More paperwork!

Remember how in the last blog post I said I would write about the weekend course we had back in October? Well here I am, and now it is December. Oops.
The two day course in October was a mandatory session held by our adoption agency. Although it was a crazy weekend of driving to Newmarket and back twice (we came back to attend a beautiful wedding on the Saturday night), we found the session to be very informative. Most of the information provided to us was specifically related to international adoption which meant that everyone in the room was also adopting internationally. The part of the session that I enjoyed most was how to prepare for your trip. The two people running the session have each adopted two girls from China so the information they provided was very helpful for us. I know that I am providing a very broad overview of the session but I feel like the next part of my post is much more interesting...I hope.

Last week I went to the post office to send a very large package to our adoption agency which included all of our documents needed for our application to China (this is separate from the package we sent to the Ontario Government). When I was preparing the package and asking to purchase the waterproof envelope (because I am crazy like that) I started to get emotional. I felt like I was sending our lives away in this package. This is another huge item to check off of our to do list and it felt amazing to have it done, but also scary to think that the Chinese government would be basing their decision on the stack of papers and photos in the water poof envelope. Just to clarify, I didn't send the package to China, first it goes to our adoption agency where they get notarized copies of everything (but not before they receive a large sum of money, which also made me cry, but for different reasons). Our agency is hoping that they will get back our approval from the Ontario Government before everyone goes on Christmas holidays. So we were in a bit of a rush to get the documents to Children's Bridge in order for them to send it to a lawyer for notarized copies (which apparently can take 3 weeks). Everyone keep your fingers crossed that we receive our approval within the next week or so.

Here is a list of the items that were in the China application package:
Letter of application to adopt
Home Study - the same one that went to the Ontario Government
Guardianship statement - included in our homestudy
Letters of employment
Financial statement
Physical examinations - these were different physical exams than the ones required by the Ontario Government, we were required to get blood tests, they also look at our body mass index
RCMP Interpol Clearances
Local Police Clearances
Marriage Certificates - notarized copies
Birth Certificates - notarized copies
Photocopies of our Passports
4 additional passport photos
Application form of Notarization/Legalization
5 more adoptive applicant reference form letters - thank you to all of those who filled out a second reference form for us
Photos - we had to create a photo collage I guess you could call it but it had very specific requirements. It had to include a photo of the exterior of our home, lifestyle photos, and a 4x8 family photo. We weren't supposed to submit photos with sunglasses or hats on and no photos that included alcohol (duh). The photos had to fit on 8.5 by 11 paper and we could not submit more than 5 sheets of photos.

Yesterday we sent two forms of payment to Children's Bridge. One was a Cheque payable to The Children's Bridge in Trust and the other was a US bank draft payable to the Children's Bridge in Trust. The cheque paid for our balance of agency fees and notarization, visas, authentication and disbursements, coordinators disbursements (which basically means adoption facilitation). The Us bank draft was our fees for the China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA). As far as I know we will not have to pay any more money until we travel to China (which gives us a little breathing room). Right now it seems like an impossible amount of money to pay back (I will not hide the fact that we had to get a loan from our bank). But I know in the end it wouldn't matter how much money it was, it will all be worth it in the end. We are one step closer to adopting our little boy. Just typing that makes me start to cry.

And so with that I am going to sign off and wish everyone a Merry Christmas from the Palmer family. You probably will not see any posts on here until the new year unless something really exciting happens. Have a safe and happy holiday everyone.

Adoption Awareness Month

Happy November everyone! Did you know that November is Adoption Awareness Month? The Adoption Council of Ontario website https://www.adoption.on.ca/adoption-awareness-month provides some great ideas on how to celebrate National Adoption Awareness Month, check it out. This month offers us a special opportunity to celebrate, promote, educate, advocate for, and create dialogue about adoption. Please join my family in celebrating adoption this month. Thank you!

Home Study...check.

