Paperwork, Picnic, and a Surprise

Paperwork

It's been quite a while since our last post. A lot has happened in the past few months. The most important news is that we finished all of our paperwork about a month ago. Everything is now in the hands of our social worker. She is putting together our adoption package in preparation for our home study. During the home study she'll come visit the house and interview one of our neighbors that we used as a reference. After that, the package is complete and get's sent to Korea. Unfortunately we'll still have a long wait, but it's a big relief to know that we've taken a big step forward.

...Picnic

Today our adoption agency held their annual "Catholic Charities Families' Annual Picnic". I would guess that there were around 100 families in attendance. The picnic was in Severna Park, MD at the Kinder Farm Park. It's a beautiful county park that has a large playground, trails, fishing, and a farm supported by 4H that has chickens, goats, pigs, cows, and sheep. Everybody met at a couple of the pavilions for a picnic lunch. The majority of the families have already adopted children. Previously we had met a few couples that are still working through the adoption process like us, so we decided to eat lunch with them. We also met a couple that got their adoption referral about 2 months ago. They expect to be traveling to Korea in about a month to pick up their son. They had several pictures of him, including one with his foster mother. You could see how excited they were to be going to pickup their son in the near future.

It was great being around so many adoptive families. There were adopted children spanning ages from infant all the way to young adult. We couldn't help but smile every time we saw a beautiful adopted child. In many ways all of the adoptive families make you feel like you're a part of one big family. Everybody has either been through or is going through the adoption process. It's like a huge support network. Everybody is always willing to listen to you, answer your questions, or just provide moral support.

...and a Surprise

As the end of the picnic neared, we were in for a little surprise...they were raffling off an item. When we arrived at the picnic, we were given two tickets. We didn't think much about it at the time. After everybody had finished their lunch, they decided to hold the raffle. They drew the first ticket, but nobody was there to claim the prize. The next number was called, and to our surprise, it was one of our tickets. We had no idea what the prize would be. I walked up to the front and was presented with a beautiful cross-stiched baby blanket.

I was speechless. As I brought it back to Laura and showed it to her, I could see tears come to her eyes. It was such a special gift. This is the first gift for our future child. I know that it will always hold a special place in our hearts and will be part of a great story that we'll share with him.

Continued Progress

We're continuing to make very good progress on our adoption paperwork and are getting close to the end. Almost two weeks ago, we went to our first PIPS (Parents in Progress) meeting. PIPS is a support group that consists of the families that are in the process of adopting but haven't completed the adoption. The group meets once a month to socialize and receive information about adoption and parenting. Also, parents that have just completed their adoption come back with their child to discuss how they and their child are adjusting. At this meeting, there was a girl from Korea, a boy from Korea, a boy from the Philippines, and two boys from Ethiopia (adopted together). It was very interesting hearing about their experiences. The most common challenge for the parents was dealing with sleeping issues for both them and their child.

After meeting the new adoptees, we were supposed to have a speaker talk to us about dental issues with children. Unfortunately she got her schedule mixed up and missed the meeting. On the plus side, we got to spend more time talking to the adoptive families. At the end of the meeting, we talked with our social worker and gave her the first batch of paperwork so she could start working on it.

Since the meeting, we've been busy trying to get the rest of the paperwork completed. Last week we had a fire inspection at the house and completed our medical exams. Next week we have somebody from the health department visit the house to make sure we have a safe and healthy environment for raising a child. Today we're trying to get the house looking great to ensure we have a smooth inspection. As you can see, there many steps that we have to take to become adoptive parents, but we know it's all worth it.

We have just a couple more items to complete before the home study (I'll explain that in a future blog). After that, we'll begin the long wait for the paperwork to go through the system and get matched with a child. If we're fortunate, we'll know who we're adopting about this time next year and travel to get him next summer.

Adoption Reminders Everywhere

As we started on our adoption journey, we had a good idea that there would be many things that constantly reminded us of adoption. Whether we're out at a local mall, reading the newspaper, or watching t.v., we're see many things that make us think about our adoption journey. For example, Laura got me a puzzle-a-day desk calendar. A few weeks ago, the puzzle showed the word "Korea", with each of the letters written in a very fancy way. The letters were so fancy that it wasn't readily apparent that the word was Korea. What made the puzzle even more interesting was that when you flipped the word upside down, it spelled a different word. In this case, the word was "America". Whether you believe that it was a coincidence or a sign from God, it was pretty amazing to see something that reminded us of our adoption, but in a place where we least expected it.

Today was another day where a reminder came out of left field. We were watching The Amazing Race and a commercial for California milk came on. Laura was chatting on FaceBook and immediately her attention was drawn to the television. The commercial was of a cow from Korea that wants to travel to California. The cow's name is Soo. Most of the commercial is in Korean, with subtitles in English. We really enjoyed the commercial and found it very cute (and funny). If you want to see it, check it out at the following web site: http://www.realcaliforniamilk.com/content/soo-0.

It's amazing to see so many reminders of our adoption and Korea. Who knows where the next reminder will come from.

