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.

PRIDE Training Day #2

The only word I can think of to describe our PRIDE training yesterday would be 'heavy'. It was a long day of some difficult topics that left both of us a little drained and in some ways discouraged. We know that adopting a child comes with many challenges but we came out of the class yesterday feeling like all of the knowledge we have gained over the past two years while raising our daughter will be useless. Of course we know that this is not true but it doesn't change how we were feeling at the end of the day.
The three main topics that were covered yesterday were human development, attachment, and loss. A guest speaker arrived in the morning to talk more about child development, specifically speech. She is a Speech Language Pathologist and she talked about the services that are available to any child with delays in development. We know that our little boy will have some degree of a cleft lip or palate and she touched on the process that we will likely need to go through in order for him to receive speech therapy.
After lunch we watched a video that made us both very emotional. It featured a young girl and her baby brother and their journey through the foster care system. I found it very difficult to watch a video portraying the horrible things that some children witness and experience in their lives when their parents aren't able to take care of them and when the foster care system fails them. I ended up leaving the room as I could not watch any more. Chris stayed to watch the end of the video so that once I returned he could tell me that the story ended well. It left both of us feeling scared, helpless, and very sad. No child should have to go through something like that and it made us realize that there are very real problems and complications that come with adoption no matter what process you go through. We have always been so focused on our international adoption that we sometimes fail to see the problems that are happening right here. It made us think about being foster parents in the future once our children are older (this is something we have talked about before) and it created some really good conversations between us on our drive home.
As I said in my last post, there is one other family in our training group who have a child already. They asked our leader that has one biological child and three internationally adopted children for recommendations on integrating siblings in the adoption process. This ended up being another topic that we talked about a lot on our drive home (good thing we have an hour and a half drive, gives us lots of time to talk). One thing she recommended is that one really good way to include your child is to bring them with you when you go and get your adopted child, especially if it is an international adoption. This is something that we have always struggled with as we weren't really sure what was the best thing to do. So as crazy as it may sound, we have decided that Maeve will travel with us to China so that she can meet her little brother at the same time we are meeting him. That way she will feel completely involved in the entire process and we can start to connect as a family immediately. So now comes the fun part of teaching a 2 year old that she has a younger brother that lives in another country. And that we will someday travel on a very long plane ride to pick him up so that he can be in our family forever. I think its time to hit the children's section of our local bookstore.....