Oh, So Slow!

The wheels of government turn ever so slowly! We were supposed to meet the social workers to review baby girl and baby boy's files on Friday. However, my social worker called to advise that Friday would not work well for them because we have to meet with two social workers and they need to coordinate their calendars. Friday did not work for them - though on Wednesday both had advised that they were free Thursday afternoon and all day Friday. Surprising how fast a county worker's calendar can fill up in a day! The next time their free slots on their calendars coincide is in two weeks! Two weeks! It was so urgent to let me know about the children on Wednesday, but we have to wait two whole weeks to review the file before we can even go to the next step! My husband was guardedly optimistic when I told him about the children - he was unreserved about accepting the referral, but did not want us to get our hopes up until it was official. He does not have much faith in with the system and he is paranoid that they may call in a couple days and tell us they had our names mixed up with another family!

The social worker has called me about five times on Thursday and Friday, which is a marked improvement from the prior communication. The children's social worker had told me that their birthday was today - but I found out it is actually Sunday. It made me cry that the one person right now who should be the children's biggest advocate does not even care enough to know the children's actual birthday. This is a new case and it is the children's first birthday. But we are fallible human beings. The Creator of the Universe knows baby girl and baby boy's names and knew them from the foundation of the earth. He knows their birthday! Baby girl and Baby boy matter to Him, He loves them and He made the greatest sacrifice of all for them - His own begotten son.

Pray for Me...Pray for others!

We participate in "Pray for Me... Pray for Others" on the Riggs Family Blog. Check out their blog to add your prayer request.

My mind is reeling! This afternoon, we had an orientation meeting with our new social worker for the international adoption. I loved her, everyone at the office and we went home feeling pretty good about moving forward with this agency. I decided to drop off a form to the child welfare agency foster care social worker. She was not expecting me and I had thought I would just drop off the form, but the receptionist insisted on calling the social worker out to the lobby. Three minutes later, she came in with another social worker and they asked to meet with me in a conference room. My social worker then asked if during our homestudy visits we had mentioned if we were open to twins. I told her I didn't recall that coming up and then the other social worker told me that literally a few minutes before I walked in, she had just finished reading our homestudy report and thought we were the perfect family for the children she was trying to place! Nice to know that our homestudy report is complete and others are reading it before we have even seen a copy:)! Anyway, my heart was pounding, I was incoherent and then she told me to go home and discuss with my husband if we wanted to come in to review the children's file. It is a boy and a girl who were born premature at 32 weeks old and they will be one year old this Saturday. They have some developmental delays due to a very tough start in life. I learnt a little of their birth history and it knocked the wind out of me. But they are beautiful and seem to be extremely well taken care of in their current home. That is pretty much all I know and my mind is racing. I can't think coherently! After the meeting, I was on my way to buy carseats, clothes and diapers before I remembered I needed to first talk to my husband! Oh yeah, there is also their first birthday coming up! My head is spinning and I am just totally jumping ahead of myself! It is totally not official, we still need to meet with the chidlren's social worker before we can officially accept the referrals. We plan to meet the case worker on Friday and look through the casefile. In the interim, it will be prayers, prayers, prayers!

God's timing is so not my timing. I thought I had everything figured out! Based on how things were going, we had assumed our first adopted child was to come from Ethiopia later this year and in another year, the next adoption would be from the foster care system. Thank God that He can see the big picture!

Not Me! Monday

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

I am so not the dorky mother who cornered the preschool teacher because her son totally did not get the lesson on Martin Luther King day and its significance. I am not the mom who forgot that a four year old's mind is a mix between fantasy and reality and that he has many years in school where he will be learning about MLK and he will totally get it! I am so not the dork who forgot to tell said preschool teacher not to sweat it when she offered to repeat the lesson the next day. Because, four year olds really do grasp all concepts and lessons taught in their pre-school classes.

