Adopting an Older Child: preparing the house

Adoption is an interesting and confusing process. It's emotional and heartbreaking long before you ever meet your children. The confusion doesn't go away once you know who your kids are either. If anything, it gets more confusing.

I am the type of person that likes to do as much research as possible about parts of my life that have become confusing or challenging. I make lists and methodically prepare for every conceivable situation.

Unfortunately for me, there isn't a ton of information out there about the logistics of going from no children to multiple school-aged children. Tons about attachment (and if we were adopting a baby we would be totally set), but none about logistical things like how many extra towels to have on hand and how to go about setting up a welcoming temporary bedroom.

Please don't misunderstand me. Attachment is incredibly important and my husband and I are absolutely doing work to prepare for that aspect of welcoming kids into our family.

But pretending like there aren't logistical issues to consider would be almost equally as foolish as ignoring attachment. I mean... the kids will be spending the night before they move in and they will need towels and sheets and other necessities. Things they won't be able to give their opinion on until they need those things. Items my husband and I, as the adults, need to consider. Like toothpaste.

So... with all of that said, I am going to begin a series of posts chronicling what Steve and I figure out as we prepare our home for our kiddos. This first one is about general preparations and categories of things we plan to tackle before the kids spend the night for the first time.... which should happen some time in June.

1. create simple, welcoming bedrooms for kids - Closer to move-in the kids will be able to make these spaces their own, but they should be able to spend their first overnight visit in a room that reflects how excited we are to have them with us.

2. Creating a bathroom space for kids - Our guest bathroom is going through a transition along with us. What do the kids need and what can wait?

3. Prepare our fridge, pantry, and kitchen - Some of this was done for our homestudy, but some things are just logistical in nature like organizing the fridge to include a "quick snacks" section and making sure our Tupperware is kid friendly.

4. BOOKS - Adding to and sorting through our current library collection to include reading material for the kids at their reading level and within their range of interest.

5. Technology - What gadgets are we planning to use? What are we doing with our current tech items to keep the kids safe? What about social media?

6. Adoption registry for the older child - We may not be adopting a baby, but our friends and family have definitely been asking about celebrating with us and helping us stock up on essentials.

7. preparing our extended family - Discussing relevant issues with them and figuring out who and when to go about introducing everyone.

Closing one door and opening another

Today was my very last day at my school for the 2015-2016 school year.

We said goodbye to the kids yesterday (with no small amount of tears on my part) and finished packing up our classrooms and saying goodbyes to other teachers today. My room was mostly packed already since I have had a group of very helpful little firsties this year. They were ALL ABOUT helping me box things up and take them to my car. They especially liked our donation trips where I let them take left over consumable supplies like paper towels, soap, and notebook paper to other teachers' classrooms.

I finished everything before lunch time today and drove back home with a conflicted heart.

While I cherish the memories made and lessons learned about myself and my teaching style, I can't help but look forward to my next adventures at my new school with an incredible amount of enthusiasm.

And then there's the excitement about what this summer has in store for Steve and me.

We had a document review last week which went incredibly well. Now we are anxiously awaiting the formal staffing and first visit with our children!

I'm going to withhold more details about the children at least until we are further along in the visitation process, but we are beyond thrilled to have found these kids and to be able to meet them so soon.

Assuming things go well with the initial meet and greet and the formal staffing, we will be spending our summer visiting with our kids and moving them into our home.

I am so incredibly hopeful for this new journey and thankful for all the prayers which have brought us this far. I have a feeling that summer 2016 is going to be one of those life changing summers people write songs and stories about.

that one kid

If you're a teacher you know exactly who I am talking about...

That one kid in class who can't sit still, refuses to participate, is constantly playing around instead of working, and generally just tap dances on your very last nerve.

Yup... let's talk about that kid.

Last year I had one. I've got another one this year. All of my teacher friends have one in their classrooms as well. I've had one in every classroom I've ever been in.

If I am being completely honest: I absolutely adore "that kid" each and every year. They force me to check my attitude and ego at the door and do all I can to meet each of my students where they are. There is no "phoning it in" if you want to reach them. They aren't the type to give in and do what you want just because you are the teacher and they definitely aren't the type to draw you pictures and bring you apples just to get on your good side.

They are unapologetically themselves. And it is inspiring to see such individuality even in first grade. Even if it is a bit trying.

I won't lie... it isn't all rainbows and puppies with these kids. They can be forces to be reckoned with even in the best of circumstances. And I'm no saint. I've definitely lost my cool and made a small behavior into a giant issue without meaning to. It happens.

I bring this all up today because there are exactly 10 days left in the school year.

10 days with my sweet first graders before we all leave for the break and I leave my school for a new one.

As I pack my things and plan our end-of-year activities I know who I will miss the most.

That kid.

My special snowflake who can't sit still for more than 2 seconds and begs me to let him play "cool math" or do GoNoodle dances after every center rotation.

