Proud of Junior

Junior has made some major accomplishments this week. He received an award for good behavior in class. He is a good student and typically does not act up in class, but his behavior was recognized in a class where he lacks interest and does not complete class work. We were glad he has improved his attitude, not sure if it will translate into an improved grade. Then in math he completed 60 multiplication problems in 60 seconds. The school principal awarded all students who accomplished this task to lunch off campus. They walked to a local restaurant and the principal bought the kids lunch. Junior really enjoys math and it tends to come easy for him. It is still an honor to be recognized plus he got chicken strips for lunch!

He has also been doing some emotional growing this week and I am proud of him for being able to to handle the situations that he has faced. Foster children's lives are not your typical childhood and often they have to deal with more complex situations than their peers. While a part of me wishes to protect him, shield him from the complexities and uncertainties of his case, I realize he will have a more mature way of making decisions and an increased ability to deal with his emotions, something typically lacking in teenagers. To help him make sense of his life, we are working on his life book. A scrapbook with photos he has chosen that depict his life through the years and descriptions about who he is and the important people in his life. For the school section we listed the schools he has attended. One page lists his favorites - food, color, song, movie, etc. It has been amazing to observe Junior's emotional development over the last five months. Yes, it has been five months since we became a family and our lives changed forever.

We progress through his case, with all its uncertainties, waiting for the day when we find out if we get to be his forever parents. Then we incorporate both birth parents into our family along with all the other biological relatives. Our family just grows. We so love Junior!

The next several weeks are going to be intense in regards to his case, especially if we go to trial and it gets postponed. There is at least one meeting scheduled prior to trial where the open adoption agreement will be presented to the lawyers of each biological parent. Either parent can decide to relinquish parental rights or to go to termination trial. The open adoption agreement goes into affect after the adoption is finalized if one or both parents relinquish parental rights. If we go to trial and both parents' rights are terminated then there is no open adoption agreement, contact with bio parents is whatever we and Junior decide is best for Junior.

Jamaican Contact

I started calling Jamaica on Wednesday to find out if there was a match possible for us. Wednesday I was given another number to call either Thursday or Friday. I called the new number on Thursday and was told my contact was out all day, try again Friday. I called again today (Friday) and was able to speak to my contact! I confirmed we are interested in a child age 2 to 8, no older than 8, we have no preference on gender and that my email address was in our Pre-Approval Application. She said she will look into our case then email me if there is a potential match. I figure I will still need to call weekly until we do get a match as the matching process can take months. Only God knows who our child is and when we will find out about him/her.

One of my co-workers had a dream we adopted a tiny Jamaican infant which I brought to work every day and we all took turns caring for it for an hour. Ha! Ha! Mike and I agree - no babies. There may be some truth, though, in that dream. Our child may be a small Jamaican baby now, but we may not be matched until the child is older. Our child may be a petite Jamaican child. We do not know. We will not know until we are matched either through Jamaica or through DSHS.

I am contemplating buying some school supplies this month now that they are on sale just because all elementary school-aged children need a backpack, paper, pencils, crayons, erasors, tissues, lunch box, pencil box, calculator and peechees/folders. These can be stored until needed next year or the year after or the year after and we can purchase some a little at a time. I will be attending the school's back-to-school BBQ the day before school begins to meet other parents and some of the teachers. I want to become a familiar face before we even have children.

I am working to touch bases with more adoptive mothers to get information, find support, laugh, cry and find commraderie. Parenthood is not easy, but adoption tends to through some extra twists into the crazy ride and it helps to have others who know how to survive those twists.

The coming twelve months is going to be full of surprises, frustrations, joys and sorrows; just as the past twelves months contained all these.