thought he would be presenting my homestudy to the panel on October 1st.  So today was October 1st, not surprisingly I haven't heard anything, but I did leave him a message this afternoon.  I received my fingerprinting back so thought I would use that as my excuse for calling.  Hopefully he will call me back tomorrow and answer my question and give me another update....I'm getting anxious for my girl :)

Fingerprinting

After waiting MONTHS for the social worker who is completing my home study to send me my registration number for fingerprinting, it finally arrived!  I had to bring a little one with me, but overall it was fairly quick and painless.  I went first thing in the morning, my little one has been really wonky from about 11am-1pm lately, no idea what that is about! We waited about 30 minutes and it took about 30 seconds to complete the fingerprinting.  She said I should receive the results in a week - 10 days, quicker than I had read online!  Hopefully this will not slow anything up. As far as I know we are still on for submitting my home study to the board on October 1st.  I would love to have some more kiddos by Christmas time.....specifically some girls so I can finally do some toy shopping that involves dolls and everything pink :)

Homestudy

Ill update this post as I go through the homestudy process.

I received a call from the caseworker assigned to do my homestudy.  He co-taught my Saturday Classes 3 and 4, and is teaching Class 5 next week.  He scheduled to come to the house Tuesday afternoon for our first session.  A few days later I got a packet in the mail with some documents and forms he will need.

They are requesting the following:
10 years of income records, in the form of W-2s and/or Social Security Statements-  This seems a little excessive to me, in the other state I just needed to provide the last years tax return and current paystub.  Since I am self-employed it makes this a little more difficult.  Hopefully he will accept my 1040's from the years I have no W-2's.
Health Certificates for entire family-  This is seriously irritating because the physical has to be done within 30 days of the homestudy being completed.  The kicker is we have all already had our yearly physical earlier in the year and the insurance wont pay for another one till next year, so I have to pay out of pocket. Update:  I had the doctor fill out the form based on the last physical anyway and am just submitting that, we will see if they say anything!  BUT I am not about to shell out $100 per physical unless I absolutely have to!
Pet Shot Records- Already have those :)
Drivers license and Insurance- Check
Renters Insurance- Check

Fingerprinting:  After months of waiting for my registration number to get my fingerprints done, the CW has finally sent it to me!  I will be going tomorrow!

The caseworker came out to the house three times for the interview phase, the questions were typical.

Caseworker says he will be submitting the homestudy for review by the agency on October 1st....we will see if that actually happens, fingers crossed.

Why do I do these things.....

So I got that call yesterday morning.  I told myself, "Self, do NOT sit around waiting!  Go about your day and get the massive list of things that needs to be done accomplished."  Did I listen??  NO, why would I do a silly thing like that  So I ran around the house cleaning for awhile and obssessed about whether my phone rang...it did not.

Around lunch I went and cleaned out the car and made sure the car seat was in place. (Side Note:  Cat jumped in car while I was cleaning, but I did not know it)

Finally I had to go to work cause a client was meeting me at 6:30.  I go out to the car and get in....cue loud panting.  I turn around and there is poor kitty kat...I mean it had to be 120 degrees in that car!!  I rush kitty inside to the air condition room (thats right i dont have central air!)  and he seems to be fine now.  Thank goodness I didnt lock a kid in the car all afternoon!  On another irritation level, the client never showed up!  I mean I am making a special evening appointment for you!  You cant even call and say your are not coming.  ARRRGGGHHH!

I woke up this morning, left a message with CW asking if she heard anything about the sibling group and if not when I could come sign the release to have my homestudy sent out for a boy Im interested in.  Then I told myself,  "SELF, do not sit around waiting all day!"   so far........Im not listening again :)

Thumb twiddling is getting old!!

