How patient should we be prepared to be?

Waiting is hard.  At least for me it is.

When we completed our home study, we had specified that we wanted a child or children who were 4 or younger.  Our youngest is 5, so we felt like bringing in children younger than our biological kids was important.  We also had told our caseworker that we wanted to take foster kids who's parental rights had already been terminated-- meaning they were free for adoption, or cases where it was known that that process was the next step.  We didn't want kids in and out of our house at this point since our girls are young, I'm working, and we just didn't think we could handle kids coming into and then leaving our lives.  Our caseworker wasn't very optimistic about us getting a placement because most times, when a case gets to the point of parental rights being terminated, the kids are either older or are going to be adopted by their current foster parents, who they may have been with for a significant amount of time.  We asked the caseworker if she could give us any idea of how long to expect to wait, but she didn't have any answer for us.  We even tried asking "Well, about how long have other families in a situation similar to ours waited, just in general?" but she still didn't give us an answer.  So, we went forward having no idea what kind of a wait we had in store for us. 

I have heard the waiting process described as being like a pregnancy, I've even heard the expression "paper pregnancy" because the whole process is a conglomeration of paperwork.  And I could see and feel the similarities, I mean, in the end, our family was going to grow through a new addition.  But, to me it felt like I was probably experiencing it through the dad's point of view, which was not a bad thing.  I felt fine, no morning sickness, no heart burn, I wasn't exhausted all day long, my clothes still fit, you get the picture. But it definetly was different.  The major difference being, when your pregnant, you know you will be getting a newborn baby, you can find out the sex, it will look like you, and it will come in about 9 months. Where as with us, we didn't know if we would be getting one or two kids, if it would be a baby or up to 4 years old, would it be black, white, hispanic, or mixed, would take 10 days or 2 years.  There were just so many unknowns.  The unknows were stressful, as they would continue to be long after we did get a placement, but those unknowns were part of the process and kept us hopping, a little anxious, and ready for excitement at a moments notice. 

So, the wait ended after only about 3 weeks, well sort of ........

It begins.....

First of all, let me tell a little bit about myself.  I have been married for 9 years to a great guy, Nathan.  We have built quite a life together.  We have 2 beautiful daughters, Addison and Hannah,who are 5 and 7, two sweet doggies, about 15 fish, oh yeah .... and we are foster parents.  We became licenced foster parents in January 2011 through our state.  We were licensed for two additional children (so 4 total counting our daughters).  We got into this whole foster thing because we wanted to grow our family through adoption.  Adoption has been something that has always been on my heart for as long as I can remember.  My plan was to have a mixture of biological and adopted children in my family.  I don't remember having a total number I wanted to have, but I knew I wanted more than 2 and less than 10!  I am so thankful that my husband shared this desire to bring adopted children into our family.

So, we became licensed this past January.  Let me explain a little bit about that process.  In October 2010, I couldn't wait any longer to start the process that would bring our next child home.  That feeling that another child was out there for us was weaseling its way into my mind more and more frequently.  Nathan and I had talked at great length about things and had even discussed it with our girls.  We were all in agreement, it was time for our family to grow.  Because I have wanted to adopt for quite some time, I had done some research on the whole process.  I became pretty familiar with our state's adoption website, bookmarked it on my computer, and checked it frequently.  So, when the time was finally right and Nathan gave me the OK, I knew exactly who to contact to get the process started.  I made the call to the local Department of Children's Services office and spoke with the nicest man.  He set up a time for me to come in and I couldn't wait for that meeting!  We met a few days later and he gave me a huge packet of paperwork to fill out.  I went home and started right away.  Nathan and I both had portions to complete and we got it finished in about a week.  When I went back to DCS to drop off the completed packet, that nice man assumed I was there to ask some questions.  He couldn't believe we had everything finished.  He informed me that we had returned the packet in record time. 

So the next steps were to complete a homestudy (which is a bunch of intrusive and personal questions about our life and relationships and an interview and home inspection completed by a caseworker), and complete foster care classes.  We both enjoyed the classes, they consisted of 3 all day Saturday classes where we learned about several things.  The classes covered the foster care system, issues foster parents were likely to run into, rules of being a foster parent, child development, etc.  We both felt like we learned a great deal and our eyes were definetly opened to things we had never even thought about before.  Our caseworker came out and looked our house over to make sure we had heat, running water, no lead paint, etc.  It was a pretty basic checklist she went through.  Then she proceeded on to the intrusive questions (which really weren't that bad) and talked briefly to our girls.  And our homestudy was complete.  It was a basically painless process.  The whole thing was done and approved pretty quickly.

So, the wait began.........