Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Home visit and photo book

In ND Home Studies are good for 2 years, so that saves us thousands!

But the social worker from our adoption agency wants to come for a home visit.  We've set that for February 10th.  So we're working on organizing our house and cleaning out the storage room for a future nursery.

Also, we're trying to get our pictures together for our adoption profile photo book.  They give the book to prospective birth mothers to look at.  I'm not creative when it comes to photo books at all, so we've decided to go with a pro.  Did you know that there are people and companies who do other people's photo books?  And they look great!  We're probably going with Our Chosen Child, because they're less expensive and we think that the bullet points in the book are a good way to get our personalities across.  Plus, much less wait time!

Now for some play date pics :)




Thursday, January 14, 2016

We're registering for infant adoption!

After a lot of prayers, grief, talking, and meeting with our pastor, we finally decided to go for it.

We're getting our paperwork together to register with Christian Family Life Services (CFLS) and they're getting back to us about how much if the home study we need to do (we still have a current one for Embryo Adoption). 

I've contacted the state foster care people through their web site twice and haven't heard anything back. I suppose once we get the ball rolling with CFLS I'll try contacting them through other means. 

When we met with our pastor some concerns were assuaged. I was feeling like I would be ok with not having more children, but that I want Daughter to be raised with a sibling. Pastor said that was a good thing and that it showed I wasn't being selfish. I never looked at it that way!

Today we had a "warm spell" it got into the 20s so Daughter and I went outside.  Got some cute pics!



Tomorrow it's back in the negatives. Brrrr!

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Strawberry Sherbet

I made Daughter a new quilt for her big girl bed. I laid it out on the couch to try to get some pics...

Can you tell she likes it?

The fabric line is Hello Darling by Moda, the pattern is Dissapearing Pinwheel Churn Dash, and the quilt name is Strawberry Sherbet. 

Strong Arm Quilts really did an amazing job on the long arm quilting. Each block is done differently. 


I'm very pleased with it :)

Friday, January 8, 2016

Looking into options...

My babysitter from years ago had adopted from foster care.  I knew this from FB so I messaged her to ask her questions about it.  She was very open and helpful.  She wanted me to call her and we ended up talking for about an hour.  She told me the ups and downs and things to look out for.

For instance, have you heard of Reactive Attachment Disorder?  I hadn't.  I knew that children from Russia and similar places where they are one of many in orphanages had some issues bonding (that was the reason we were looking into Korea, where they don't use orphanages), but it can also happen with foster children here.  Wow!  Scary!

She told us to make sure the terminate parental rights, we get a social/medical history... etc.

The most exciting thing might be that she said that they would use our home study that we have through our adoption agency, CFLS (she's not positive because she's in another state).

If we do foster to adopt, they would have to be TPRd (termination of parental rights) and then we foster for 90 days before we can legally adopt.  (at least in her state, which I don't think is all that different).

We could request for Daughter to remain the oldest, which is apparently normal, and would keep our potential adopted child basically an infant.  It's pretty important to keep the family "constellation", I was informed, so the social workers should understand that and be willing to work with it.

She also told me that my disability should not be an issue.  She knows of a couple who went through the foster system and the man has no arms or legs.  

I contacted the ND foster care system on Wednesday but haven't heard back yet.

Also, my awesome mother has been looking into other adoption agencies in ND.  She contacted God's Children and told them our story (I'm not yet to the point where I can talk about it without crying) and the woman with whom she spoke told her about a wheelchair bound woman who was turned down by the first birth mother, but approved by the second.

God's Children also works with more states than just MN and ND (unlike our current agency, CFLS)

So... there are a lot of options.  We are meeting with our pastor, praying fervently, and honestly I have some peace in my heart that we will have another child.

We'll probably go ahead and update our home study through CFLS for an infant adoption (right now we only have an EA home study done) and then possibly have God's Children or the state take it.  We have to find out if God's Children will allow another agencies home study.

That's a lot to think and pray about.  God grant us discernment!

Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Adoption options

When I first took my last negative home pregnancy test, I bawled. I didn't sleep well that night and then I was up at 3am researching Korean adoption. 

I felt that God might be leading us that way. We have Koreans who we are very close with and it was my first instinct at 3am.  Must be God's hand at work, right?

We contacted Korea through the agency who works with our state. We were turned down for medical reasons because of my hemi-paresis. 

That was a blow- but "in all things God works got the good of those who love Him" (Romans 8:28)

Now we're praying for guidance about whether to do domestic infant adoption or try foster to adopt. 

I'm worried that many birth mothers would feel the same as Korea. I need to cast my worries on God. 

We're taking some time to figure out what we want to do. We're going to meet with our pastor and pray a lot more. 

On another note, we've had several people volunteer to be surrogates. It is truly heartwarming to know that people love us so much. That is not a way we want to go. We don't believe that's in God's plans for building our family or that it's Biblically sound. 

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Say cheese!

She learned to smile for pictures!  We spent the weekend with her cousins who are professional "cheese!" sayers, so now she smiles and days "cheese" when asked!  Woohoo!

Another milestone, she did awesome at story time today!  She stayed in the room for all three books (a real struggle with our free-range Daughter) and then even partook in the craft!



We're blessed. :)