Some of you may know that I am an avid scrapbooker. It's a little crazy sometimes...but I try to catch important moments on camera and then put those into books. Part of it is just for the fun of being able to look back through pictures, but I also like to think that I am keeping a journal of God's faithfulness to us in good times and bad times. All of my children have a 0-12 month album in which I have written a Bible verse on each page in hopes that those will encourage, challenge, and strengthen them in days to come. After that they have a birthday album where I have pictures of their birthdays, along with stats from that year. Other than that I do family albums where I keep track of all of the other pictures.
Right now I am trying to figure out the best way to record our adoption journey. I can do some pictures, but should I just do one adoption album? I could play with some digital scrapbooks so I could assemble the book once and have one printed for each child. I'm just looking for ideas. Would a "first year with us" album be appropriate? I know that the kids will have some type of scrapbook that the foster families keep for them. Maybe I'll figure out how to integrate those into scrapbooks.
Thank you all for your feedback from my last post :-)
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
Feedback
Until we announced our decision I didn't realize how much I was hoping for a good reaction from our friends and family. Now, you may be thinking that this is pretty obvious, but I guess I didn't realize how the negative or lack-of feedback would effect me. I tend to not let others bother me so I guess I assumed that it didn't matter what others thought.
I was wrong.
When I mentioned this to a friend that is hoping to adopt in the next few years she said that announcing an adoption is like announcing a pregnancy! We want people to be happy for us! We want them to share in our excitement! People that are anticipating adoption are emotionally pregnant!
For the ones that gave us negative feedback, I'm aware of what their concerns are and why they aren't happy for us. All I can pray is that time will help them embrace this and that our actions and words will relieve their concerns.
Maybe I'm being over-sensitive with the non-feedback. It's just that there were certain places that I got NOTHING. Silence. It certainly surprised me. I guess I would rather negative than nothing. I don't mind answering questions. If you have a question or concern, please ask!
I was wrong.
When I mentioned this to a friend that is hoping to adopt in the next few years she said that announcing an adoption is like announcing a pregnancy! We want people to be happy for us! We want them to share in our excitement! People that are anticipating adoption are emotionally pregnant!
For the ones that gave us negative feedback, I'm aware of what their concerns are and why they aren't happy for us. All I can pray is that time will help them embrace this and that our actions and words will relieve their concerns.
Maybe I'm being over-sensitive with the non-feedback. It's just that there were certain places that I got NOTHING. Silence. It certainly surprised me. I guess I would rather negative than nothing. I don't mind answering questions. If you have a question or concern, please ask!
Friday, June 11, 2010
The Adventure Begins
I should probably add the word "Officially" into my title. Like I mentioned before, we have been considering adoption even before we were married. For us, it's something that we have always planned on doing. It was just never the right time. So for the past 8 years or so I have been researching, reading and asking questions. Anytime I come across a family that has adopted I asked questions. In the last year or so I have started joining adoption blogs and message boards so I could gain some insight. I talked to people that adopted infants from private adoptions, people who did international adoptions, and people that have adopted from foster care.
Private infant adoption sounds wonderful because the transition period is easy! The baby eats, sleeps and poops! Each child will still need to come to grips with their adoption at some point and in their own way. The downside for this one for us is that most birth mothers would not choose a family of four that has no infertility problems. Also, because we would be dealing with private agencies the cost can be rather high.
International adoption has always appealed to me. When I was in high school I wanted to adopt a little girl from Romania. By the time I was married and started looking into it more Romania had closed their adoption program. From what I have found, most countries will not allow us to adopt from their overfilled orphanages because we already have four children. Their are a few countries in Africa that would allow us to do adopt. We may still consider this at some point in the future.
We have chosen to adopt from foster care. Please don't confuse this with foster-adopt. We will be matched with our children before they come into our home and so the time period from when they enter our home until we go to court will be less than a year. These are children who are wards of the state and are waiting to be adopted. Many people choose to foster-adopt, but we have decided that it will be important for us to know from the beginning that those children really are ours :-) Also, by going about it this way it will enable us to homeschool all of our children instead of sending some off to public or private school. I think that this will be one thing that will greatly help our bonding as a family.
Once we decided on foster care started looking for agencies. We narrowed it down to two and met with both of them. We decided to go with the second agency that we met with. We filled out the application and our training will start in late July. I set up a baby-sitting/piano lesson swap so our kids will have friends to play with while we spend the total of 24 hours in training. After that we have the dreaded home study! While I am nervous about it I also realized that I've never met someone that failed a home study. So what's to worry about?
