So Monday (January 24th 2010) we got an E-Mail from our adoption clinician. She had heard back from the caseworker for the kiddo who we did a conference call with 2 weeks ago. She told us that the kiddo s caseworker had decided to send us to committee. She also mentioned that at this point the caseworker had yetto identify any other families to send to committee Also; no date has been set for the committee meeting, so we don’t know if this will be weeks or months of waiting.
We have only gone to committee once before. Some families go multiple times before they are matched to a child. Just because you’re sent to committee doesn’t mean that you’re going to get a placement.
Because we don’t know how long we will have before the committee meeting, we have decided to spend this time prepping for a hopeful placement. So we have started to improve our knowledge base, this time learning more on how to directly meet the needs of this particular kiddo better. This is turning out to be a good thing and a bad thing.
On the good side we have time to go back through the house and re-kid proof it. We also are going to upgrade our child proofing of the house to have High Focus, something the kiddo’s therapist mentioned about be very helpful. We are still looking into this and will post as we learn more. We have also started reading a new book, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today’s parents, which was also recommended by the kiddo’s therapist. Also, based off another recommendation by the therapist, we have signed up for a 3 day workshop here in Portland to get a better understanding of this kiddo s needs.
On the “bad” side we have found ourselves becoming, perhaps, a bit too optimistic. In conversation the generic term “kiddo” has slowly and unconsciously been replaced with the kiddo’s real name (something we are fighting). When arranging for our two upcoming family trips in May, more and more of the planning seems to be centered around this child’s special needs, you know, just in case. We have even started to identify which children in the neighborhood OUR kiddo will not be playing with and which ones look safe.
All of this is great news if we are selected in committee, but probably not the best emotional thing for us if we are not. Right now, we are trying to find that proper balance of excitement, necessary planning and the elusive emotionally distant safe point.
We know that this kiddo might not be the one, but it is very hard not to hope and dream.