Finally!

We’ve finished the last of our foster/adoption classes!!! There will be additional classes to maintain our certification, but the classes required for our initial certification are done. Boo ya!

In other good news, our final walk through has been scheduled for September 13^th! This is the final step to our full-fledged certification. At that point it’s a waiting game until a child is placed with us. We expect this might happen within 30 or so days. Though it could be 24 hours, or 8 months. We really have no idea.

We are obviously beyond excited and trying to get everything together. Nikki is a sewing and knitting machine. Our car seat arrived today. We have onesies and diapers in the house (which is craziest to me for some reason). We still have a lot of stuff to acquire but we’ll get there.

More to know…

There is a lot that goes into adopting from the California foster system and frankly we’re learning as we go. Here are a few fun facts, if you’re interested…

Stats: There are over 20,000 displaced children in LA County. That’s Twenty. Thousand. Children, under the age of 18, exclusively in LA County, without parents to provide basic necessities let alone love them. This blows my mind. And then we say, ‘why is there so much crime and poverty?’ I don’t mean to get on a soapbox but this was insane to me.

Permanency: There is a high likelihood that the first, second, third, maybe fourth child we are placed with will be reunited with his/her biological family. We may raise that child for a year or more, and they may reunite. It’s the nature of what we’re doing and we’re happy to do it. For the scenarios that make it to adoption, on average it takes two years to ‘permanency’.

Monitored visits: The child we will be fostering will probably have monitored visits with their biological parent(s)/family. Nikki or I will be the ones monitoring and documenting those visits, occasionally supported by the case/social workers.

Baby name: The baby name is up in the air. Chances are high that he/she will already be named in which case they will keep their name. Because we’re fostering an infant, many times they are left at a hospital without a name. In this case, we would get to name them. Upon adoption, and yes we will eventually adopt, names are sometimes changed. The child will definitely become a Call and may get a new first or middle name (this will depend on many factors).

No pictures: Probably the biggest bummer, there will be no pictures posted online. Not on this blog, not on schmacebook, not on your blog, etc. It’s not safe for the children and potentially not safe for us.

And now we wait, until September 13^th. Then again after that, but we’re excited!!