Our adoption journey with Jayme felt like a long one. We started in 2008 with a pre-adoption class and ended with finalization in June of 2012.
We thought our journey was over. But for over a year now Jayme has been requesting a little brother. And both of us feel that our family could be larger, Jayme’s request has started to become our own request and desire.
We started by E-Mailing our former adoption clinician and asked when the next adoption foundation class was. The next class was in February YAY! But it was all booked up, BOO! They did place us on the wait list and let us know they would call if they had an opening. It was a bummer and a reminder that this new goal for a new family member could take years to achieve.
About a week later we got an E-Mail asking if we would sit again on the post adoptive Friday night panel which speaks to very class we wanted to get into. We have done the panel now 4 times. The offer was that if we said yes they would move us off the wait list to the yes list. We jumped at the chance.
We E-Mailed our friend Suzanne and she agreed to babysit for the weekend of the training. The classes ran Friday night 6pm-9pm, Saturday 9am-6pm and Sunday 9am-6pm. It was a kinda huge favor to ask, but she said yes and we were deeply grateful.
We had a week or two of waiting and this gave us some time to talk to Jayme about what the adoption process would look like from our point of view. We wanted him to know that a little brother would not be moving in tomorrow and we wanted him to know what having a little brother would be like.
Jayme and Anthony talked about all the things that they thought would be different. About how we would have to share, and in a complete surprise to him, Jayme would not get to make up the rules for his brother to follow. Jayme is a slow processor so we know we will be having this conversation many times over the next few days/months/years before anything happens. But the funniest thing was at the end of the talk, Jayme was not sure he wanted a brother. It was very very cute to see the 7 year old logic in action.
The big day came and both of us met Suzanne at our house. She came over and after promising not to let Jayme juggle knives, we said good-bye and headed downtown to start over.
The classroom was the same, the chairs where a little better then last time and at least they still have toys on the tables for Anthony to play with. We picked the table in the back and quickly got a lashing from the teacher who we have now known for several years.
The class started and both of us kept our mouths closed and tried not to be the know it all’s in the room. But that was something that proved to be very hard when we were called to the front of the room and the adoption panel began.
We were joined by one other family (not retaking the class). The panel is asked to describe their family and get into some pretty deep emotional stuff. The class asks their questions and the panel does the best they can do to answer. The whole panel is scheduled to run for an hour, but always goes long. For us this time it was beyond weird, almost like talking to ourselves and remembering all the “fun” stuff we have to look forward to. After the panel and for the rest of the night, we were both pretty introspective.
The next day bright and early we rose and made a beeline for Starbucks. Being the cool kids that we are, we arrived 4 minutes late and had to do the walk of shame to our table. Lunch was at our old training class hunt Quiznos. While we sat a bit bored Jayme was playing with Suzanne’s grand kids having a blast. In fact on Sunday he got to go to the Children’s Museum.. our son is so spoiled.
Our class finally ended on Sunday and with it our weekend. For better or worse we are back at the start. Next step is filling out paperwork, writing up a new home study and coming up with another large check.