10 Months Old

My posts are getting further apart. I guess this is for two reasons. One: that I have a very active 10 month old boy to look after. Two: that this blog is about our adoption journey and that is a part of our lives that is winding down. We have gone from prospective adoptive parents, to adoptive parents and now just just parents. Richard is 10 months old today. It is also his father's 47th Birthday.

In October, we were informed by our adoption agency that we could contact an adoption attorney and start the official adoption procedures. This included signing documents for the attorney so they would have access to the adoption agency's reports on our progress as a family. Not knowing how long any of this would take, we just waited. Then, in November, we got an email from our attorney's paralegal saying she had not received the agency's paperwork. Come to find out, someone at the agency had just filed away the letter requesting the home study, etc. After an email to them the agency got right back in line with sending the proper paperwork.

Fast forward through the holidays. We got word through the attorney that the paperwork for our adoption had been filed with the local circuit court. Hunter called them to see if we had to wait for the circuit court session in January. In this small town, the court only meets once every 3 months. But the staff assured us that the judge would get the paperwork and could sign off on it at anytime. Hunter checked with the clerk last week and they said that the judge had only signed one of the three documents sent. We checked with the attorney and she said this was absolutely right. So we have two more documents that need to go through the courts which include paperwork passing from the agency to the circuit court judge. I can't believe how slow it all happens.

In the mean time, Richard is getting so big. He has 8 teeth now. He has gone from crawling to walking around the furniture. He got a big boy haircut last week. He went from this

To this

And now he's doing this!

Lost and Found

Genealogy has been an on and off hobby of mine forever. Back in the 1970s, my great aunt painstakingly traced my father's paternal tree back to England in the 1840s. In the late 1990s when the Internet finally became a household item, I took to RootsWeb trying to find out how the Isle of Wight Biddlecombs came across the Atlantic. A nice lady was able to give me some info about the previous generation before the family emigrated. I shared it with family members and we were all amazed at the info.

Then I met Hunter and I more or less forgot about genealogy, what with trying to reproduce and  continue the family line and all. So after Monday's shocking call from the adoption agency, I received another shocking call on Tuesday. Or rather, my Mom and Dad did. The two of them called me at work and said they had just gotten off the phone with a lady from the Isle of Wight in England and she was looking for me! What???

She and Dad talked a little while. He grabbed his aunt's notes and it turns out that she is one of our long lost cousins still living on the Isle of Wight. She was looking for me because of a couple of inquiries I had made on RootsWeb all those years ago. Amazing! So my cousin and I have been emailing back and forth this past week. Today I am sitting here having a cup of tea and getting ready to scan my aunt's work from all those years ago to send to my new found cousin. I was just looking through the pages and, there it is, the link between us two. My aunt knew the name of our mutual ancestor and the last name of her husband but not much else. So now, hopefully we will know more about this side of the family.

It's all too much to take in. But it is a welcome distraction as we prepare to go to Richmond tomorrow. So, dear cousin, if you are reading this, I am getting to work. It's going to be a rainy day here so not much else to do. So glad to have been found.

I couldn't make up this story even if I tried...

Today we spoke to the Texas adoption agency. It was a call I had been dreading. But it was ok. While we won't get back any of the money that went towards the birth mother's living expenses, we will receive a partial refund on the agency's fee. The social worker asked us to consider staying on with them to find another match and we said we would definitely think about it. We feel the agency did a very good job and I would recommend them to anyone looking for an agency in Texas.

So we decided to have lunch together and we talked about how it all went. We also talked about what to do when our home study expires in May. We have mixed feelings about our agency in Virginia and we discussed our options. So many decisions and it is so hard to know what to do.

Later in the afternoon, my cell phone rang. It was a call from our Virginia adoption agency. I quickly answered it, thinking "what on earth is this all about?" It  was the child placing supervisor and she wanted to know if I had a few minutes to talk. Well, of course.

She told me she had been working with a birth mother for a couple of weeks and this young woman wants to meet us! My exact response was, "you gotta be kidding me, right?" But no, she was not kidding. We will be meeting her in Richmond next Monday. I was shaking like I don't know what. I called Hunter to tell him. I couldn't get the words out. My voice was so high I think only dogs could understand me. But I finally got the words out. "A BIRTH MOTHER WANTS TO MEET US!"

And then, after I settled back down to work, my phone rang again and it was from the Texas agency! She wanted to know if we would like to be considered for a birth mother she was going to meet this afternoon. UNREAL.

Somebody at the office said I should buy a lottery ticket tonight. *Sighs* If only I was the gambling kind.

More news later, hopefully...

Home Study Update

Today we had a meeting with our adoption agency's social worker to update our Home Study. Our Virginia Home Study conducted in 2009 is valid until May 2011. But the agency that is handling the placement is in Texas and there, Home Studies are only valid for one year. I thought we would just be able to go to the agency for a meeting. But no, the social worker needed to come to our house.

As you can imagine, there was a frenzy of cleaning going on this weekend, Monday and Tuesday. I'm talking about going so far as washing windows and cleaning ceiling fan blades. I even got home a little early to do some last minute tidying up this afternoon. And then I panicked about our basement which is still in the progress of being finished. Should I write something up showing how we would spend the next few months putting the final touches on the basement? Would she insist on seeing it like our last social worker did when she came to visit us a year and a half ago? Even though we have done this before, I started having all kinds of paranoid thoughts. Maybe she would check the cabinets to make sure we didn't have any cleaning products within a child's reach. And on top of everything, she was about a half hour late allowing me more time to let my imagination run wild.

And in the end, she just sat us down at the dining room table and we had a lovely hour or so with her explaining the paperwork we needed to fill out. Most of it is just an update of forms we have filled out before. She did ask a few questions about what our plans were for maternity leave and child care after Baby comes home. But that was it. This is our third social worker at this agency since we started and this was our first time meeting her. Well, I hope she sticks around. We had a great chat with her and she was so helpful in so many ways. And the only time she left the dining room was to use the restroom just a few steps away. Ah, all that extra cleaning (and worrying) for nothing.