#2

Who actually has one of my favorite boy names, Mr. D is **2.5** months old and well... his parents had some major issues and this little guy has some MAJOR issues! Of course we were not prepared at all for his arrival, like NOT AT ALL! Hubby is out buying the baby gear. Not sure how much he weighs, he's got some casts on his legs, but he's a tiny little fellow... hubby is gonna have FUN he's NEVER had this stage before... how many times do you think he's gonna spray him do you think it'll take until he figures out how to block? And seriously, some how there was air in the gtube and spit up out his nose happened... yeah... he's a Peds nurse's dream :-)

The good and the bad of it....

The good news is unlike our old agency we have gotten a lot of emails and two calls for placements. Bad news is we currently don't have and others except Miss E, but it's progress because the reason we don't is that I turned down three, but I have said yes to two, but we didn't get them yet.

Tough Decisions...Integrity Challenged

So old agency is causing trouble. They have "given the alert" and throwing questions as to why we are trying to adopt more than 1 child at this times. Hummm... sour grapes actually from them? But if it gets back to me they are saying anything about us, I will sue the freaking pants off of them. They have been already been making EVERYTHING difficult with the transition and blocking everything that they can try, from that Red File, to all of the updated paperwork that we just completed. Some of the paperwork I paid for, and they are with holding the originals because, they don't have to release it...blah bah blah! Whatever, I'll just go get another copy of it and screw them.

So what are the alerts? One was why were we pursuing another adoption so soon? Well because we were approached by them to consider it! I only said that I was only looking for him as a placement because he was referred to be by another foster parent who was in NO WAY looking to adopt him. She just thought he'd do well with us. I didn't know that he was adoptable and despite the vendor call they put out that that was the only route they were actively pursuing at this time.

Now his "team" is playing games, so despite their invalid concerns, and only because they are partnered with the old agency, we have removed ourselves from consideration as his forever family. Now this placement everyone was so excited about, is over, and this poor kids does not get a forever home. They kept asking if we could pay our bills without money from him, and wanted to see our financials. Well, having him and not getting a reimbursement is a moot point, because you do get one, and a subsidy too after the adoption is final. But trust me we spent and spend more money on Miss E than we have gotten for her, so yeah I can see us doing the same thing for him too. Miss E's money just helps keep the electricity on in her section of the house for things like her, vent, suction, feeding pump, etc... so yeah we need some help paying for the additional expenses associated with their care, and yes his would be the same. But the extras, like toys, dvds, clothes,things for their rooms, even supplies that are not covered by her insurance, like mouthwash, toothpaste, baby wipes, etc... well yeah we have to pay for those too. I mean come on people, having a parent available 24/7 for the expected and unexpected appointments with these kiddos is a HUGE necessity to maintain a CDH home, so yeah we do need the "extra" money to subsidize the loss of income from hubby now being a stay at home parent. So if that makes our integrity suspect, than FUCK you!


Anyway, we had to make a very tough decision regarding this, but I AM NOT, going to play stupid games with them. Our plan is to maintain an organic flow. If by chance in the future one of our placements fits perfectly into our home and we just can't see them leaving, I guess we will cross the adoption bridge again if it comes along. Until then, we are focusing on Miss and the foster process. I feel very good about this new agency... so there!

Useless meeting...

Hubby attended a meeting yesterday for prospective foster placement "B" it seems that "B"'s case is not exactly what we were lead to believe, but then again the meeting had zero information in it anyway. The only good thing that came of it was we were able to get contact information for the CPS worker so that we can get more answers to our questions. Of course, you know they always say, " They sound much worse on paper than they really are." For me, personally so far the opposite was true. Of course with my only real first hand experience so far being the three girls, well... we all know how that turned out.

Anyway, his discharge date to us is supposed to be Monday, if we move ahead.

It is what it is

There is a lot going on right now behind the scenes. There just isn't time to really blog about it because, well nothing is really "happening".

We've been getting quite a few emails for placements, which are not fits for our family right now. We are still being sought after for 1 we have already said no to, but they have asked us to attend a meeting about him tomorrow anyway. Frank is going to go, listen to what they have to say, and voice our issues. We may give it a try with this placement, but honestly, I really would like to hold out for a better fit. Autism is a hard one.

Things are the same with the MR C placement status, I'm straddling the fence on the forever part. It's just hard to commit to a child prior to them moving in and saying, " yeah this is forever my child" anyway we are just doing once a week visits right now and seeing how that goes for a few weeks as we get closer to the end of the school year.

Little Miss E is doing well. We are hoping that PT will get the activity chair paperwork completed soon as well as the gait trainer. We have a lot of up coming specialist appointments starting next week that are every week now until May. There are a lot of things moving and changing with her status, we have a lot of paperwork to look for. But ultimately things are settling in, she's a handful.

