To catch you up on things from where we were since I last added a submission to my "Our Road to Building a Family" series, I'll begin by saying that a lot has changed for us! In my previous entry, I relayed how we were at a point of frustration with the process as it seemed that we weren't getting anywhere. Despite my wife's best efforts at being an advocate for us, it didn't feel as though we were being kept in the loop about the goings on of what may or may not have been happening on behind the scenes with the various organizations with which we'd been working. Then came the afternoon of June 19, 2014.
My wife and I were on our annual vacation to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and we were making our first visit to WonderWorks. (As an aside to this, I will say I'm not a fan of WonderWorks - it could be fun, but it was way too busy when we were there. The crowd made for a scene that was chaotic, and it was made worse by the fact that there's not enough guidance or direction to how the whole thing is laid out.) I was in line for one of the attractions when my wife & I received phone calls, one after the other, from the same number but one that neither of us recognized. As it would turn out, the call was from an adoption specialist contacting us about the fact that we'd been selected as a potential match for a sibling group of three children.
Yes, you read that right - three children, ages 6, 8, and 10. Two boys and one girl.
The rest of our vacation was a blur, and to be honest the time since that phone call has been a constant whirlwind of activity. We have gone through the paces of learning more about the children, their individual histories, their background, and essentially everything a prospective parent could hope to know - on paper, anyway. I point that out because one of my recent frustrations has been the fact that my first knowledge of these children came in the form of a 3-ring binder as thick as a soda can is tall filled with documentation. I understand that the paperwork is there for a reason as it unveils every facet of their lives, and it is most certainly an effort towards the organization we're working with covering their butts as they'll be able to say "Well, we told you so..." But as I have told my wife and many others, I truly wish the process was reversed so that you could meet these little people first, then be handed their details.
As you might gather from how I worded that last paragraph, yes, after pouring over literally hundreds of pages worth of records we did decide to go forward in trying to make a connection with this group. And yes, we realize that to go from no children to three children is a lot in a short period of time. Trust me when I say that I've grown tired and a bit annoyed by the fact that more than a few folks have seemingly gone to great lengths to remind us of the fact that life's about to change if this works out the way we're hoping it does.
Really? Life's about to change? You don't say! Like when life changed when I moved away from home, got married, bought a house, and started a new job? It feels like the last decade of my life has been nothing but change.
Ever since we've been together, Jill and I have always said we wanted 2 or 3 kids. In my eyes, this is no different than when people become parents via more traditional methods. What if Jill and I had been able to have kids naturally and we'd wound up pregnant with triplets? Or if we'd staggered the births of our children over the course of a couple years yet still wound up with three? Would we still be getting told "Life's about to change!" in a way that makes it seem like the person voicing that comment is telling us we're about to make a mistake? Some folks need to work on thinking before they speak and learning that when you apply inflection to a statement the connotation of those words changes significantly.
My frustrations aside, I have to say the process has gone quite well for us, and quickly at that. We were able to meet the children for the first time during a supervised visit that involved having lunch at Mellow Mushroom Pizza then going to EdVenture, a children's museum and activity center. It goes without saying that I learned a lot that day, both about myself and these kids. First and foremost, kids don't care that a pizza is artisanal - there is no point in paying $20 for a pie that, to them, is no different than a $5 from somewhere like Little Caesars. (That's not a knock on Little Caesars, their pizza is quite good to be as cheap as it is.) Second, when visiting an attraction like EdVenture with three kids who are full of pepperoni and soda, you'd best be wearing good shoes and be ready to play the finest zone defense of your life.
What I mean by that is this: I understand now that supervising children as a parent isn't so much about keeping your kids from doing things as it is keeping track of where they are when they're doing things. Sure, you don't want "doing things" to involve stuff like jumping off a balcony or drinking water out of an unsanitary basin, but so long as they're not destroying property or hurting others whatever they're doing is probably alright.
EdVenture is an expansive facility filled with activity stations that are spread out across several floors. Keeping track of these three quickly became a test of our skills of being able to read & recognize their movements, tendencies, and preferences. I truly am convinced that being a parent is about being able to understand the concept of zone defense. When the play begins, everyone on defense (read, myself and Jill; in this instance, we had a third member of our squad, that being the kid's adoption worker) has a zone of the playing field to cover. It's an effective strategy, so long as everyone does their job. I'd say we did pretty well that first outing - at the end of the day, everyone was still alive and still equipped with all their fingers & toes.
That's how I'm measuring success now as a prospective father: Limit property damage to a minimum while keeping everyone alive and as intact as possible.
We have had a second "play date" with these kids since that first outing and it involved lunch at Zaxby's as well as bowling. Things learned from that get together include the fact that not all grilled cheese sandwiches are created equal and that bowling isn't as appealing as the bright, blinking lights of arcade games. I can't say as I disagree much with the second part of that statement because only God knows how many quarters I plunked into arcade games when I was their age. Despite my former fascination with them, nowadays my opinion of arcade games is that they are essentially wooden boxes filled with strobe lights and MP3 players loaded with bad music that require a person to connect the business end of a shop-vac directly to their wallet in order for them to work. And by "work" I mean kick off a game that's configured in such a way that you'd have to be the 1972 Miami Dolphins of video gaming in order to get past level 1, stage 1. Seriously, I don't remember games being this difficult when I was a kid. I watched these three play and it was like they were getting beaten about the head by a technological behemoth.
The kids came to our house for the first time this past Friday, August 1. We were able to have lunch together - everyone made their own personal pizza, pizza being a recurring theme with this group as if you couldn't tell - and spend a few hours roaming around the house, allowing them to learn the ins & outs of what up until now had been the personal, exclusive space of my wife and I. I think that may be the biggest hurdle I have to get over, the fact that suddenly there will be three small people living with us. Not just living with us but depending on us for everything.
At this particular juncture, we have decided to change our outlook on adoption when it comes to these children. Up until now we had been working under the pretense that we were hoping to adopt children instead of being involved in a foster-to-adopt scenario or serving as a foster home . In order to speed up the process of them being placed in our home, we have opted to get on a foster-to-adopt path specifically with these children. What that will mean for us is that they will be moved from their current foster home and placed with us. (We will not be a traditional foster home in that we could be contacted to provide shelter for kids in need at a moments notice.) At that point we will be functioning as foster parents with the ultimate goal still being adoption. This changes a few parts of the process but it will be beneficial to all involved seeing as how the kids will be with us, we'll get to build our relationships, and they'll be in a stable environment where they'll be able to move forward with their education and development.
I have long believed that if the opportunity presents itself for you to shop local, you definitely should. People get attracted by big national ads for chains and they forget about the fact that there's probably a Mom & Pop establishment not far from where they live that would be able to get the same or comparable wares and for less money. That's exactly what we did when it came time to refit two rooms in our house so that they could become proper bedrooms for kids. Grubb's Furniture in Saint Matthews, SC is a fantastic purveyor of furniture as we were able to get exactly what we needed at a real bargain price and delivered quickly.
From here, the timetable is tentative in terms of what happens next. The plan is for them to have a weekend visit with us in the near future and then they will be able to move in on a date soon thereafter. At that point, we'll officially be their foster parents. I don't know how long it will take but their becoming our children will come sometime thereafter, depending on the swiftness of how things go once they're placed with us.
Jill and I have the great fortune of having a tremendous support structure around us. We couldn't do this if not for our parents and our families. It means the world to us that everyone has opened up their arms to these kids because they are great kids. They are not broken. They are not damaged goods. They are normal, vivacious, energetic kids. I can't wait to see them flourish once they can be in a stable environment that I believe we'll be able to provide.
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