My friend D.

update:

My friend D was not able to hold off till the end of training on Friday and ended in the ER at 12:30 for some plasma and consequently getting admitted into hospital. I did go visit with him yesterday afternoon and he says this is the worst bruising that he has ever had. His leg is about 4 times its normal size. Thankfully, he does not have to have surgery which he had been scheduled to have to relieve pressure on his muscles. We visited him in the hospital today and he is scheduled to be there at least through Thursday. During service today, one of the deacons shared his heart. He was praying for my friend D and really asking God why all this was happening to such a good and decent person. During prayer, his conviction was God laying it on his heart asking what he personally was going to do about the situation. It is one thing to pray for someone, but unless we are willing to be God's hands and feet, we will not see a lot of answers to prayers. All the offering and tithes at church today went to help support his family and almost the whole church went to visit with him after church. The body of christ was really His hands and feet to bring spiritual encouragement and practical help to my friend. Just what we are commanded to do!

Prayer requests: that his job will be willing to take a chance on him and that he can start the next training session next month. He had been scheduled to take a test yesterday for a county job. Needless to say, he was hooked up receiving some plasma! So if his current job is not willing to take a risk on him, he has nothing else in the works! At a time he should be really enjoying first time fatherhood with his 4 month old child, he is having to spend time with her in a hospital room. Prayers for spiritual encouragement and financial provisions. Inspite of all that is going on, he was in really good spirits today! Nothing to bring a smile to your face than someone sneaking in some Macdonalds after 24 hours of no food because they were preparing you for surgery!

Urgent Prayer Request!

A good friend of mine is having a really hard time. He has hemophilia and the last three months have been torture. He bruised his right hand about three months ago and was in excrutiating pain for most of that time months before the doctors finally figured which pain meds worked for him. He can't really use his right hand because it is numb from a blood clot that is causing nerve damage and affecting his fingers and thumb. No surgeon wants to touch him to remove the blood clot because of his hemophilia.

He had just started a new job a couple of months before his arm got bruised and the employer had to fill the position because he was in the hospital for a couple of days, needed several blood transfusions for another couple of weeks and was on heavy duty pain meds that he could not function. Things seemed to look up and he started a new job three weeks ago. He is in training and loves the job and his co-workers. This week, he bruised both his legs and he had to go to the ER yesterday afternoon because the swelling was not going away. He got a blood transfusion and went to work today because he cannot afford to loose the job. He has a three month old daughter and his wife's job is reducing everyone's work schedules to part time as a cost saving measure. I called him today at 11:00 a.m and the swelling was getting worse. He was in a catch twenty-two to say the least. In order to heal faster, he needed another blood transfusion asap, but he knew if he left early again today, he would not have a job on Monday. He was also in pain and was not sure whether where he would be able to hold off going to the ER till after work. My heart breaks that he has to make such difficult choices. In this job market, employers don't have much room for compassion and empathy. My heart aches for all that he has endured these last few months. He is a really decent, God fearing guy who loves the Lord and just wants to serve him. Please pray for healing and financial provision. He has had moments of deep discouragement and despair but through it all, he still praises God.

Not Me! Monday

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to http://www.mycharmingkids.net" her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

I am so not the mama who finds it funny that my 4 year old pronounces chewing gum, "shooing gum" and who doesn't correct him because she thinks it is cute and funny. You know all good mamas put their child's language development ahead of an opportunity to laugh.

I am so not the mama who laughs and cannot for the life of her get an appropriate response to her 4 year old's pleas to feed his mama a piece of his apple so that she can be like god! Adam and Eve is one of his favorite bible stories and attempts to straighten his theology have not been successful! I so do not help matters by laughing. Poor pk, he will be in for a surprise when he realizes the apple pieces did not make me god!

Mystery Solved!

Remember my surprise that the social worker from my Local Child Welfare Agency initiated a call to see if we were still pursuing our foster care adoption? Well, I learnt that the County has decided to outsource all future homestudies to a private agency! Yippee for all new families trying to either foster or adopt foster care children. The private agency is paid depending on the number of homestudies done, so the agency has an incentive to be timely in how they do the homestudies. The county social workers do not have any quotas to meet and are not really accountable to anyone to get the job done well and in a timely manner. My social worker has to complete all her outstanding homestudies that she started last year hence the call! This explains why she was asking if we were still interested in going through the process. Did I detect a secret wish that we abandon the process so that she would have one less homestudy to do? Mind you, the county uses a template for the home studies and she just needs to fill in the blanks! Now how easy can that be!

All in all, we anticipate that we will have a homestudy report before our 1 year anniversary since beginning the process to adopt from the local child welfare agency! Yipee!

Not Me! Monday

It’s that time again to play along with MckMama on Not Me! Monday.