How this all works...

Bio mom was supposed to be coming today for her last weekly visit, but of course she cancelled and wanted to make it for next week, but I told her no. we cant set the precedent that her visits are at her whims.



Of course the court is the one who made the choice as her rights were taken and not signed away. So technically from now until our adoption is final there is a no contact no information except with our approval. After the adoption is final we have a verbal agreement to maintain contact.

Our verbal agreement is that I'll send texts and picture updates and she can see her twice a year at her own expense. I will not be hunting her down, reminding her, or making any transportation arrangements. Additionally those visits are 3 hours long each, are preset to occur at her birthday and Christmas and NOT randomly when she sees fit to change them. The thing is, there is no binding agreement to this, so it's all because we feel that since there was not any abuse, she should be allowed to still know her. If there comes a time when things just aren't working, we will cross that bridge when we or if we have to.

Today CPS is coming to sign off on her case and move her to the adoptions team.

Severed Parental Rights

It's official our "at risk" placement has officially become a pre-adoptive placement. Her case transfers next week to a new adoptions case manager and we then just wait for the court date this summer. Probably end of July beginning of August.

A tad confused...

I mentioned to our day nurse about a set of sisters that were in care. Next thing I know I get an email from our new agency that she got a request for a staffing for them for us? What? Then she says that she's concerned about our home stability with bringing in too many children at one time.

First, I have no idea what the hell just happened because I never called anyone and secondly, it's been almost 3 months since we got Miss E and IF we go through with Mr C, because yes of course there are issues with that. It won't be until June. Ummm... How any other places get months between each placement? Not even my friend. I'm not exactly sure what she means.


Then about 30 minutes later we get another vendor call email. First I'm pleased with the agency and their available placements. Second, I'm kinda mad at what he assumes.

Half of a day....maybe less

We have been with our new agency 1/2 of the day....and we already received a vendor call placement request. Seriously! I'm not sure I will say yes to this one, but as soon as she found out we only had one placement, not even two hours later there was an email in my inbox with a prospective placement and its not even Friday.

Does it feel like loss or rejection?

Understandably some people know mr c better than we do. They talk about how he doesn't like change. How he'll need a long transition. How he has had a lot of loss in his life, combined with a lot of rejection. So what happens when you tell him you finally find the family he wants, then he gets to visit them, then they bring him back over and over again? He said to me, " I just want to get out of here, I just want a family." Does it look like rejection to him if we keep bringing him back because I am not really understanding this and don't want to cause him unneeded pain either as we move forward. I guess we will see what happens over the next few weeks and go into the CFT (child family team) meeting with a better understanding of him.

Transitions

New agency called and said that we should be transitioned next week. Hopefully we will get that bed filled with a foster placement. We are also up for license renewal and will open the third placement spot with the renewal which technically is for Mr. C .


Renew my license you say? But we just did. Well technically we only changed licenses. Yup took that long to do a simple switch and we have to start the whole process again for renewal. Wtf?

Lots of Slowgress

I can't call it progress but there was some major drama surrounding the most recent happenings around here. "C" is the new letter in our foster/adoption vocabulary, perhaps it may even come with the letter "J" but for right now the drama and how we got today's Redfile/Information meeting was hive producing stress evoking.

So a month or more ago, not sure now it all kinda runs together, well my friend was contacted about a little boy. She knew that she wasn't going to be able to take him so she suggested us. No call from our current licensing agency, a vendor call had not been placed out for him either. So I was looking at the Heart Gallery and I saw this little boy and contacted his agency. Low and behold it was the same little boy from before. So we continued to find out more and put our names into the hat for selection.

Of course we were chosen to be considered, then all forward progress hit a MAJOR wall. We are changing agency. Our current agency however still holds our adoption certificate. Our new agency doesn't do adoptions just placements, but once the child is placed you can still adopt. So a lot of back and forth and the agency that hold our certification 100% refused to attend the staffing. Why should they when they don't get credit for the placement? Or funding... ok I guess I can see that... but where does that leave us? More importantly where does that leave this little boy???

Advocating for children starts in full swing and we aren't even his parents yet. But I had to climb the ladder up the State's Official Child Protective Agency to get this done. Yes I did contact his DDD and CPS supervisors and bypass the adoption recruiter and both of our agencies to do this. But do this I did.

I sent them my license, I sent them my homestudy, I sent them my adoption certificate, and today we are going to present ourselves infront of a panel selection committee to sell why we think we'd be the best placement for "C"

Wish us luck! But dang, since they saw how hard I fought just to get this meeting, well that has got to tell them something.