Anyway, I just thought I'd give you a peek into how our journey began. Now that you're up-to-date I'll be filling you in as we go along!
Private infant adoption sounds wonderful because the transition period is easy! The baby eats, sleeps and poops! Each child will still need to come to grips with their adoption at some point and in their own way. The downside for this one for us is that most birth mothers would not choose a family of four that has no infertility problems. Also, because we would be dealing with private agencies the cost can be rather high.
International adoption has always appealed to me. When I was in high school I wanted to adopt a little girl from Romania. By the time I was married and started looking into it more Romania had closed their adoption program. From what I have found, most countries will not allow us to adopt from their overfilled orphanages because we already have four children. Their are a few countries in Africa that would allow us to do adopt. We may still consider this at some point in the future.
We have chosen to adopt from foster care. Please don't confuse this with foster-adopt. We will be matched with our children before they come into our home and so the time period from when they enter our home until we go to court will be less than a year. These are children who are wards of the state and are waiting to be adopted. Many people choose to foster-adopt, but we have decided that it will be important for us to know from the beginning that those children really are ours :-) Also, by going about it this way it will enable us to homeschool all of our children instead of sending some off to public or private school. I think that this will be one thing that will greatly help our bonding as a family.
Once we decided on foster care started looking for agencies. We narrowed it down to two and met with both of them. We decided to go with the second agency that we met with. We filled out the application and our training will start in late July. I set up a baby-sitting/piano lesson swap so our kids will have friends to play with while we spend the total of 24 hours in training. After that we have the dreaded home study! While I am nervous about it I also realized that I've never met someone that failed a home study. So what's to worry about?
Anyway, I just thought I'd give you a peek into how our journey began. Now that you're up-to-date I'll be filling you in as we go along!
Announcement!
I figured that it was high time that I put this blog to use again. Due to many life changes (i.e. hubby exiting the military) I thought about just starting a new blog. But...I couldn't find any open domain names that I liked! It is my personal opinion that if you started a blog back in 2007 and only posted once that blogspot should remove your blog from their system. But that's just me...
So, the URL is incorrect but I changed the title to make it all better :-)
Before I get into my new blog name, I thought I should update you with the last appointment that Tyler had before we moved. He had a 5 hour appointment with a Pediatric Neuro-Psychologist. After all of the testing, evaluating, and filling out of many forms they have determined that Tyler has a speech and language delay. Basically, it's what we already knew. The frustration was that the appointment didn't tell us anything new. The good thing is that the appointment didn't tell us anything new. What I mean is that there isn't some extra random piece of the puzzle that we need to account for. So, we will continue to homeschool and work with Tyler to help him develop to the best of HIS abilities.
Now, on to our announcement! To make it easier, I'll just paste the email that I sent to a few people:
We have always wanted to adopt. Prior till now it was not the right time or place. We believe that we are now at the time and place to go forward with adoption. We are currently working with an agency in our state to adopt a sibling group from the foster care system.
While we haven't been matched with our children yet, we have stated that we want the oldest of the sibling group to be younger than Tyler. We hope to go for a matched adoption, but we may end up with a legal-risk adoption, which simply means that the parental rights haven't been terminated yet. We will complete our paperwork and training at the beginning of August so we should be approved by the end of October. From that point it is just a matter of time until our case worker finds the right kids for us.
We welcome any questions that you may have for us.....I'm sure you have many :-) Please know that we have been in prayer about this and have been looking/researching for many years. This is not a decision that we have taken lightly or that is being led by emotions. We know that this is not an easy road or something that can be done halfheartedly. Our commitment to our children will be the same across the board, though we know that this will require a lot more work from us, especially in the beginning.
We pray that you will see these children as part of our family as much as Tyler, Andrew, Melia and Eliana are. We ask for your love, prayer and support.
So, the URL is incorrect but I changed the title to make it all better :-)
Before I get into my new blog name, I thought I should update you with the last appointment that Tyler had before we moved. He had a 5 hour appointment with a Pediatric Neuro-Psychologist. After all of the testing, evaluating, and filling out of many forms they have determined that Tyler has a speech and language delay. Basically, it's what we already knew. The frustration was that the appointment didn't tell us anything new. The good thing is that the appointment didn't tell us anything new. What I mean is that there isn't some extra random piece of the puzzle that we need to account for. So, we will continue to homeschool and work with Tyler to help him develop to the best of HIS abilities.
Now, on to our announcement! To make it easier, I'll just paste the email that I sent to a few people:
We have always wanted to adopt. Prior till now it was not the right time or place. We believe that we are now at the time and place to go forward with adoption. We are currently working with an agency in our state to adopt a sibling group from the foster care system.
