I lack patience.
This is not a new flash but a statement of truth. We haven't had a kid in our home since August 17, 2013 due to the switch in states. We got an email on Monday regarding a new superkid! Our profile was sent over to the caseworker to see if we would be a good match. Our matching working told me that we wouldn't hear anything for a few days. Sigh... More Waiting!
What stinks is that this placement would require us to buy a lot of items that we don't have right now. We had them in Vermont but decided that lugging them through moving or storing these items wasn't a good idea. So I'd really like a couple of days to get everything together and get my mind set back in "diaper mode" as it's been awhile.
Last week I went to my first matching event. To be brutally honest it's not the greatest thing. There were no kids there which I was glad as they shouldn't have to see adults parading around taking to each other about what good parents they would be or social workers talking about what great kids they have. I drove to Lancaster early in the morning. After a bit of a rough start ( the hotel was without power for the night before but finally came one), there was 16-20 agencies to talk to. It was like being on mini job interviews for 2 1/2 hours. Moving from booth to booth giving out flyers about your family and talking about what you are looking for and what is a no go for your family. There were a couple of kids that would work for our family. We had our profiles sent over for these kids and now... we wait!
Also, we are still waiting for a good offer on our house in Vermont. This is quite stressful for us as by not selling this house we will not be able to buy the one we are building in Pennsylvania.
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
Sunday, June 8, 2014
We are officially licensed in state of PA!
Hi Everyone!
We signed off on our profile a week and a half ago. We got our paperwork that we are now officially foster parents in Pennsylvania. (WAHOO!) It's been a long process since Dec 2013 but well worth it.
Now comes the hard part.... the waiting. We wait to get the call for a child or children that are in need of a home. Since we are doing the foster to adopt program we are also a pre-approved adoptive home. If we ever decide to do a private adoption ( which at this point is not on the table) we could pay to have our home study given to a private agency and deal with that process.
About a month ago we did get a call and did respite care for a 10 year old boy for the weekend. It was fun but, boys are very different than girls. I missed the constant chatter boxes. We had a wonderful time even though the weather was lousy. It made us realize even more that we miss having kids in the house.
We have an bedroom all setup with a twin bed and a port-a-crib as we are looking for an ages of 0-5. While we wait for a call for a child, we are also struggling with our home in Vermont having not sold yet. It's weighing on our minds daily. We've had lots of showings, lots of great comments but nobody is making an offer. Our realtor in Vermont is great! It's very frustrating for Shilo and I as our brand new home has broken ground as well and will be ready to close in October.
So.... we wait for a call about kids and a call about our house. Have I mentioned that I'm not the worlds most patient person?? I feel like our life is a bit on hold at this moment. Luckily we've met some wonderful people through my knitting night group (because everyone in their 20-30's knits in a bar!)who are great and we've been seeing more and more of Pittsburgh.
And so we wait.....
Becky
Friday, May 2, 2014
Final Home Inspection is done!
Today was our final home inspection. We passed with flying colors. Thankfully since we've been through this we knew what to except. It was still nerve racking and made my stomach do flip flops but at least its done.
Now we wait a few weeks while they write up our home study for our review. Then it will be submitted and we will be matched up with a matching person. This person takes what we are looking for in a child and searches for children that are awaiting pre adoptive homes. These children are still in foster care and it's possible they could be in another state. Shilo and I are willing to take high risk children ( this means that these are children not yet freed for adoption) into our home. That would be very similar to what we did in VT.
In the middle of April, Shilo and I made the trek to see family and friends all over New England. We were lucky enough to be able to schedule a wonderful session with BirdieLou Photography in Northern VT to capture some of the joy and excitement we are feeling.
Now we wait a few weeks while they write up our home study for our review. Then it will be submitted and we will be matched up with a matching person. This person takes what we are looking for in a child and searches for children that are awaiting pre adoptive homes. These children are still in foster care and it's possible they could be in another state. Shilo and I are willing to take high risk children ( this means that these are children not yet freed for adoption) into our home. That would be very similar to what we did in VT.
In the middle of April, Shilo and I made the trek to see family and friends all over New England. We were lucky enough to be able to schedule a wonderful session with BirdieLou Photography in Northern VT to capture some of the joy and excitement we are feeling.
Thanks for all the kind words on facebook about our session. Shilo and I were overcome by the love and support.
Hugs!
Becky
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Paper Pregnant......
Sigh... All Shilo and I seemed to do is fill out paperwork for fostering to adopt. I thought we filled out plenty in VT, in PA it's like that x 100! Basically when you decide to foster or adopt a child be ready and willing to write down every detail of your life. These questions are not just like how was your childhood?. Basically go through every stage in your childhood and describe in detail what was good, what was bad, your relationship with your parents and then answer who, what, where, when and why about everything.
