Archive for March, 2014

Spring Break 2014

Monday, March 31st, 2014

Spring Break came early with the arrival of Uncle Sam. Jayme was out of school for a long spring break, thanks to budget issues with the school district. So Jayme got Thursday and Friday off as well as a full week off of school. Anthony had requested time off for the whole run, but was only able to get the Thursday & Friday. So when Sam said he wanted to come up in the last minute… the timing could not have been better.

The Sunday before Jayme’s school break, the three of us drove to the airport and picked up Sam. First stop was breakfast and we headed over to Biscuits for a welcome breakfast. Second stop was to home. We were not even in the door when Jayme started to spill his planned agenda for Sam. Jayme had worked out Sam’s whole day for him and was a bit crushed when the reality that Sam was not a new toy for him.

The weather for the first half of spring break could not have been better. Sunny and in the 70’s. This meant bike riding, Basketball, and a whole host of outdoor events came into play for spring break.But on the first full weekend the whole family leaped at the chance to get outside and work on the yard.

Last year we planted some blueberries and some raspberries and after seeing a full year of rain and sun. We now knew the best planting areas and worked but a yard plan over the winter.

But first, Joshua and Sam took to the roof and cleaned the gutters and swept the winters collection of pine needles off. Followed by Joshua dusting the whole roof with Moss-B-Gone, which looked like a dusting of early spring snow.

Anthony and Jayme worked on the lawn in the back yard. Or rather the lack of a lawn. They scrapped off the moss and raked up the pine needles, tree branches, sticks and leafs. Then Jayme started to dig up all of the rocks that remained in the new lawn area. We also spent some time measuring and laying out a tree house plan for Jayme.

Anthony removed the rotting wooden railroad tie staircase and planted some new ground cover. He then moved the Raspberries to a section along the back fence, an area that gets much more sunlight and will be right next to a planned walkway to the tree house. So, you know, free snack food for the kiddos.

Clearly all of us had done too much over the weekend. Both Anthony and Joshua were sore for most of the week. Each morning both Dad’s wake early, groan in pain and then leave the still sleeping Sam and Jayme and then trudge off to work. Jayme and Sam of course, both slept in for hours.

Once the weekend ended so did the nice weather. The temperature dropped into the high 50’s and low 60’s and a steady rain fell. This cooler weather was followed by a warm rain which set our yards plantings into hyper drive. Over night the blueberries went from planted sticks to sticks with little green flags.

So with the rain, Sam and Jayme stayed indoors, went to the movies and re-watched the Lego movie, baked cookies and worked on Anthony’s homework assignment. Jayme’s school sent no spring break homework home, so Anthony invented some. Worst of all and MUCH to the hate and loathing of Jayme, all the grownups thought this was a great idea. Anthony asked Jayme to find one chapter book, read it during the week and then write a book report. At first Jayme was very upset, but Sam used the homework as a type of structure for the day. So Jayme could watch TV or play video games but then he would have to read his book for an hour. In the end Sam had Jayme reading 3 chapters a day. By the end of the week Jayme had read the whole book himself.

Mid-week, Jayme was invited to a birthday party. Funny thing was it was to the same bowling alley that Jayme’s 9th birthday party was at. Also the invite came from a kid that was invited to Jayme’s party, yet did not attend. This fact was NOT lost on Jayme. But he did not hold a grudge. The night before the party we took him to Toys R Us and he picked out a very nice wooden box art pencil/pen/chalk set for the kid. This turned out to be a great present as the birthday child was really into making little paper projects.

Jayme ended his spring break with a trip to OMSI with Uncle Sam. He even got to go into the diesel engine submarine.

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Happy Times

Monday, March 10th, 2014

Today we had a conference call with the Caseworker of of a new sibling group we are learning more about. It was such a great call!

The caseworker was very open with information and seemed happy & excited to talk with us. This is a very different experience then we just had where information was scarce and we never got that “good” “happy” vibe from any of the people we talked with. But today we have a really good feeling about this match and really feel we made the right choice last week.

The four of us (our Adoption worker, the Caseworker, Joshua & Anthony) all talked for a good 50 mins and covered a lot of ground. We can’t post anything about what was said, but  it looks like we are heading to committee again! Date and time to be determined, but the caseworker is putting in the paperwork this week.

Thankfully the house is still primed and ready. Anthony has started work on new hello books and Joshua is looking at Baby’s R Us advertisements again.

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The day we didn’t go to committee – By Anthony

Monday, March 10th, 2014

grief

Our adoption worker said it… She used the word “Grief”. When she said it, it was in the middle of a conversation and it was one of those conversations were you nod at what the other person is saying but you are really really focused on what you are going to say next. So you hear them speaking but you don’t process it all at that moment. Then later you have one of those “Oh” moments.

In our last post we found out that the youngest kido’s Doctor made a surprise request to call off the committee meeting set for today. We held off making any decisions until we could learn more. But when the foster mother failed to join us in a prearranged conference call, with the Doctor and child therapist not communicating with us as well. Our avenues of getting better information became very closed. We had to make a very heart heavy decision and we decided to not go to committee until we got better information. We did not feel that in good faith we could say to the committee that we are the best choice for these kidos when so many vaild questions about them remained.

So today is the day where we should be very nervous and watching our phone for the call. Readying our letters to our employers HR departments letting them know the moment for FMLA is here and we are out of here. It should be a day were we have a party. A day were we get to tell Jayme that he has not only the brother he has longed for, but two brothers now. But today is not that day. Today is a day of grief.