While we haven't been matched with our children yet, we have stated that we want the oldest of the sibling group to be younger than Tyler. We hope to go for a matched adoption, but we may end up with a legal-risk adoption, which simply means that the parental rights haven't been terminated yet. We will complete our paperwork and training at the beginning of August so we should be approved by the end of October. From that point it is just a matter of time until our case worker finds the right kids for us.
We welcome any questions that you may have for us.....I'm sure you have many :-) Please know that we have been in prayer about this and have been looking/researching for many years. This is not a decision that we have taken lightly or that is being led by emotions. We know that this is not an easy road or something that can be done halfheartedly. Our commitment to our children will be the same across the board, though we know that this will require a lot more work from us, especially in the beginning.
We pray that you will see these children as part of our family as much as Tyler, Andrew, Melia and Eliana are. We ask for your love, prayer and support.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Developmental Pediatrician
Today we had Tyler undergo an evaluation with a Developmental Pediatrician. This was the appointment that we wanted initially, but ended up with a Pediatric Psychologist instead. Both Ryan and I were very amazed at how much time this doctor spent with Tyler vs. the psychologist. The psychologist asked Tyler all of one question, but spent the other hour and a half talking to us. Don't get me wrong. Asking the parents about the history of the child can be very important. But without interacting with the child you can miss a lot.
Basically the Developmental Pediatrician agreed that, while there might be a slight bit of A-Typical behaviors with Tyler (i.e. scripting movies), that overall we are dealing with a speech and language piece of the puzzle. This was encouraging to hear because it validated what I had determined myself. She didn't have any real suggestions for continued care; just keep doing what we're doing. I'm not sure what we'll do when Ryan separates from the AF since I'm pretty sure that not all insurance companies will pay for speech therapy. Right now my goal is to see what his teacher is doing and work to copy that at home.
That's all for now since I'm really tired and would like to go to sleep. Is it bedtime yet?
Basically the Developmental Pediatrician agreed that, while there might be a slight bit of A-Typical behaviors with Tyler (i.e. scripting movies), that overall we are dealing with a speech and language piece of the puzzle. This was encouraging to hear because it validated what I had determined myself. She didn't have any real suggestions for continued care; just keep doing what we're doing. I'm not sure what we'll do when Ryan separates from the AF since I'm pretty sure that not all insurance companies will pay for speech therapy. Right now my goal is to see what his teacher is doing and work to copy that at home.
That's all for now since I'm really tired and would like to go to sleep. Is it bedtime yet?
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
DSM-IV
In preparation for Tyler's evaluation with a developmental pediatrician I looked up the all-knowing, always confusing, ever elusive DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders version 4). This is what caught us off-guard the most at his appointment with the pediatric psychologist and probably frustrated us the most. The psychologist didn't interact with Tyler at all but instead asked us some questions and went through a diagnostic check-list in the DSM-IV. On the way home I rethought some of my answers and wondered if I had answered correctly. I had no way of knowing....until now. I found the DSM-IV online!
After looking over the checklist I came up with 3 things that fit Tyler. You need at least 6 (out of 12) to qualify for any form of PDD. So now I am even more anxious for this second opinion!
After looking over the checklist I came up with 3 things that fit Tyler. You need at least 6 (out of 12) to qualify for any form of PDD. So now I am even more anxious for this second opinion!
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Anyone There???
It's been 3 months since my last update on Tyler. We have kept him on milk and finished the supplement program. For a while everything seemed good. His ST came back from maternity leave and was encouraged by his progress. Then, about mid-September he started to regress. More random statements. More SI behaviors. More things that I can't explain. I was discouraged, to say the least.
We discussed this with his ST and she said that she has seen at least 2-3 kids in her care get a lot of benefits from going gluten free. She also said that if we change anything to be sure that we DON'T tell her.
Last week I emailed Dianne Craft to see if she had any suggestions. She recommended putting him back on the program along with doing a six week trial gluten free diet. I had already considered this so....here we go. We have a lot of family coming in town for the next 3 weeks, so during that time he'll be taking vitamins and be back to casein free. After that he'll go gluten free.
We discussed this with his ST and she said that she has seen at least 2-3 kids in her care get a lot of benefits from going gluten free. She also said that if we change anything to be sure that we DON'T tell her.
Last week I emailed Dianne Craft to see if she had any suggestions. She recommended putting him back on the program along with doing a six week trial gluten free diet. I had already considered this so....here we go. We have a lot of family coming in town for the next 3 weeks, so during that time he'll be taking vitamins and be back to casein free. After that he'll go gluten free.
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