Now it is waiting time

Looks like I haven't posted since January. It has been a busy time since then - partly with the adoption stuff and partly just with life. In some ways the domestic adoption process has been similar to the international process but in other ways it is very different. We had to do another auto-biography for out home study - it was a little easier the second time around but is still difficult. The training for this adoption was all reading books and online training - while we did more of a classroom setting for our international adoption. There have also been several sessions with the social worker answering lots of questions about yourself.

The biggest difference in the two processes is the "Adoption book". With domestic adoption we had to put together a book about our family with lots of pictures and information about ourselves. It also includes what they call the "Dear Birthmother" letter. Putting this together was way harder than anything we had to do for the international adoption. You are trying to write a letter to someone you don't know - but hope to have a relationship with in the future. You are trying to "sell" yourself while trying to be honest and open about everything. You are trying to feel empathy in the letter while knowing nothing about their situation. It is all a very difficult thing to do.

Anyway - that is all done now. We completed the books and I think they came out very nice. So now it is time to wait. When a birthmother wants to see a profile they send out a request. It has some information about the birthmother/father - and also says what they want from the family. We have had a few of these and sometimes it is obvious we don't fit what the birthmother wants. The birtmother may have very specific requests for siblings or pets or location. We have only been shown to two birthmoms so far - the first rejected us right away (we were kind of expecting that since they did not want any siblings) and the second is looking at us right now. I can tell you the waiting with the international was easier since it was just that - waiting. With the domestic process you have to wait for a profile request, decide if you want to be shown, then wait to hear if they are sort of interested in you or not, then wait to here if they pick you.

Well - that's enough of an update for now. Hopefully you will hear from me again sometime in the semi-near future.

We're back!

It has been almost exactly 2 1/2 years since I last posted on this blog. I have been an at home dad and I have loved (almost ) every minute of it. Victor is a great little boy and I know everyone always says it - but it is true - they grow up very fast. It seems like one second you are wondering if they are ever going to grow up - will they ever walk, will they ever talk, will they ever be out of diapers. Next thing you know they are walking, talking, little people. It is so much fun watching him learn new stuff.

So why am I all of a sudden writing a new entry in this blog. I am very excited to announce that we are currently working on number two. Actually we have been working on it for a while now. Starting last summer we investigated a few different options and decided that an international adoption might not be the best for us right now. We would have loved to go back to Guatemala but it has been closed to adoptions since we adopted Victor - with no sign of opening in the near future. We decided to look into domestic adoption. There were a lot of ideas we had about domestic adoptions and a lot of reasons we thought we didn't want to go that route.

We decided to go to a intro meeting with New Life Family Services. We knew a little about New Life because our church is a supporter of theirs and we occasional see videos t

hat they have put together. After attending the intro meeting we found out that if we were to use them to adopt they require a class on openness that is only offered once or twice a year and it was going to happen less than a week away. A little short notice but we had to attend that class if we were going to use New Life and not extend the adoption search by an extra six months. We weren't telling family what we were doing so I had to tell my parents a "small" fib in order to get them to babysit while we went to the openness seminar.

I can tell you the openness seminar made me feel a lot better about the whole open adoption thing. The seminar was just a panel of three birth-moms who shared their stories and answered questions. Nowadays most domestic adoptions are open at least partially. It can be scary thing for all involved but hearing these moms talk really made me feel that it was the right thing. I think at the time I felt it was really the right thing for the birth-mom, that they deserved it for making this decision. Since then I have done a lot of reading on the subject and now think that it is really the best thing for the child - which is what everyone should want.

Well that all happened back in May and June. Since then we have re-done a lot of what we did with our first adoption. We had to fill out a bunch of long applications and forms. We had to do another autobiography ( that is the fun one). The difference with this agency is that instead of a lot of classes you do a bunch of reading. There are four different books that both Lara and I have had to read. Some of the reading is not fun since it tells you all the stuff that can go wrong - all the problems that can happen. There are also a lot of good stories though and I am learning a lot that will h

opefully help us with issues that may or might not occur.

With New Life there is a lot of waiting. They like to keep just a small group of people at each stage. At any time they only have so many couple working though the social worker part of the process and then they only allow so many to be on the list to be seen by birth-moms. Even after you get to that last stage it could take or year ( or it may not happen at all). It could be long process. Our preliminary application was approved in June. Our full application was approved in September. Then at the end of December we were told we were moving to the next stage which is where we have to complete all our homework (mostly book reading) and we have to meet with a social worker to do our home study. This will be several meetings few week apart so it will take several months.

So it is an exciting (and terrifying) time for us. I can't speak for Lara but it is a little scary deciding to adopt again. I go to ECFE classes and hear all the other Mom's problems and I can't help but notice that 90% of the problems come when you put more than one child together. Hopefully we are up for the challenge.