I know some of you might be wondering why we are upset. It’s not like lost anything, heck the kids were never placed. But for weeks they were placed with us, at least in our minds.

  • We had to prep their rooms
  • Order and build new a bunk bed
  • Buy new bedding
  • Figure out schedules
  • Plan for time off and arrange things with work
  • Have talks with Jayme to prep him for the upcoming transition and the realities of having brothers
  • Think about meal planning
  • Toddler proof the whole house
  • Create lists of toys and items we would need
  • Budget for new clothing and sort Jayme’s hand me downs
  • Talk to friends and family about what was about to happen
  • Go on shopping trips

We woke up thinking about them, spent the day thinking about how we will meet their needs and each night together some conversation about them would creep in.

BUT

As one possible future is closed another possible future with two other boys has opened. Their caseworker seems very interested in us as a match.  These new boys would be a great match for us and us for them. They are super cute and the match is actually the best match we have seen. Call it Gods will/plan, predestination or even fate. This new match is looking to be the one that is a perfect fit.

The quote we used in our last blog keeps coming to mind. “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” 

We do not want that to be us. So today is a day for grief. But not tomorrow!

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When the Door closes…

Wednesday, March 5th, 2014

ds

“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” – Alexander Graham Bell

So with 3 business days until we go to committee we get a E-Mail from our Adoption worker. The youngest of the two brothers  we are trying to be matched with Doctor’s send a E-Mail to the children’s caseworker asking for the committee meeting to be delayed today. The Caseworker then E-Mailed our Adoption Worker and said the committee meeting was going ahead anyways. But the Doctor felt that the youngest child has an very high need an diagnosed medical issue and was requesting the delay so that the child could be tested and evaluated.

WHAT!?!?!  No where in any of the child’s medical paperwork (that we had been shown) or in any of the conversations we have with anyone was this discussed. Nor was even the remote possibility of this medical issue discussed or disclosed. If the Doctors theory holds true it, this becomes a HUGE game changer.

We know that raising any child, there are no promises or guarantees of perfect health. But to intentionally adopt a child with this level of high needs would not only impact  how we could parent the child, but also effect how effective parents we could be to his biological brother and our current son Jayme. Again is a huge game changer and reason for thoughtful pause.

We have had no training or done any prep work to parent a child with this medical condition. With only a few days until committee the amount we can learn and training we can take is little to none. But we are also aware the longer these boys are kept from their forever family the harder their lives will become. So it just beyond  heartbreaking.

So with only days to go, we have very few options.

1. Proceed forward like nothing has happened and accept the risk of adopting a child that might have VERY high needs. Needs we are not prepared for.

2. Join with the Doctor and clearly state we will not go forward to committee without the tests being done first. The danger with this option is the committee might still happen without us and we would be left behind come Monday afternoon.

3. Walk away now and focus on other kidos.  Which is very hard to do. Emotionally we have put up walls to protect us. But for the last few weeks those walls have been falling one by one as we have prepared the house for their arrival.

Our Course of Action?

We have a conference call set for tomorrow morning with the children s foster mom. After a long talk we have decided to move forward with the conference call and get as much information as we can.

 

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Prepping the House… again

Monday, March 3rd, 2014

So with the adoption committee a week away now we spent the weekend getting the house ready. It’s not as fun as it sounds.

Since we are looking at 2 boys moving in, it meant that two bedrooms must be kitted out.

First we finished up the oldest child’s room. Jayme had a large collection of toys he wanted his new brother to have and we changed out all of the light sockets with new white ones with shiny white cover plates the capped them with toddler proof plug covers. Joshua added a motion light switch, like we have in Jayme’s room. Last weekend we installed a new bedroom ceiling fixture, a nice bright LCD bulb one. With the bunk bed we ordered finished and the new mattresses in place we made up the beds and Jayme decorated the room with toys.

For the toddlers room we needed to convert our dream computer room. So on Saturday we started the long process of moving our dream computer room to a new location.  Jayme’s computer was moved back into his room (after double checking the parental lock settings).  The other computer was moved downstairs into the formal sunken living room. We plan to add some gates and turn the sunken living room into a toddler play area/work from home location for Anthony and Joshua. We cleared off one of our IKEA billy bookcases and decided to add some doors to it. This will allow hidden storage for the sunken living room, keeping all our desk junk tucked away and out of the little ones hands.

Once the computer room was cleared we started to move in kid toys. Right now we are not sure where the toddler will sleep, our guess is we will want him to have two beds during the transition time. One in the dads room and then one in his own room. From all of the research we have done into toddler adoption the one thing they state over and over again is we may see younger behaviors come out. With Jayme at age 6 we saw that, so we might be dealing with infant behaviors and want to keep him close.

We headed to Ikea Saturday afternoon, to look at toddler beds, cribs and bookcase doors. We came home with the bookcase doors and a new dresser for the toddlers room. The Malm dressers that we had in all of our bedrooms were on close out clearance. So we grabbed one of the last ones so the toddlers dresser would match his brothers. We decided to hold off on the toddlers bed until after committee and after talking to the Foster family to get a better idea of where the little one is at.

Once the rooms were set up we then had to stage the house and do a photo shoot of each room for the hello book.  The hello book has tons of photos and introduces our family to the kidos and puts a face on our family for the committee. We even picked up a second book for the toddler. That one is all plastic and it’s soft and drool proof.

Sunday afternoon we had planned to be done and rest, but it wasn’t until after Jayme was in bed before Anthony put the final touches on the hello book and Joshua still had to stay up late  to finish the weeks laundry.

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