I so totally was not the dork who thought we would be taking a real train ride seeing the major attractions of San Francisco. I mean, when reading a quick description of the outing we were taking my son to, it is so easy to mistake a G-gauge train set complete with a first-class passenger train and a freight train for the real deal. Only I would actually imagine that there would be a train looping past ten of San Francisco's most famous places including the Conservatory of Flowers, the Japanese Tea Garden, the Golden Gate Bridge, Mission Dolores, Chinatown's dragon gate, the Transamerica Pyramid building, the Ferry Building, Coit Tower, Ghirardelli Square and the Bently Reserve (formerly the Federal Reserve Building). You know I am not that gullible even after having lived in this area for over a decade! I would so know that a train cannot access most of these places! I was not the dork making sure that her husband confirmed with the ticket agent that we would be going on the Golden Gate Express Train. And that said husband (born and raised in the area) did not sheepishly laugh saying he knew all along that we were going to see model trains!

Once I figured that we were only seeing model trains, I was not the crazy lady trying to get a four year old boy excited about the wonders of banana trees, coffee trees, orchids, water lilies and carnivorous plants. And I was not closely followed by a husband who was impatiently shepherding his family through the conservatory of flowers and into the special exhibit area to see the model trains. I mean we only arrived 2 hours before closing and said husband wanted to make sure that his son got a chance to see the model trains. Because you know how just long it takes to see models trains in a 25 by 15 feet room! And that was so not my husband trying to drag out the excitement for at least half an hour in the special exhibit room to justify the one hour trip we had just made, leaving a much larger model train exhibit 15 minutes from our house!

Thank goodness for small mercies because said son said he had a good day in “The City”.

New Year = Progress!

New Year + New Resolutions = Progress! Yesterday, I got a voicemail message from the Child Welfare Agency social worker. Per her message, she was calling to check in if we still want to proceed with our adoption plans from the foster care agency. That one left me scratching my head because she is the one who has not written up our home study report though our last meeting was in October! Numerous classes, numerous homestudy visits, lots of inefficiencies from the agency etc, etc, and we still hang on and she wonders if we are still on? She thought I might not have been in touch because of the holidays??? Did she not mean she has not written the home study report because of the holidays????? Okay, I know that this is in keeping with the agency's policy not to acknowledge their inefficiency and ineptitude, but still! However, I still see this as progress since I have always been the one to initiate any calls regarding the process. I was actually pretty surprised at getting a call. Good thing she did not get to speak to me because she might have reconsidered our suitability to be parents because I am sure my surprise at her initiating a call, and then proceeding to ask me if we still wanted to pursue adoption would have made me totally incoherent!

I am keeping my resolution to be praying for the social workers who are charged with protecting and advocating for the abused and abandoned children in my county. I am praying daily that their hearts would not be jaded, but would give 200% to meet the best interests of the children.

We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers. - I Thessalonians 1:2

Not Me! Monday

I so totally did not get out of a movie outing with my son and husband last night so that I could have some alone time. I then did not spend the next two hours resting like I had said I would, but instead spent time catching up on reading blogs (so totally not breaking one of my new year's resolution to spend less time on blogs). I so totally did not forget to feel absolutely miserable and guilty about not spending every available time with my family because I am a working mom and ordinarily, I always feel guilty that I do not spend enough time with my son.

I so totally did not introduce my husband to the joys of bargain shopping and kissed goodbye the only opportunity I have to get full price clothes. My husband hates shopping (unless it is electronics) and twice a year (on my birthday and Christmas), he goes to the mall, looks at mannequins and asks for assistance to get the mannequin look. Come to think of it, I am not sure if he ever wonders how come he never quite gets the look he saw at the store. I mean, the mannequins are a size 0 and they still nip off the waists of the clothes when they dress the mannequins. Mmmm, maybe that explains why my husband was so excited to have bought me some clothes that were on clearance when there was no occassion calling for him to go girl clothes shopping! I mean, why spend good cash to buy clothes at full price if you will not get the mannequin look.

I so totally did not wake up with a splitting headache from lack of sleep and did not enjoy a guilt free morning sleeping in till noon. I mean, the last time that happened, I was in college and every self respecting wife and mother would take advantage of a free morning to clean, organize, and take care of others. I am not typing this and thinking that having one of these mornings every three months should be on my list of new year's resolutions.