In Which We Do A Whole Bunch Of Stuff And Jer Takes A Vacation

Well that was a busy day!

I'm happy to say that little guy slept quite a bit better last night!  We made it all the way until around four in the morning, when he woke up with a stuffy nose (pretty sure he's got some allergies going) which made him cry.  This of course, made him more stuffy, which made him cry more, and then we spiraled down into a vicious, snotty, crying cycle that ended with me sitting on the floor of our guest bathroom rocking the little guy with the door closed, the shower on as hot as it would go and the vent off.  Thankfully the steam did the trick and he was able to go back to bed around a quarter to five, though it's not a remedy I'd like to try often as I enjoy having paint on my bathroom walls.

Anyway, so after I got up again-- this time for good-- and took Connor to school I spent an hour or so with Jeremy making the house look spic and span for the visit from our social worker today.  Our I-800A paperwork, which allows Ellen to immigrate to the United States, expires in December.  So we needed a homestudy update to be able to extend our I-800A.  As usual I completely freaked out and cleaned the house from top to bottom, just in case she decided that we would be unfit parents for Ellen because our mantle wasn't dusted or something.  I'm pretty sure every adopting couple (or in our case, half the couple) freaks out about social worker home visits.  It's an adoptive parent rite of passage.

Anyway, so the home visit went swimmingly, which is to say that she stayed on the living room couch and didn't so much as glance at the inside of my closets or the state of my mantle.  Since our house had already been inspected to make sure it was suitable last year and we hadn't made any major changes to it, she didn't need to go over that part of things.  So the meeting was pretty quick and painless.  Our paperwork should hopefully be submitted next week and then once we redo our fingerprints (yes, we have to redo those too, though as Jeremy pointed out it's not likely they've changed) we shouldn't have to renew our paperwork again until June of 2013, and we're hoping we'll have our girl home before that.  We'll just have to see!

Jeremy, by the way, wasn't just off work for the home visit.  He's on vacation!  He's built up so much leave time that he was about to lose some of it, so he's taking a couple of weeks off.  We have big plans to spend a bunch of quality family time together, and I'm excited about having him home! 

So after our home visit was over and we picked Connor up from school, Jeremy spent some time doing yard work outside while Connor and I ran errands and then headed up to Pike Place Market for a little pre-holiday rush Christmas shopping.  Unfortunately when we got there we discovered that a large chunk of the market is under renovation right now, and the stores that I wanted to buy specific presents at were closed.  Oh well; we've still got plenty of time to go back before things get super crowded.  I'm just going to keep telling myself that.

I realized about halfway home that I'd overdone it today.  I'm still feeling under the weather, though it's less a definable illness and more a distinct feeling of malaise, which makes me unsure of whether or not it's being caused by an actual illness or if it's the ridiculously small amount of sleep I've been getting lately that's the culprit.  At any rate, I had to stop for coffee on the way home and resort to calling various friends and relatives to keep myself awake behind the wheel.  Falling asleep while driving on the highway would have put a serious damper on Connor and my afternoon.  Luckily the caffeine and conversation did the trick and I didn't have to pull over at a rest stop and nap in the van or anything.

So I took the rest of the day easy, and now I'm off to bed.  It was a pretty busy day!

~Jess

In Which We Pose For The Camera, And Receive Some Wonderful News

You might recall that a while back we won a photo shoot from Persimmon Images, and did an extremely fun (if wet) session with them at the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle.  We had the second half of our photo shoot with the always lovely Kat and Justin today, and all of us had a blast!  Happily we were not rained on this time-- and the sun even peeked out a little bit from behind the clouds, so that was great.  We've become friends with Kat and Justin over the past few months as they happen to be not only very talented photographers but also pretty awesome people, and so it was really great to get the chance to hang out with them.  Knowing we'll get some fantastic pictures out of it is an added bonus!

This time we met in Tacoma and posed outside the Glass Museum for a while.  It was fairly uncrowded, though we did see one other photographer photographing a gorgeous couple in what was probably an engagement session.  Connor behaved just beautifully-- not just for the photo shoot, but all through dinner afterwards as well.  He didn't even tell Kat to "go away" this time; which makes the session a big success in my book! 

And to top it all off, we got our home study rough draft back today.  Our approval is contingent on our background check from Texas coming back clear, but otherwise we're approved to adopt a child from Thailand of either gender who has physical/medical special needs and is up to eight years old!  This is fantastic news because it puts us one step closer to adopting Sylvie.  The home study is fairly general so that if for some reason we are not able to adopt Sylvie (because another family adopts her first, she transfers to a different orphanage and the adoption agency is unable to locate her, etc) then we'll be able to adopt another child who falls within those parameters.  But hopefully it won't be an issue, and we'll be able to move forward on bringing her home!

All in all it was a pretty perfect day!

~Jess

In Which We Have Our Home Study, And Connor Rocks Out

So I think the home study went fairly well.