Shilo and I thought we were finished with all of our clearances ( FBI, State of PA, Allegheny County background checks), sadly i checked the wrong box online and our fingerprints went under education instead of children welfare so Shilo and I get to go do the fingerprinting again! Ohh Well...
Shilo and I did have our first in home visit with our homestudy writer. A homestudy is : a written document your caseworker writes about your family and includes basic information drawn from interviews with your family and information provided by third parties. We enjoyed meeting him in our home. We were pleased to hear that our previous foster experience would be a sought after bonus to placing a child in our home! We'll need to have one more visit then our writer can complete our homestudy!
I can't start buying anything for the children that we are waiting to come into our home since, we have no clue what age he or she may be.... I've decided to start adding to our library of children's books. I've purchased one of the our foster daughter's in VT favorite books for us to read to them. If you have not read this book.... Please do! It's great!
We got a call today regarding a respite placement ( Respite: Short term care for a child in foster care) for the weekend. Sadly, this is the weekend of our move to our next 6 month housing location. One last move before we move into our beautiful brand new home that will be built this summer. Luckily this next rental is a detached single family home that we can have both cats and our wonderful pugs at. I can't wait to go get them in VT and have them home again.
We are headed to VT 2 1/2 weeks and we are doing a bit of a surprise there for our Pre-Adoption Time. Stay tune for that fun!
Shilo and I thought we were finished with all of our clearances ( FBI, State of PA, Allegheny County background checks), sadly i checked the wrong box online and our fingerprints went under education instead of children welfare so Shilo and I get to go do the fingerprinting again! Ohh Well...
Shilo and I did have our first in home visit with our homestudy writer. A homestudy is : a written document your caseworker writes about your family and includes basic information drawn from interviews with your family and information provided by third parties. We enjoyed meeting him in our home. We were pleased to hear that our previous foster experience would be a sought after bonus to placing a child in our home! We'll need to have one more visit then our writer can complete our homestudy!
I can't start buying anything for the children that we are waiting to come into our home since, we have no clue what age he or she may be.... I've decided to start adding to our library of children's books. I've purchased one of the our foster daughter's in VT favorite books for us to read to them. If you have not read this book.... Please do! It's great!
We got a call today regarding a respite placement ( Respite: Short term care for a child in foster care) for the weekend. Sadly, this is the weekend of our move to our next 6 month housing location. One last move before we move into our beautiful brand new home that will be built this summer. Luckily this next rental is a detached single family home that we can have both cats and our wonderful pugs at. I can't wait to go get them in VT and have them home again.
We are headed to VT 2 1/2 weeks and we are doing a bit of a surprise there for our Pre-Adoption Time. Stay tune for that fun!
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Our last foster to adopt class has been completed today! Next weekend we have to be trained in Infant/Child and Adult CPR and then the waiting for our homestudy and profile to be completed begins. We've been told that it will take anywhere from 1-2 months. The homestudy consists of making sure that we live in suitable living arrangements with enough bedrooms, facilities and safety features (smoke alarms, fire extinguishers etc...). Our profile will be used to match us with available children who are looking for forever homes. We are awaiting all of our clearances (FBI, PA and county) to come in and they will be contacting our references list.
During this time we are also in the hunt for a new home to rent. Our house in Vermont is still on the market. We are hoping that it will sell soon but we can't really put our lives on hold anymore. We are tired of our place in Pittsburgh that we rented with a short term lease sight unseen (We will never do this again!). We are tired of sharing walls with neighbors. We have found a few places to might meet our qualifications but the rental market here is brutal. We are going to look at another place tomorrow with our checkbook in hand. On paper it looks great and we'll be able to have the pugs come live with us!
We started this journey in PA on Dec 13, 2013 by contacting agencies. That night I decided to write a letter to our soon to be child. I thought I would share:
Dear Child of Mine,
Today I spent much of the day calling foster and adoption agencies. You may be already born, you may be growing in your mother's belly or your may be waiting to be created. No matter what, I love you. You have been dreamt of, waited for and wished for by your dad and I for years. Never forget that you have always been wanted! There is place in my heart growing for you already. I can't wait to meet you.
Love,
Your soon to be mom!
Hugs,
Becky
During this time we are also in the hunt for a new home to rent. Our house in Vermont is still on the market. We are hoping that it will sell soon but we can't really put our lives on hold anymore. We are tired of our place in Pittsburgh that we rented with a short term lease sight unseen (We will never do this again!). We are tired of sharing walls with neighbors. We have found a few places to might meet our qualifications but the rental market here is brutal. We are going to look at another place tomorrow with our checkbook in hand. On paper it looks great and we'll be able to have the pugs come live with us!