Ok so I took over the stupid paperwork that the CW needed in order to get my home study sent out finally.......now Im just waiting. Ive been trying to clean and get some basic necessities. I got some formula and bottles, some clothes, blankets. Just a few things so Im prepared for a placement and wouldn't need to run out to the store within hours of having a child in my home! To days project is organizing the bathroom closet...currently it is shoved to the brim with lotions, shampoos, and other random things! Wish me luck :)

Finally Finished

Finished......well sort of! HomeStudy Assessor came by last week to do the final Safety Inspection and despite the fact that the molding is still not up in the kitchen....I passed! What a nightmare that Kitchen ceiling has been, my brother was still trying to get everything done minutes before the social worker was due to show up. Thankfully, she has never been here on time and runs at least 30 minutes late each visit....which normally irritates me to no end :) So now its just a waiting game until I get my license. She says she will need another week or so to get everything written up and then it will be a few weeks before her supervisor reviews and signs off on the homestudy. Then it gets sent to the state and I should receive my license. She seemed to think it would be another 2 months or so before all the paperwork was completed and the license received.
Later on in the week she called back and told me she just had a few questions she had forgotten to ask...which must mean she is working on getting it typed up :) The questions that hit me was, "When and If you adopt who would the children go to if something were to happen to you?" WOW....what a question! I hadn't even really put a lot of thought into that yet and you want me to give you an answer on the spot!! So I quickly told her my brother *Jesse* and hung up the phone. In most situations your spouse would be left behind to care for the children (hopefully), but how do you pick something like that. I mean my first instinct would be to say my mom, but is that really fair for her, shes already raised her kids and should enjoy the chance of being a grandma...only having to spoil the kids and then send them back for someone else to deal with all the behavior issues and disciplining! My brother is responsible and would be a great caregiver, but he is also young and is it fair to saddle him with all these kids. Plus, whose to say when of if I would die...I mean if i were to pass away and my child is 17 years old it would be a big difference then if I passed away and i adopted a sibling group of 5 who are all under the age of 6! And I really think I would need to get to know the kids first before I can make a decision like that, personalities clash, different parenting styles may fit better with a certain child....I don't know!!!
I guess its just more for me to think about over the next few months.
I bought a car seat yesterday after I spent the day cleaning out my car...yes I said "day"...it was that bad! I also found a 2T boys Ralph lauren Snow Suit at the thrift store for $3 that I had to buy.....you never know and it was brand new tags still on it!
I'm going to try and clean out Kitchen Cabinets today so wish me luck!

Inspiration

I've been battling a secret addiction of reading every adoption blog I can get my hands on.....I wonder if there is a Blog Reader Anonymous group I can join! All these blogs have inspired me to write my own, even if just to chronicle this journey for myself and future children.
I watched this movie last night "Gigantic" about a young single guy who had always wanted to adopt a baby from china. It led me to several strange emotions/thoughts:
1. It struck me as off that a young single guy would want to adopt.....then I realized that it is no different then my current situation. So why does that strike me as strange?
2. Why can't I find a young cute guy whose dream in life is to adopt a bunch of kiddos??...Wait I just thought that was an odd dream for a young single guy...oh well :)

At this point in my adoption roller coaster journey, I have just about finished my homestudy (back to that in a minute). I've always wanted to adopt children and for the past few years have wanted to seriously pursue it, in September the training classes finally worked with my schedule and I completed my foster to adopt training through the county. Then came the first aid/cpr classes taught by a dictator of a woman....I'm still having nightmares of her screaming "FLIP THE BABY" during infant cpr! I started the homestudy "interviews" which has really been a frustrating experience. Mostly because I am an organized "Work smarter-not harder" kind of person and clearly my social worker was not! I swear I have answered the same questions numerous times because she doesn't have it in her notes. WELL, you wouldn't have it your yellow notebook there because you brought you laptop last week and a yellow notebook the week before. Oh well I guess its just the introduction of the foster care world as I have read in so may blog and chat rooms. Anyway this past eek as supposed to be my last visit, but I didn't pass the safety audit. Right before Christmas I had a pipe burst in the bathroom and the plumbers had to take down several tiles from the kitchen ceiling to get to all the pipes. Now the ceiling tiles are purely cosmetic, what safety precautions dos the ceiling tile hold?? Anyway the ceiling tiles had to be specially ordered and wont be in for another two weeks, SW won't approve without it. Which makes no sense to me considering no one checks to make sure the fireplace is in working order but those darn ceiling tiles have danger written all over them. Anyway, after all that the SW says her goal is to get my license by April and hopefully a placement shortly after that. Right now my age range is 0-8 and I'm open to pretty much anything with a few exceptions. Given that my background is Special Education I feel like I have the skills and training to work with a variety of disabilities.

While that's all for now, I have some dogs who are dying for a game of fetch and a bite of leftover chicken enchiladas!