I promised all of you that I would post about our Home Study process after it was completed. So here I am, keeping my promise. Thank you everyone for being so patient.
Back in July I wrote about all of he paperwork my husband and I had to fill out  in preparation for our Home Study. Most of that paperwork would be submitted along with our Home Study Report to the Ontario Government (Police checks, medicals etc) but the two surveys we filled out (one about our upbringing and family, the other about our relationship) would be the basis of our discussion when we met with our Adoption Practicioner Kim.
Before our first meeting with Kim my husband and I were very nervous. We had talked to her on the phone once and communicated a few times through email so we weren't entirely sure what to expect. We went around the house and scrubbed it from top to bottom and we installed additional childproofing throughout the house as we knew there would be a home inpection. When Kim arrived we were both pleasantly surprised. She was laid back and very friendly which immediately put us both at ease. She stated from the beginning that she thought that the Home Study would be a very straighforward process and since we already have a child living in the home the home inspection would be a breeze. Phew!
Overall we had 4 meetings with Kim in our home. Each of the meetings lasted around 2 hours and consisted of candid conversations about our lives, our history and our future with an adopted child.
Our daughter was present at only one of the meetings and luckily she behaved like an angel. Another Phew! She even offered Kim one of her plastic cupcakes from her play kitchen to eat. :)
I think that the easiest way to tell you about the Home Study is to outline the end result, which is the Home Study Report. This report will be sent to the Ontario Government by the end of this month.

The report is 17 pages long and contains the following information:
Applicant information - our names, address, phone numbers and email addresses
Dates of contact - outlines the dates we were interviewed and where they took place
Further applicant information - including information like my maiden name, our birth dates, religion, education, languages, occupation, racial origin, ethnic origin, and citizenship
Date of our marital partnership - the day we were married
Names of children and birth dates
Medical report information
Motivation - this was a one page report on our motivations to adopt and where we want to adopt from. It outlines the steps we have taken already in the adoption process etc.
Extended famly members - lists our parents, siblings and their spouses and their children as well as where they live.
References - lists the names of our wonderful family and friends that filled out reference forms on our behalf
Criminal Record Check/Child Welfare Check/RCMP Finger Print clearing
Profiles - there is a half page profile for each of us - our hair and eye colour, physcial appearance and fitness level, personality, occupation, character traits, family make-up and extra curricular activities
Family Lifestyle - this outlines our lifestyle and activities we participate in together, it touches on things like childcare for our children, guardianship (if needed), our household routines, and how we discipline our children
Home and comunity - describes our home in detail and how it is decorated (she said tasteful and modern, woo hoo), it also outlines the neighbourhood we live in.
Legal/financial rights and responsibilities - here is a little quote from that section "Applicants have been advised of their duty of honest disclosure and candour along with their ongoing duty to disclose of new event or information, which may require an updated or amended home study."
Historical information- this was a full page report on each of us individually outlining our family make up, our upbringing, and our childhoods.
Personal characteristics - outlines our communication skills individually and how we handle stress etc.
Marital/Domestic Partnership - discusses our relationship from the beginning until now, this was also a full page report.
Children - discussed our daughter and the person she is as a result of our parenting (the cupcake helped in this section)
Extended family relationships - this talks about our relationships with our families together as a couple
Physical/Social environment - outlines our income, home value, RRSPs and savings etc.
General Parenting - discusses our parenting style and techniques we use and will continue to use with our adopted child
Specialized parenting - states that we have completed PRIDE Training and are aware of the challenges that come along with th role of being full-time parents a second time to an adopted child. This was a long report as it talks about challenges with children who are adopted from orphanages and with medical issues etc.
Family Preparation and Training Activities - this was a report on what we learned at PRIDE Training.
Adoption issues - outlines our desire to expand our family through adoption and our willingness to discuss our future as adoptive parents
Psychological evaluation conclusions - outlines things like providing an open atmosphere to our daughter and our adopted child about their history and appreciating that  by adopting from China we will become a bi-racial family etc.
Placement considerations - says YES, we are reccomended to adopt!!!!

