Tuck Turns Five.

           Five years ago today a little boy was born as the 4th child of a drug addict. She was unable to care for the children she already had & he was left behind at the hospital. It took more than 2 years & thousands of prayers before he would come home as our son & we would know God's plan for him. I couldn't be more proud to be his Mommy & walk beside him in his life. He amazes me everyday with his ability to overcome the life he was born into & grow into the strong, smart, free spirit he is today. So to the little boy that made all of MY childhood dreams come true, Happy Birthday Tuck!!

We're moving right along....

          Yesterday we completed our training that was required in order to move on to Homestudy. We had Praesidium Risk Prevention in the morning & CPR & 1st Aid in the afternoon. Praesidium Risk Prevention is a training program that helps Foster & Adoptive parents know what to look for in order to lower the risk of abuse for your children. The class goes over typical behaviors of predators & how they prey on children. The class also covers steps to take to lower risks of accusations from your foster or adoptive children. We took lunch & after that we did our CPR & 1st Aid certification. We are now officially done with all of our training & are now waiting to move on to Homestudy. Because our agency has so many families coming through training their Homestudy workers are behind. We are expecting to wait a couple of weeks before we start that next step.

Mini PRIDE & training continues......

        Once our file was complete we still have to complete training. Since it had been over a year since our placement & we didn't complete the 30 hours a year required to maintain our license we had to start completely over. Our training consists of PRIDE training, which is basically your core classes. We completed our PRIDE training this past week & now have 3 more classes to complete before we move to homestudy. PRIDE training goes over the basic things to expect once you receive your placement. They cover discipline, sexual abuse signs & symptoms, behavior management, grief, SIDS, shaken baby syndrome and those types of basic topics. We still have to complete a 2 hour course on psychotropic medications which we will do Wednesday evening, Praesedium risk prevention (I have no idea what this is) which we will do Saturday morning, we have lunch, then we will complete CPR & 1st Aid. Once your training is complete you then move on to a homestudy worker. Our agency is currently a little behind, so we may have to wait 2-3 weeks before our homestudy interviews.

The File is complete..............

     An update on the process. Once we got the call about our application, there are still a few things to clear up before our file is complete to move forward. We have been busy the last month or so getting a few loose ends tied up & our son had surgery as well so things have been moving slowly. We both had to under go our FBI fingerprint & background checks. Our agency required us to pay this out of pocket, if your homestudy is approved they will then reimburse us the cost, about $48 each. We also had to do online medical consent training, get our pets shot records, as well as statements of health. The statements of health had to be written by our doctor. They basically say that we are healthy & able to raise a child. Our agency does not reimburse for this cost, so it is out of pocket. Our file is now complete to move forward to training. We are scheduled for our PRIDE training next month, along with 3 secondary training classes, we should be finished & heading into Homestudy by August. We have also been organizing the house to fit another child. The homestudy is an important time to prove your home is ready & able to welcome a child. We realized they want to see a child's room decorated and ready to go. With our last adoption we held out on decorating & buying things as we didn't know the sex or age of the child. I got advice from another Mommy a little further along in the process & she said we needed to decorate ASAP. Within a month of decorating the room (in a neutral theme) we got matched. I have also updated the blog format to show better on mobile devices. As I am new at this it took me a bit to figure that out. Oh, the pic above is our son from Halloween. His Daddy made this amazing costume & it was a crowd favorite!

    -Crystal

The Race Is On..............

            We got a call today regarding our new adoption application. We will be working with the same recruiter as our last adoption. She called today to let us know she got our information & to start the ball rolling. From this point she will go ahead & submit our background checks, schedule us for FBI fingerprinting & send out our reference checks. Generally you complete your PRIDE training first, which is basically your core class(es). After PRIDE training there are still a few misc. classes left to complete before moving on to your home study. We completed our PRIDE training last time by doing a class that was all day Thursday, Friday & Saturday. We will be doing the same classes this time as well. The office location we will be doing our PRIDE classes at only offers them every other month. The next class starts this month on the 19th & is too soon for us to take off for. We will be completing our PRIDE classes the next time they are offered in July. She did agree to go ahead & let us start completing the misc. classes out of order since we can apparently be trusted to complete the training (as we have one successful adoption & know what to expect). I would assume this order is because many people do NOT make it through PRIDE training for various reasons & the agency does not want to waste time or resource training people who can't complete the PRIDE. Hopefully we have some more news pretty soon!
      
         -Crystal

The First Step is The Hardest

    Today we took the first step in our new adoption & put our application in the mail. If you have never done this, it consists of a 15 page questionnaire about everything from your religious beliefs to your child care plans. We also had to gather countless references (thank you everyone who volunteered & those of you that didn't but we put you down anyway). You also have to include photos of every room in your home & yards, along with pets & everyone living in the home. Also required were 2 most recent pay stubs, proof of auto insurance, birth certificates, FBI background releases, a floor plan of our home & a financial form. Now this is where many people get nervous! I would just like to say this is not where they determine if you are "rich" enough to adopt a child. What they basically want to know is if you have stability & are able to make ends meet before adopting or fostering. They do not want to have people that can't pay their bills volunteer to adopt or foster just for a paycheck, Yes people do this. From my memory it should take a couple of weeks before the recruiter pounces on us like a lion after a gazelle. For recruiters every new family is a "foster" family. Due to the high number of children in foster care & the low numbers of volunteers, they need foster families BAD. This is a decision every family must make for themselves. We decided early on this wasn't for us with our first placement. We just didn't think we could handle finally getting the family we wanted & living with the risk that we may not get to keep that child forever. With this adoption we talked about it quite a bit but ultimately decided that again, it wasn't right. Our son was ripped away from the only family he ever knew at 2 years old. I think this builds a sense of dis-trust in him that we have spent YEARS rebuilding. To bring in a sibling for him to love (he asks daily for a sister), then to have to rip that child away isn't an option for us. So on one hand this could be a faster placement for us since we've been told your second adoption always goes way faster because you have proved you can do it. On the other hand, since we are wanting a little girl this time we may be waiting a bit longer. It seems there are much fewer girls available than boys. So I will post an update once we move on to the next step!

          -Crystal

This is the chaos I mean..........

   This post is short. This afternoon I got a text from my mother who was at my house, this is what it said "I just found a dried out quesadilla hanging from the clothes in the spare room"........Enough Said.