Home Studies, Home Projects, and Hikes

Did you think I died?

We are still alive and kicking but blogging has just fallen to the wayside lately.

The biggest update is probably the progress we’ve made in the adoption process. When I look at it on paper, we’ve only had one or two things each month but they feel bigger and more time consuming than that. I blame the mental capacity it takes to complete this process.

I’m going to write about the progression now, in probably too much detail. If you are not that interested in the adoption process, you can skip down to the pictures for a more general update. Choose your own adventure!

In April we attended a two-day Foster Parent training that opened our eyes to the realities of children in foster care and it broke our hearts. It’s so much worse than we ever could have imagined. The agency purposefully walks you through all the worst-case scenarios in order to weed out those who can’t handle it. If I didn’t know that we were starting out with infant adoption and wouldn’t be faced with most of what we learned right away, I may have walked out myself. The main thing I learned is that these kids need us to step up, even though it would be intentionally signing up for guaranteed hard things. Although we aren’t in a place to take in older children right now, I don’t know that we could ever completely rule out foster-adopt in the future, once we have more experience with children. If I could sum it up in a nutshell, I feel like we spent two days watching the human version of the Sarah McLaughlin commercial, but we couldn’t change the channel. I’ve grown up not thinking twice about rescuing animals who have been mistreated and now I realize we need to do the same for these children.

The next step was to take a child/infant CPR class. We signed up for one through the college we work for and spent a Saturday in May with a very intense EMT as an instructor. He does CPR frequently as an EMT and the reality is that you will need to do it for 15-20 minutes, especially in our more remote mountain towns where it will take the emergency responders longer to arrive at the scene. He set up mock sessions where we had to do compressions for not even that long (probably more like 5 minutes) and we were all sweaty and hot and the classroom smelled like a gym locker room. I ended up with very sore knees and bruises on my hands but I feel more confident from that class than any other CPR course I’ve ever taken.

After we were certified, we had to start the dreaded Home Study. I don’t know why this step felt the most threatening but I was so freaking nervous. It didn’t help that I googled S.A.F.E. Home Study to try and glean a better understanding of what it would entail, and all I could find was resources for those conducting the study that said, “Ask the questions in Questionnaire #2 and be prepared for this to be an emotionally charged situation”. Great.

Actually, it wasn’t so bad. I don’t know that I’d want to do it every day but it was definitely do-able and not terrible. I think the worst part was me worrying about the dogs and how they would react to her. They were actually fine but I made a bigger deal about them than was necessary and she did comment that it was a concern. Cesar Milan would tell me to chill out.

We did have to answer a lot of personal questions but it wasn’t anything I haven’t shared with anyone who will listen so it wasn’t too bad. I felt pretty drained for the next 48 hours though. Crazy how talking about yourself can do that.

We had our second interview last week with more questions and good prompts for things we should research as far as parenting goes. I think it is going well because she said we’re really boring (which is a good thing in the adoption world) and that she feels like she has a good sense of who we are. I kind of feel like our life-long goody-goody tendencies was preparation for this process. We may be buzz kills who follow the rules but gosh-darn it, we’re excellent candidates for adoption and that’s certainly going to come in handy now.

We’ll have to meet with her again before she submits a giant report to the State. This report will go on file and will be THE document that represents us in court so it’s very important and we’ll get to review it before to make sure we feel it’s an accurate representation of us.

After that? I suppose we wait for a birthmother to pick our profile.

We are so, so grateful for all the support and prayers you have showered upon us. We are now kicking it up into overdrive and would be grateful for your continued prayers. Specifically:

That we get picked!
The birthmother will want to meet us. This makes me nervous as heck. Pray that God will bless this interaction.
That the birthmother would make good choices to limit the types of difficulties we may come across with the baby. It’s scary to think of all the potential side-effects we (us and baby) could have to deal with if the birthmother makes bad choices while pregnant.
That the birthmother would utilize counseling resources and that she will have good support so she will be as ready as she can be to give the baby up once it is born. We are really scared about the possibility that she could change her mind at the last minute.
That we would find good resources to tap into so we are as prepared as we can be. We’ll have to be more intentional to ensure the baby attaches to us after birth, we’ll deal with life-long questions about where they came from, abandonment issues, etc. Remember how tough your self-discovery was through puberty? Try adding the fact that you don’t know anyone in your biological lineage to the picture. We need to know how best to answer our child’s questions in a way that reinforces how loved and wanted they are, including discussions about their birthparents.
That we would continue to trust God with the details. The second I start to think about all the little things, I begin to feel so overwhelmed that I want to put a paper bag on my head that says, “Aw hell no”. When I let it all go and just trust that God will work it all out, I only feel excited to meet this little one and that’s a much nicer place to live.
I’m finding that anything parenting-related makes me feel like I’m playing ‘house’. It’s an odd thing to know that it’s a real possibility I could become a mom almost overnight. I’m not sure how pregnant ladies feel but I imagine you gradually feel more and more motherly as you progress through your pregnancy and bond with the baby inside you, which is not the case with adoption. We had to come up with house rules and draw up an escape plan for our home study and it really felt like I was back in elementary school, pretending to be a mom to some imaginary children. Honestly, it’s weird and uncomfortable. Pray that I get over it and really own being someone’s mom for realz.

I just read the book In On It: What Adoptive Parents Want You to Know About Adoption and it was pretty spot on. I found it refreshing to know I'm not the only one who thinks and feels the way I do now that we've started this journey. If you know anyone who has or will be adopting, I recommend it. Adoption is not commonly understood; the book is a quick read and can save you from saying something that might send someone to their journal to rant about something you said. I will give you one piece of advice (which is also covered in this book): never, EVER say to an adoptive parent that adopting will cause them to get pregnant. That is so annoying and, as the book says, only 5% of people who adopt actually end up getting pregnant during/after the adoption. Our focus is now on adopting, not on getting pregnant. Adoption takes all our energy and all of our hearts, so at this point thoughts of pregnancy feel like unnecessary distractions. Soapbox speech is now over.

In other news, here are some other goings on:

House Project

Around here, summer wouldn't be summer without a house project. This time the resident rockstar (Brian) is working tirelessly to cover our ugly concrete front porch with something much more aesthetically appealing.

Before

Framing

Where we are as of this morning

Camping Echo Lake

We were able to take a weekend to go camping with my parents. We met them at Echo Lake Park, near Mt. Evans, and it was glorious to be at 10,600 ft, away from the incessant heat. We hiked almost 12 miles round-trip to see Lincoln Lake. Most of the trail is in the woods but then we reached a magical clearing that took my breath away. And also, Cotton rocked it on her longest hike to date. She's come such a long way. Stella was channeling her inner mtn goat (like she does) so she was not one to sit still for a picture. That dog lives for hiking.