Okay so I know that is a lot of information, but I wasnt really sure how else to show you the amount of information that was in the report. I thought about scanning the document and posting it here but it does include information about our parents and siblings and since this isn't a their blog I didn't think that was fair.
Now I can hear most of you asking..okay, so now what?
So now Kim will send this report to our Adoption Agency (Children's Bridge) where they will approve it and then send it to the Ontario Government. Then we wait.....approximately 6-8 weeks to hear if we are approved by the government. Keep your fingers crossed everyone.
While we wait for our approval we have a mandatory two day training course to attend that is put on by our Adoption Agency. The course is this weekend so you can expect another post about it fairly soon.
Talk to you soon.

Don't worry we are still here....

There has been a lot of people who have been asking us about our adoption lately. I started thinking, when was the last time I wrote a blog post? So I took a few minutes today to check. JULY! Oops, sorry everyone. Don't worry I didn't completely forget about our followers, life has just become very busy. Not really busy in the adoption world, but busy with back to school, and sports, and back to daycare etc. I was waiting to finish our home study before I wrote another post so that I could summarize the whole process. I am still going to do that because we only have one more session to go and it is in a couple of weeks. So I apologize for the delay, but I promise the wait will be worth it.

Happy Fall Everyone.

Just the beginning...paperwork.

Summer is here and we are busier than ever with our 2 year old daughter. So, I apologize for the delay in posting this update.
After our PRIDE Training we were in contact with our Adoption Practitioner Kim to set up our first meeting. Once we set up a date for Kim to come and meet us she sent us a very large package of documents to fill out. I know that this is just the first of MANY papers we will have to complete so I tried to keep an open mind as checked off boxes on a variety of surveys. Here is a list of the documents/information we needed to provide to Kim. Keep in mind this is just the documentation required for the Ontario Government. I will have to write another post about the China paperwork.

• References - both of us had to provide; 1 relative, 1 long-time friend, 1 current friend who knows both my husband and I
•  General application form - provided general information about us and our desires for an adopted child
• Release of information forms - Doctors release form, three forms for Kim (Adoption Practitioner) to release information to Children's Bridge, Children's Aid Society, and the Ontario Government
• A memo to adoptive parents - outlined  the roles of our Adoption Practitioner, Children's Bridge, and the Ontario Government
• Financial information - we provided our employment income, monthly disposable income, monthly expenses, and our assets, liabilities and net worth
• A child welfare record check release
• Survey #1 - This survey asked questions about our upbringing. Relationships with our parents, their parenting styles and abilities, their discipline techniques, and personal values. We also checked boxes that described our spouses characteristics and their roles in our relationship. The last section of the survey dealt with our current relationship with our parents and any medical information about our family that would be considered important (depression, drug/alcohol abuse etc) This survey was very intense, it asked a lot of personal questions that were sometimes awkward to answer.
• Survey #2 - The second survey asked questions about my husband and I. Specifically questioning if we have any past criminal records, bankruptcy issues, and drug or alcohol abuse. It also asked if we have received counselling or therapy for a number of issues.
• Medicals - each of us require our doctors to fill out a medical for both the Ontario Government and China.
• Police Checks - we are required to have a local police check as well as a RCMP Interpol Security clearance (for this one we have to be fingerprinted)

And apparently that is just the beginning! It felt very good to send back a majority of the information to Kim. It made me feel like we accomplished one more thing on a very long list of "to do" items. Once I get a little more time I will write about our first meeting (Home Study) with our Adoption Practitioner Kim. Stay tuned...

* I apologize for the lack of excitement in this blog post, unfortunately I feel like a lot of posts in the future may be like this :(

PRIDE Training Day #4 - We did it!!!

