what a difference a year makes

Because of the duration from the time we started on our adoption journey to now, there have been a lot changes. We are just getting to the waiting part that can realistically take over a year, yet we've already been working on things for over a year. We'll be "meeting" with one of the adoption coordinators from our agency (having a phone call with) to talk about how and where we want networked. I've talked with our coordinator briefly once and she started throwing stuff out there like we'd already heard it. What I don't think she realized is how much their programs have changed since we were introduced to them. Three big changes:

1. The Agency restructured. People let go and roles changed for some who remain. For us, this has translated into us introducing ourselves over and over again.

2. The cost has gone up. Our agency's fee has increased as has the agencies they network with. Not a small change either; we are talking $4-9k. Nobody mentioned this to us, so when I requested a list of the agencies that they network with and their placement fees it is possible I fell out of my chair. At work. I guess that's what I get for checking my personal email at work. :o) Lesson learned.

3. Average waiting time....double to TRIPLED.

So, a lot has changed, right?

We really weren't prepared for any of this, but we've talked about it all and are doing our best to take it in stride. Knowing that in the grand scheme, these are minor details that we can adapt to accomodate fairly readily. Doesn't everything in life cost more and take longer?

To learn more about the other agencies that ours works with I decided to look them up online and also call them myself and ask a few questions. I had one of the most interesting conversations with an agency in Georgia. While one of the coordinators was explaining their programs and how the volume of placements have changed over the last year I was sad to hear that their wait is averaging 18-20 months. They are seeing more adoptive parents than babies. They've also seen such a shift in their program that although our agency does network with them they won't look at our profile until those parents who've been waiting over a year are placed. There were 30 couples in that category. There was one caveat to this - if we were black. The only need for adoptive parents was for black couples open to a not 100% black baby. Listening to a woman with a thick southern accent asking someone (me) on the phone with no (or northwestern?) accent whether I happened to be black made me smile.

Thinking about the statistics I posted about before made this conversation even more interesting. All of the proportions just seem off. I think to look at the race of babies who are being placed is necessary to understand how long it is taking and what races adoptive parents are "open to" or "willing" to be placed with to understand the whole dynamics of race in adoption.

It is all just so interesting to me...

Race in Adoption

A topic that frequently comes up about our adoption is race. It is a topic that elicits a lot of questions and I often feel like I have to explain why Jake and I are in a "transracial" program with our adoption agency. A lot of people have a lot of VERY strong opinions about race in adoption. So much so that I contemplated naming this post something different so as not to attract undesired attention from people who seek out adoption blogs for the sole purpose of bashing them and leaving horrible comments. Although this topic can become extremely complicated, I believe that it doesn't need to be.

When I look back at much of my childhood there was a lot of simplicity in it. Believe in God and have faith. Live by the 10 commandments. Love deeply. Don't be hurtful - whether it be intentional or not. Be thoughtful enough to consider how others might feel when expressing your opinion and thoughts. Everyone is equal. Everyone is entitled to their opinions. Having an opinion doesn't make you right. Be kind. Live life with grace. Be humble, yet confident in who you are because you are valuable. Give to others who have less than you. Appreciate the little things. I could go on and on, but there is simplicity in all of these things.

This is going to be my (our) approach to having a transracial family. Yes, there are things that will be different. We do not, however, need to make it complicated.

While in our training our adoption agency requires there was a lot of time spent on race in adoption. We ended up having the only black man in the entire class sitting next to us with his wife who is white. Super amazing couple. Jermaine and Jessica and Jake and I clicked immediately and would have been great friends had we stayed in Idaho. Jermaine works in law enforcement and does a lot of work with keeping college athletes on the straight and narrow. He is also a motivational speaker. Our agency asked him to talk a little bit about raising his two boys (Jessica was his second wife and I can't remember his first wife's race, so maybe mixed kiddos maybe not) in a mostly white community. Everything he spoke of - and he called it out later when just talking to Jake and me - didn't have to do with race. He spoke a lot about awareness and building an inner confidence in your child to tackle whatever may come their way. Race issues weren't the only issues his sons were going to encounter in their lives an he wanted to prepare them for that. Up until talking with Jermaine and Jessica the things they were saying and the way they were presenting them in class was making us feel like we had NO business adopting a child of a different race. Of course, me being a bit outspoken at times, said this to Jermaine. He laughed and was very reassuring. They were just trying to make the point that race can't be ignored. They could have just said that! :o)

So, what triggered this post about race? Facebook. Buried in my news feed (I swear when you are adopting you have an eagle eye for all things adoption) I saw a reference to the below blog. I think this lady says what a lot of us think. We judge. Maybe we shouldn't.

http://www.rageagainsttheminivan.com/2012/06/why-are-so-many-celebrities-adopting.html

This blogger also includes some very thought provoking statistics (pulled from a sample of adoptive parent profiles that might not be a valid subset). I don't know how accurate they are. I'm going to try to research a bit more and I'll also share in an upcoming post my conversation with an agency in Georgia. It was all about race and eye opening.

Until next time!

P.s. The spellcheck is telling me transracial isn't a word...

Last Couple of Weeks

Here is a list of 10 things I've done in the past couple of weeks...

1. Sew new pillows for the couch

2. Hang a wall full of pictures in the living room

3. Practice playing softball
4. Shop for a bicycle
5. Go to a butterfly exhibit

6. Steam clean the carpets
7. Take the couch apart to wash the covers and make it look new again
8. Dinner at friends' house
9. Have friends over for dinner
10. Go for a few trail runs

Here is what I haven't done in the past couple of weeks...