We started this journey in PA on Dec 13, 2013 by contacting agencies. That night I decided to write a letter to our soon to be child. I thought I would share:
Dear Child of Mine,
Today I spent much of the day calling foster and adoption agencies. You may be already born, you may be growing in your mother's belly or your may be waiting to be created. No matter what, I love you. You have been dreamt of, waited for and wished for by your dad and I for years. Never forget that you have always been wanted! There is place in my heart growing for you already. I can't wait to meet you.
Love,
Your soon to be mom!
Hugs,
Becky
Monday, February 3, 2014
Welcome to our blog!
As many of you know, we are now living in the state of Pennsylvania. Shilo (my husband) and I had lived in Vermont our entire lives except for our time in college (which was only in New Hampshire). When Shilo was laid off from IBM in July of 2013 our whole world was rocked. At the time we were foster parents hoping to adopt at some point. By the Fall of 2013 we had remodeled our home in VT and placed it on the market, said goodbye to our foster children, sold most of our furniture and packed up what was left and headed to PA.
I will not make light of the pain our hearts have endured over the last 6+ months. We miss friends and family and we especially miss our 5 year old foster daughter but, with all that loss we are ready to begin our process again to have children.
Shilo and I have been together for almost 16 years and this fall we will be celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary. Impressive for us both being in our early 30's. Unfortunately, all of our love has not given us children. We've miscarried once and it was traumatic for me. After that we decided that adoption was what we wanted to do.
We want to help children locally. We have nothing against overseas adoption we just decided that since there are roughly 400,000 children in foster care that we wanted to start there. We loved being foster parents in VT. We worked with some of the best professionals in the business. Social Workers are overloaded but the good ones will sit down and build a fort with a child. Foster Parent Resources Coordinators are overloaded with children landing in there door every day and managing to find them loving foster homes to go to. We had children as young as 36 hours old and as old as 13 enter our home from 1 night to 10 months. We loved them all with all of our hearts. We treated them as our own children. With that many children coming and going we had a lot of heart ache. We would never trade a moment of time we spent with any of the kids ( even the puke and poop).
In PA, the state doesn't qualify foster parents anymore. They go through third party agencies. In Allegheny County alone there are 22 to choose from. We decided to go with Three Rivers Adoption Council as they offer a foster to adopt program. Foster to adopt is looking for children in PA that are freed for adoption or on the verge of being freed. Three Rivers Adoption Council also works with other states to find families and children.
On Saturday we attended our first class here. Most of the information we are hearing for the second time around since we've been through this in VT. It's actually nice to hear the information again as the first time, Shilo and I were overwhelmed.
So right now we are in the process of filling out paperwork, getting background checks, and physicals. To make our life more complicated, we are trying to sell our home in VT and our lease in PA runs out at the end of March. We are looking for a new home to rent as well. Never a dull moment.
We have lots of love and support from friends and family. I can't wait to meet others going through the process.
Hugs,
Becky
I will not make light of the pain our hearts have endured over the last 6+ months. We miss friends and family and we especially miss our 5 year old foster daughter but, with all that loss we are ready to begin our process again to have children.
Shilo and I have been together for almost 16 years and this fall we will be celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary. Impressive for us both being in our early 30's. Unfortunately, all of our love has not given us children. We've miscarried once and it was traumatic for me. After that we decided that adoption was what we wanted to do.
We want to help children locally. We have nothing against overseas adoption we just decided that since there are roughly 400,000 children in foster care that we wanted to start there. We loved being foster parents in VT. We worked with some of the best professionals in the business. Social Workers are overloaded but the good ones will sit down and build a fort with a child. Foster Parent Resources Coordinators are overloaded with children landing in there door every day and managing to find them loving foster homes to go to. We had children as young as 36 hours old and as old as 13 enter our home from 1 night to 10 months. We loved them all with all of our hearts. We treated them as our own children. With that many children coming and going we had a lot of heart ache. We would never trade a moment of time we spent with any of the kids ( even the puke and poop).
In PA, the state doesn't qualify foster parents anymore. They go through third party agencies. In Allegheny County alone there are 22 to choose from. We decided to go with Three Rivers Adoption Council as they offer a foster to adopt program. Foster to adopt is looking for children in PA that are freed for adoption or on the verge of being freed. Three Rivers Adoption Council also works with other states to find families and children.
On Saturday we attended our first class here. Most of the information we are hearing for the second time around since we've been through this in VT. It's actually nice to hear the information again as the first time, Shilo and I were overwhelmed.
So right now we are in the process of filling out paperwork, getting background checks, and physicals. To make our life more complicated, we are trying to sell our home in VT and our lease in PA runs out at the end of March. We are looking for a new home to rent as well. Never a dull moment.
We have lots of love and support from friends and family. I can't wait to meet others going through the process.
Hugs,
Becky
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