First class done!

Part of the reason for blogging about our journey is to share the foster care/ adoption process with folks who are interested in pursuing this for themselves.  Part of the reason is to have a written account of our own to look back and see. Part of the reason for blogging is to share with our friends and family near and far what is going on! 

Monday night was the Miriam's Heart get together.
Tuesday night was our first PRIDE class where a state worker actually came to our home and gave us our own personal class.  He said that he rarely ever does personal classes for people but our worker pulled some strings so that we could do the JULY set of classes instead of August. 

The Miriam's Heart  get together was great!  There were representatives from different agencies there as well as from the state.  There were a handful of parents there who are Foster Parents already.  Some whom have adopted through the state... some whom have fostered for years and the children have been reunited with their biological family.  There were wonderful discussions and wonderful questions asked.  We learned a lot. :)

Our first PRIDE class went well!

PRIDE classes-
Parent Resources for Information Development and Education

We received our PRIDE book that we have to bring to the 9 required classes.  The book is over 400  pages long.... whoa......   my favorite section is the section on "Hair and Skin care for children of African decent."   This is the first section I will read! We have no idea what race baby/children we will have some day.  Time to learn about it all!  More serious topics in the book are "Understanding Child Traumatic Stress" and "Behavioral problems of Children who have been Sexually Abused". We have no idea the amount or type of abuse/neglect that the children will have who come to us.  That is the main reason for these classes.. to prepare us for the journey ahead.

We found out that there will be NUMEROUS state workers in our life.   We will have a Resource worker and the child will have a different resource worker.  There will be a nurse that comes to do monthly visits to make sure we are taking care of the child's medical needs (taking to dr., getting proper vaccinations etc).  There will be a Licensing officer who comes prior to us being licensed to make sure our home is safe.  They will check for the obvious things... making sure outlets are covered, baby gates for the stairs, etc.  They will also check for more obscure things like the temperature of our water.  There will be a lawyer in our life too.

The Foster Parent license is for 3 years and during that time we have to do about 20 hours of extra classes.  Apparently the state provides these classes for you so we will cross that bridge later.

Our hope is that we can adopt so we will be put on a list as potential Adoptive parents.  The goal of the state is always reunification.. keeping families intact.. and that makes total sense... but we know we don't live in an ideal world so we are open to adopting a child/children who's parents cannot raise them for whatever reason. 

My back went out over the weekend... I had never experienced such pain before....
I was scared... and freaked out for a good 24 hours...  At certain points I couldn't move at all , the pain was so intense.  I was mad... scared.... sad  as my brain went to the worse possible scenarios.  What if my back never gets better? How will I be able to take care of children if I am permanently like this? People from the state are coming to our house this week, how will I get the house ready?  I was in a pitty party for a bit.. Feeling sorry for myself.. yada yada...   Monday morning I woke up and I was like, Heck No!  I am going to push through this!  My broke back is not gonna stop me!  If the hubs has to carry me into the Adoption meeting, I am going!  If I have to hobble in like a 90 year old, I am going!  I went to the Dr., got some muscle relaxers and anti inflammatory meds and rested up.  I hobbled into the meeting but during the meeting I didn't have any pain!  Tuesday morning I still could barely get out of bed, but slowly throughout the day I tidied up things, pushed through the pain and we did the class anyway.  I spoke to my #1 fan today, and she said, 'maybe you are going to go through painful times, physically, emotionally, until you get a child- just like women who are pregnant do."   "Maybe God is going to use the painful times to teach you stuff to prepare you for parenthood?"   yup... that makes sense!   Maybe that won't make sense to everybody, but that makes sense to me.     So we go forward!   Trusting God the whole way...

Next step is to be officially hooked up with our Resource worker from the state.  Then more paperwork.. paperwork.. paperwork and 8 more classes.... fingerprinting and baby proofing!