And by that I mean that I have absolutely no idea how it went, other than the fact that we managed to not set the social worker on fire or anything, and she did not run screaming from our house, so it probably wasn't a total disaster.  Never fear, though-- I will probably have convinced myself that she completely hated us by the time we get the actual home study report back, because I am fun like that. 

She took a look around our house, and then we sat down and went over the gigantic packet of information we'd sent in about our lives, and she asked us a bunch of questions and wrote notes down on her notepad about what we said.  Unfortunately none of the questions were multiple choice, which probably would have been waaaaaay easier.  But at any rate, I think we did okay; the social worker seemed very nice, but she was a little hard to read.  We'll find out in a few weeks whether or not we convinced her we're not total psychopaths when she sends us a rough draft of the home study. 

Connor spent the morning hanging out with Joanna while we conducted our interview, and then we spent a relatively quiet evening at home, with the exception of a rather exciting development.  Connor's been a big fan of his rocking horse for a while, but he hasn't been able to really make it go on his own.  Well, today he finally got it!  Check out the awesome video, in which he very slowly and carefully rocks waaaay back and then waaaay forward. 



I crack up in the middle, by the way, because while you can't really hear it on the video apparently exercising his abs like that makes Connor emit extremely loud, rapid-fire toots.  Hey-- he's working hard!  At any rate, this is the first movement-related activity that Connor has ever been able to do completely on his own, so it's pretty exciting! 

We'll see how he does on the real horse in a few weeks!

~Jess

In Which Connor Is A Starveling

Poor Connor. 

Last night around ten o'clock he threw up, and so I went in and turned down his feed.  At least I thought I'd turned it down-- I'd actually turned it off.  So at about four in the morning he woke up with an empty tummy and refused to go back to sleep.  Like an idiot, I didn't check his pump even though he kept signing "eat, eat!" so I tried everything else that it could possibly be (Maybe his diaper's wet-- no.  Maybe he's cold-- no.  Well, he can't possibly he hungry...) before discovering at around 7:00 that he had in fact not gotten any of his night feed and was now starving.  Feeling horribly guilty, I turned his pump on and he immediately fell back asleep, and I got him up just in time to put him into clothes and take him to school, where he was extremely crabby and tired. 

Not one of my best parenting moments.

He came home after school and took a three hour nap.  Then he refused to go to bed tonight until almost nine.  Joy of joys. 

The good thing that happened today was that we got our home study visit scheduled!  The social worker will be visiting our home in a couple of weeks, and she'll be spending three-to-four hours talking with us and viewing our house.  I'm excited and really nervous all at the same time, but hopefully things will go smoothly and we'll be one step closer to bringing Sylvie home!

~Jess

In Which We Finish Our Adoption Seminar

We had the second part of our adoption seminar today.  It was a long day; we were in class from nine in the morning until five at night!  The seminar gave us a lot to think about, and we both came away from it more firmly committed to the idea of not only adopting Sylvie if we can, but the idea of adopting an older child in general.  It also got us talking more about some of our hopes and fears for our adoption process, which was a very good thing.

A lot of the information, to my mind, was common sense.  Of course these kids are going to have behavioral issues stemming from their traumatic experiences.  Of course it's going to take them a while, possibly years, for them to become comfortably bonded with us.  Of course the child is going to be developing on a different timeline than their non-adopted peers.  Many of the things that they were discussing as possible issues (such as sensory integration disorder, developmental delay, social anxiety, etc) were things that we have already experienced through parenting Connor. 

What we don't know much about is parenting a child with a past and another set of parents.  We also haven't dealt with sexual or violent behaviors.  So it was good for us to hear that information, though much of it we'd already found in our research on parenting a child who was adopted, because it really made us think.  What would we do if Sylvie showed violent or sexual behaviors toward us, Connor, or our pets?  What would we do if she completely rejects us as parents?  What would we do if, even after several years of parenting, we still don't like her?  While these are, for the most part, worst case scenarios, I think it's so important that we discuss them, because they are possibilities, however remote, and it's much better that we be prepared for them rather than just deny the fact that they could ever happen to us.

I think the most helpful thing was getting the opportunity to hear a parent who has already gone through the process to adopt an older child speak about how things are going.  It was interesting to hear her tell stories of some of the things her children had gone through, the issues they came home with, and how, after over six years with their family, they are doing now.  Once again I found myself thinking about Connor and the similarities there; she talked a little about how they had to change their expectations for what their kids would be accomplishing, for example. 

So we left feeling pretty good about the whole thing, and I'm glad that we went (though we were required to in order to complete our home study, so whether or not we wanted to was sort of a moot point).  The next thing we'll probably have to complete (besides more paperwork) will be the home study visit, which should happen some time in June. 

On to the next step!

~Jess

In Which We Go To An Adoption Training Seminar

So we spent all of today in the adoption seminar.  It was interesting to get the chance to meet some of the people we'll be working with and hear the various reasons that other adopting hopefuls had for being there.  We were the only folks there for Thailand, which isn't really surprising when you consider that only 40-60 children from there a year are adopted by American parents.