Our profile.

Ugh!!!!!

Next Steps

On Friday we were excited to see an email that said:

Your home study has been finalized and signed off on here in the Boise Office, you are ready for the next steps in your adoption journey, entering your program of choice.

That means we need to really get going on putting our profile together. This is the please-pick-us book of pictures and stories about us and the letters we write to our future birthmomma.

As I've mentioned before, this has been so hard to make headway on! I literally have two pages done. And by done I mean I only make a few changes to them each time I look at them. :o) I think the hard thing is making sure it is "us" and that our personalities and who we are show through. There are a few pages of instructions and required/recommended content that we need to include, but what I really wanted to start with was our relationship...no narrative, just pictures and what 12 pictures looks like; one for each year we've been together.

Jake and I have more pages to create and it is the perfect mother's day project to work on together!

xoxo

adoption is the new pregnant

Love this!

So thankful for my loving and supportive friends and family...

Lonesome Adoption?

I have to say that our adoption journey has been lonely at times. I say that not knowing if "lonely" is really the right word to describe it. I've never excelled at sharing my feelings so I think that contributes to the situation. I, of course, have the hubbs next to me every step of the way, but there is just still something that feels lonely. I know there are others out there who have experienced the same things and have been googling various blogs looking...looking for something/someone to connect with. I don't know if it is because there is so much about adoption that so many don't know (including me, I'm definitely a newbie) that makes me not know how to talk about it.

Today, there were two examples of this odd feeling where I would have loved to have someone to relate to. First, I was super excited to get a phone call from our Idaho caseworker asking a few confirmatory questions for our home study. She is wrapping up the last of the details of the paperwork and expects the home study to be reviewed, revised, and approved by the end of the week (yay!!!!). This phone call was seriously the highlight of my day. As a couple of my coworkers asked about it, they were trying to be enthusiastic for me, but I think they were wondering what I was so excited about. :) I'm sure from their perspective we've been working on this whole home study thing for months and thought the last home visit we had meant we were done. Well, it has been months....but we are still working on it.

After the phone call started to sink in and I started to realize what it means for the home study to be complete I went into panic planning mode. My first thought was what if we got another phone call right away with a baby waiting for us to pick them up. Next thought, I need to check our bank account. Seriously. Happy baby thoughts quickly dissolved into 'how are we going to pay for this?' thoughts. One thing I talk about less than my feelings is talking about money. Of course it will all work out, but that lonely isolated feeling crept in again. Who can we talk to this about? Do we ask our caseworker what other couples do, how they feel going through what we are going through?

Anywho (remember saying that like 10 years ago, old school I know) - now that is off of my chest, I feel better. Thank you blog for listening.

Next dilemma...what font to use in our profile...

I'm not joking!

I'm tentatively liking Magneto.

Except, I don't l*o*v*e how the numbers look as much as I like how letters look.

Stay tuned... 

5 Years 5 Random Acts of Kindness

So what do you do five years later...five years after getting the single most profound phone call of your life? Five years after learning what true agony is. For most, war is a distant and foreign thing. Not for me. War came into my home and changed my life forever.

I've spent the month of April this year similarly to the past few years. The change you feel in the air that shows a hint of spring changes something inside me. I sleep less. Significantly less; we are talking maybe a few hours a night. I find myself lost in thought often and contemplating things both big and small. I think about my entire childhood. I think about my family, my future children. I think about my faith. I think about my brother.

April 23rd comes around every year as do the other Dale-days throughout the year. There are a lot of them. This I am thankful for. I, as does my entire family, think about my brother every single day. It is a blessing to have as many memories as we do. Dale-days bring about some memories that have gotten fuzzy and an opportunity to talk about them with loved ones.

This year one thing that is different is the focus on starting our family. Hours have been spent combing through pictures and writing and re-writing words to our future birthmomma. There are times I am completely overwhelmed with emotion as I think about the uncle my children will never know; the fun they would have had and the lessons they would have learned from my only brother. This is what I've been contemplating a lot about this month.

Dale made people smile.

So, this is where I got my idea. I want to make people smile and I want to do it for him.

From this year forward I want to spend April 23rd focusing on making people smile. For every year that passes I want to do that many random acts of kindness.

This year is 5 years so 5 random acts of kindness were incorporated into my day. I didn't really have a plan going into today, so I just went with it as things came to mind.

1. I bought a couple of people a cup of coffee. After snagging an iced tea at a local drive-thru I left extra money and instructions with the barista to use the money towards the next few coffee orders she got. As I drove away, she was smiling.
2. Jake and I met up for a beer and on my way to the table I stopped at the bar. I left money and instruction to cover the next customer's happy hour and a relatively large tip for the waitress. As I was explaining my idea to the waitress, she was smiling...and she was really smiling as she told her next customer that her order was taken care of. And for the customer, she was smiling.
3. I gave away some jeans (that I love, but will probably never fit into again) to some teenagers who happen to love clothes...especially free ones. As one of the teens was running out the door, she was smiling.
4. I made cookies and took them to a neighbor I hadn't met yet. After sitting around and chatting and getting to know each other a bit, she was smiling.
5. I ran out of time today, but I plan on taking some more of the cookies I made, some tea, a handmade card and an envelope with postage to another neighbor. I want to share a little treat with her to have while writing a note to a friend and sending it to them in the mail. I'm pretty sure this will make her smile.

Today was still a hard day and tears were shed, but smiles were shared today too. The war continues, but today I did my best to show some kindness on behalf of and in memory of my brother.

Love you little brother. Semper fi.