It's official (according to the certificate pictured above), we have completed PRIDE Training. Woo hoo!
Our last day was full of useful information and was probably the class we enjoyed the most. We spent most of the morning talking about our SAFE Homestudy Assessment (the next step in our adoption journey). We were able to ask a lot of questions about the process which eased our minds a little bit. Basically, the Homestudy is an assessment of the two of us and our immediate family by our Adoption Practitioner. Sounds intrusive doesn't it. On top of helping us to prepare our documentation to apply for our adoption, our practitioner will be making sure we are ready, willing, and capable of providing a home for an adopted child. Although our house is already equipped with child locks and safety features there will be a lot of other things that she will need to know about us before we can send in our adoption application. There will be reference checks, and physicals, and police checks (apparently my husband will also need one from Australia since he lived there for 7 months, that should be fun) etc. But I promise I will explain this process more once we are actually in the middle of it.
Our afternoon was filled with information on topics that will be important once our little boy is home with us. Topics like how to create a healing and nurturing home and how to use positive adoption language with everyone we come into contact with. I know that positive adoption language will be especially important for us since we will be adopting a child of a different race. We will need to be prepared for difficult questions from family, friends, children, and strangers about our child. It will be something our family will face our entire lives. Hopefully we will answer those questions in a way that all of our children will feel equally loved by their Mom and Dad. Because no matter how our family was made, all of our children will be our own.
Something that really interested me from our discussion on Saturday was creating Life Books for your adopted child. Life Books are a way for children to learn about themselves. They are essentially a photo book about their story on how they came into our lives. I love photo books and always have since I was a child, I think I will really enjoy making one for our boy and I am sure it will also strengthen my connection with him throughout our journey. It is a book that I hope he will refer to and be proud of his entire life.
I feel like I could write this post forever, the information we received in PRIDE Training was so beneficial and important and I'm finding it hard to fit it all into one little post. We are also very excited, we are now one step closer to adopting our child. It is crazy to think that after 4 years of talking about it we are now actually on our way!

PRIDE Training Day #3

Last weeks training heaviness felt like it lasted most of the week. Luckily we went to a great concert on Friday night with some good friends. The concert gave us a chance to relax and recharge in preparation for another training session on Saturday. Unfortunately, we stayed out far too late on Friday night. I mean it seemed like a good idea at the time, but our drive to Burlington the next morning ended up being a little more rushed than we had hoped.
The first half of our day we discussed cultural heritage. We shared stories about how we have learned about our own heritage and discussed the importance of learning about our adopted child's background as well. I really liked one of the concepts that was brought up by our leader Anne. She said that if you adopt a child from a different heritage or culture you then also adopt that culture. So once we adopt our boy from China our family will be Irish, Scottish, English, Canadian, and Chinese. Whoa that's a lot, but you get what I mean.
In the morning a guest speaker came in to talk about her experience when she adopted her two girls from China. At first we were very excited to hear her story but then quickly realized that her experience was much different than ours will be. She adopted almost 10 years ago when adoptions from China were a quicker process and when there were less restrictions on the parents applying to adopt. It was nice to hear a more relaxed approach to an international adoption. It gave us a bit of hope that maybe our adoption wont be very complicated, and that someday we can come and share our story to a training class to ease their minds about international adoption.
A majority of the afternoon was spent talking about openness in adoption. This is a subject in adoption that admittedly my husband and I are very scared of. We learned about the importance of keeping an open relationship (if possible) with the birth family of your child. Since we are adopting from another country and the likelihood of having information on our child's birth parents will be very slim, this topic didn't interest us much. We do know that someday our child may want to try and search for his birth parents. We will support him in any way we can to help him in his search if necessary. If he has a specific caregiver from China that he is attached to we will do anything we can to keep the communication open between them. At first by sending photos of him once he is home, and then possibly going back to visit where he lived once he is a little older. The openness that we will have will likely differ from most of the adoptions of our "classmates", as most of them will be hoping to adopt infants from Canada. In order to provide us with an example of an open adoption, a couple that finished their PRIDE Training course in 2013 came in to speak to us. They have just finalized their adoption of their now 10 month old, and they spoke of their relationship with the child's birth mother. They have ongoing contact with the birth mother and they have had two visits with her and the child already. They even talked about inviting her to the child's first birthday party. The concept of open adoption makes sense to me, and I can see the benefits for the child in the future by having open communication with the birth parents. But, I do know that it is not for me. At least not in the same way it is for our guest speakers. This is a difficult thing to admit because it is a selfish reason to adopt from another country but I am glad that I know and understand this about myself.
We have only one more Saturday left of PRIDE Training. I don't know how they are going to fit the remaining information into the final session because it seems like there is still a lot to cover. I guess we will see, stay tuned for an update after our last session.