While a lot of the information given out wasn't new for Jeremy and me, we did get a more accurate picture of the current timeline in Thailand right now, and it looks like it'll be closer to June or later of next year than it will be to Christmas before we bring Sylvie home.  No doubt I will be totally insane from waiting by that point.  You can all watch my descent into madness.  It'll be fun! 

The good news is that we finished the last of our first round of paperwork-- all sixty or so pages worth is sitting on our coffee table waiting to go back up with us to the adoption agency when we return tomorrow for day two of our adoption seminar.  Now all we need for our home study is our home visit with our social worker and our references, the requests for which have all been sent out.  Getting our home study finished will be a big first step towards bringing Sylvie home, so I'm excited about it!

The other good news is that the Thailand program coordinator from our adoption agency will be traveling soon to Sylvie's orphanage, and so we not only have the chance to get some of our questions about Sylvie answered, but we should be getting updated photos and maybe even video of her!  This is really exciting because the pictures that we have of her are almost two years old.  We're sending that adorable little stuffed owl over for her, too (selected after I did research to make sure that an owl didn't mean Horrible Death or something in Thai folklore, which would have been great).  While she probably won't be told about us until the Thai government officially matches her with us, we're still able to send her little gifts like this, which is a comfort for us (and will hopefully be a comfort for her, as she'll be able to take them with her when she comes home with us).  We're taking a photograph of us holding both the owl and a picture of her, so that once she does know we are her family we can send it to her and she'll see that it's from us.   

So all in all it was an exciting (though very long) day.  I'm sure tomorrow will be the same!

~Jess

In Which I Have Trouble With Adoption Paperwork Because I Am A Smart Aleck

Connor has been a little sniffly the past couple of days and by late afternoon yesterday was sporting a full-blown cold, so I kept him home today.  By this evening he sounded much better, though, and he was acting like he felt pretty good, so hopefully he'll be able to go to school tomorrow.  Since it was sunny and nice outside he helped me plant out my strawberries (we have four varieties and 125 plants this year).  I'm not expecting big crops this summer, but next summer should be a pretty tasty one.  Here he is all bundled up and in his explorer hat; sunny-but-cool days make for some very strange outfits.

I also spent several hours today answering questions for our adoption home study.  I just finished up the autobiography portion of the study, which is only eight discussion questions long.  This doesn't sound so bad until you realize that question one is divided into parts A through M.  Many of these parts are actually several questions.  My eight-question autobiography is sixteen pages long.  Single spaced.

All of the adoptive parents out there are laughing and shaking their heads at me right now, as I have just begun to skirt the edge of the paperwork that will need to be filled out, signed, mailed to various parts of the country to be notarized, and then if the adoption is drawn out long enough possibly filled out, signed and notarized all over again.  We won't have an adoption file by the time this is done-- we'll have an adoption box, which I may be unable to lift without straining my back.  So it is perhaps premature to be complaining about it, especially since I like writing and answering discussion questions.  My problem is actually not with the number or the length of the questions.  My problem is that I have an overwhelming impulse to spice the whole thing up by writing ridiculous answers. 

Take this question, which is under the Courtship and Marriage/Partnership section:

Give an example of your problem solving process with your partner.

What I wrote was this:

If Jeremy and I have a conflict about something, the first thing we do is make sure that we’re both able to speak about the problem calmly and rationally. So we each have a cooling off activity—I’ll sit with a cup of tea and read or take a long bath, and he may exercise or play a video game. Often times we’ll realize that the argument was over something that wasn’t a big deal and we have no reason to have any further discussion about it. If the issue is still something we need to talk about, we’ll sit next to one another when Connor is in school or down for a nap and work the problem out through calm and rational conversation. Then once we’ve resolved the issue we’ll do something together that we both enjoy, such as taking a walk or going out to eat. We won’t go to bed angry with one another.

Totally appropriate.  Totally boring.  What I really wanted to write was this:

First Jeremy and I attempt to solve the problem with large amounts of duct tape.  We might also pretend it doesn't exist for a while in the hope that it might become depressed and lonely and go away.  If this does not work, we may employ screaming, scary masks and jumping out from behind various pieces of furniture in an effort to scare it into leaving.  If the problem proves persistant and unimpressed by our scare tactics, we will then attempt to set it on fire.  Whether or not this results in the resolution of the problem depends on how flammable it is and whether or not it possesses opposable thumbs and is able to call emergency services and/or operate fire extinguishers.  Other problem solving methods involve velociraptors, very small rocks, chain saws and loudly singing multiple rounds of "It's A Small World."  We save nukes as a last resort.

Now I personally think my second answer would be a much better read.  Completely inappropriate, sure, but I like to think that I'd at least make the social worker chuckle as she threw our file into the waste basket and called Child Protective Services.  I do actually want to adopt a child at the end of all of this, though (as well as keep the one I already have), and so I'd probably better rein myself in and stick with the serious answers, even if I don't get to mention anything about velociraptors. 

Dang it.

~Jess