Reinvigorated

Sometimes it doesn't take much to get reinvigorated with something that's important in your life..today was one of those days for us.

This afternoon we had a chance to spend a little time with our friends in the Southern Maryland Adoptive Family Network. We were first introduced to them last fall. Laura was talking to one of her customers about adoption and that's how we found out about the group. They invited us to a picnic in the early fall. We had a great time meeting everybody. Now that the holidays have passed and people's lives are back to a more normal pace, they decided to throw a potluck lunch to get everybody back together.

We all met at a church in La Plata and spent a couple of hours eating, socializing, and watching all of the children have fun playing together. It was a great time. Every time we see so many different adoptive families with children adopted both domestically and from various parts of the world, we get reinvigorated. It makes us want to work harder and move faster so that we'll be able to adopt our child as soon as possible.

Well, I'm cutting this post short. Since we're reinvigorated, it's time to go work on our paperwork. :-)

Getting back on the adoption wagon

If you've been following this blog, you know that there hasn't been an update in two long months. Family and friends have been excited to hear about our progress with the adoption. The bad news is that over the last two months, very little has happened. We fell off the wagon (so to speak). Laura and I found ourselves overwhelmed with work and the holidays, so our progress with the paperwork came to a halt. The good news is that our life has gone back to normal (as normal as our lives are) and we're redoubling our efforts to finish our paperwork so that we can get one step closer to adopting our child. Now we're back on the adoption wagon. As we work through the remainder of the paperwork, I'll provide more regular updates. But for now, I'll recap the second day of our adoption training from last November (as promised in the last blog update).

On the second day of our adoption training, our original group split into two so that all of the people adopting internationally were together. We started by talking about how the focus on adoption differs between the parent and adopted child. In the beginning of the adoption process, the parents are extremely focused on the adoption. As you bond with your child, your thoughts of adoption start to diminish. It's always there in the back of your mind...as you teach your child about their heritage, celebrate holidays from their country of birth, etc....but first and foremost you are a parent. For the adopted child, the focus on adoption is just the opposite. In our case, our child will be young so at first he won't know he's adopted. Over time, as we explain adoption to him and teach him about his place of birth, he will become more and more inquisitive. One way that our adoption agency helps with this is by offering homeland tours. When the child is ready, the family can visit his birth country. The whole family has a chance to experience the culture first hand and they may even be able to learn more about the child's adoption story.

The adoption story is basically the information about the circumstances of the child's adoption. It may include information about the child's birth parents, place of birth, or other personal facts. Some of this information we may get when we first get matched with our child. Other pieces of information may be discovered at a later date. The important thing is that in the end, it's all personal information that belongs to our child. As parents, we will share this information with our child when we feel he is ready to hear about it, but we will not share this information with anybody else. We feel very strongly that the adoption story is our child's story to share with others, not ours.

The next portion of our training covered health issues. We learned about mongolian blue spots which is a collection of pigmentation at certain areas of the body. It normally happens in infants and slowly fades over time. It looks very much like bruises, so it's important to be aware of it and share the information with your pediatrician so that there's no misunderstandings as to whether it's mongolian blue spots or bruises. We also found out that we'll have to get some vaccination updates prior to traveling to South Korea. I'm probably good to go (thanks to the Air Force) but Laura will probably need to get a few shots.

During lunch, each person in the group got to go over their homework assignment. I'm sure you're all thinking..."homework assignment". Our assignment was to increase our awareness of our child's culture and share it with the others couples. Some examples of things we could research or do were to...

1. Visit a market or store related to the country
2. Visit an ethnic church and talk to church members about your plans to adopt
3. Research special holidays or traditions
4. Identify books, foods, or music particular to the country

If you read the earlier blog entries, you know this was a pretty easy assignment for us. We had already done most of these things on our own. We were able to share our experiences with Korean cooking and the Korean cultural festival. We also brought some Korean snacks and shared them with everybody. There were three other adoptive families (2 South Korea, 1 China) that shared their information too. It was a great way to learn more about both cultures. We all had a great time.

At the end of the day, we had our toughest assignment. Each person paired off with somebody else (not their spouse) and was given two role playing scenarios. Each scenario was based on an actual incident that somebody has experienced as an adoptive parent. One person played the role of the adoptive parent while the other person played the role of the person that was either asking lots of personal questions or was saying something inconsiderate (or ignorant) about the situation. An example of a scenario is that the adoptive parent and child are in a line at a grocery store and the next person in line says something like, "Where's he from...are you his real parents?". The goal of the exercise was to understand that as adoptive parents, there will be many times that we have to deal with uncomfortable situations and will have to learn how to respond. The way we look at it, we'll have a chance to educate people about adoption. Most people that ask insensitive questions don't do it to hurt the adoptive family. They are just inquisitive. I believe that if we're able to help other people understand adoption, it will make our child's life just a little easier in the long run.

That's it for the long awaited update. Now I'm going to get back to work on our paperwork. Our goal is to get it completed so that we can have our home study by the end of March. We'll let you know how we're doing soon.