It hit me especially hard today because of something that happened at dismissal. 

You see... this little boy does not really show affection. If he is close to you then you have a better chance of getting sand thrown at you than getting a hug.

But he hugged me today. I called him to get on his bus and, before stepping onto the bus stairs, he stopped and gave me a huge bear hug and said "I see you tomorrow, Mrs. Riecke!"

It felt like I had just been crowned Queen of England. And I promptly teared up because I'm going to miss that kid. And I only have 10 days left.

the beginning of the end

My brain can't really handle the fact that Sunday is May 1st.

I mean, I know I have been there with my kids day in and day out since August, but this school year seems to have FLOWN by. It's like I turned around and my sweet firsties are composing informational texts and subtracting two digit numbers with ease!

I'm so proud of these kiddos. Really.

I'm also going to miss them.

My district is redrawing some zoning lines in an effort to alleviate overcrowding in my school and others in our cluster. As a result, many of my students will not be at our school next year. On top of the large amounts of people which move as a result of our community being highly transient.

But the students are not the only ones leaving. I'm leaving, too.

At the end of this school year I'll be packing up my things and moving to another school closer to my home. New school, new district, new county... same grade level though. :)

My choice to switch school districts wasn't easy and I agonized over the decision for months. In the end though, I knew it was going to be the best choice in the long run. This school is within the district where I grew up and attended school myself when I was a kid. It's one of the best in the state. It's also within the school system our house is zoned for which means our kids could come to school with me, yet still make friends with kids who live near us.

There will be perks like having a regular classroom inside the building and more resources than you could shake a stick at.

It also has a population similar to the school where I currently teach which was a HUGE deal for me when making the decision. I'm still going to be working with a high immigrant population and a good deal of students receiving ESOL services.

The only thing it won't have are my former students and the amazing coworkers I have come to know and love. But I am confident that, through the connectivity tool that is facebook and my own willingness to jump in with optimism, this move will be for the best.

The quotable Mr. Thoreau

This is an insanely popular quote. To the point that people have had these words tattooed on their bodies.

It also served as the inspiration for the title of my little corner of the internet here on this blog due to it being my favorite quote from a literary figure I have revered since reading an excerpt of Walden when I was 15.

You see, I can most assuredly be classified as a Transcendentalist. It has been thrown at me by professors as an insult before (literary nerds have weird insults). The whole "people and nature are inherently good" philosophy is practically my life motto. Actively engaging in life to benefit your circumstances or the circumstances of causes that you hold dear is what I do. 

My current job and choice of employer is clear evidence of that.

However, the events of last week ignited all of my pent up frustration about this waiting game and I found my brain raging against this quote. I was pretty angry and felt that this quote, which has had a deeply rooted place in my heart for over 10 years, was deeply flawed.

After all... I have spent years going quite confidently in the direction of my lifelong dream of motherhood and I am nowhere NEAR living the life I have imagined. In fact, that aspect of my life is playing out more like a nightmare at the moment. All the self reliance in the world will not fix my broken reproductive system OR our adoption struggles. 

I actually planned to write this very blog post about how wrong this quote was and how I would be changing the name of this blog to something new and different.

In my search for a new quote, I stumbled across the Walden Woods Project misquotations page. This quote I have loved for so long is actually a famous MISQUOTE . The actual quote as it appears in Walden is:

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

Henry David Thoreau

Isn't it amazing how a few words can make all the difference? I love the inclusion of the word "endeavor". I love that there is more there than a simple cause and effect structure. Whereas I have always understood the quote to be almost an "if, then" statement (IF you go confidently in the direction of your dreams, THEN you will live the life you've imagined), it is, in fact, an anecdotal observation that we all must try our best to be the people we wish to be and be open to a fluid interpretation of success.

That is something I think we can all embrace. 

this is not my week

It's been an emotional week.

That's also a gross understatement.

We had our document presentation on Monday with our caseworker and, even now, I fail to be able to explain my emotions upon leaving.

Really.

Suffice it to say.... we are no longer pursuing our most recent match. It felt like a punch to the gut to read through the documentation and realize that we are so poorly suited for these kids. I can't go into detail about why for privacy reasons, but they were significant.

And they did not apply to just one child either.

As I mentioned in my last post, adoption is forever. Whatever kids we do bring into our family will be there for a lifetime. It's permanent. We have to be honest about what we are willing and able to handle for forever.

One thing that made the situation particularly rough is that this is not the first time this has happened to us. And we had zero time to process our emotions about the failed match because we couldn't afford to take more time off of work for an adoption that wasn't going to happen.

Add in state testing this week for my school and you have one long, emotionally draining week.

I stumbled across this music video while browsing YouTube the other day and it has brought me a certain amount of peace the last couple of days. Enjoy! And I hope you have been having a better week than me.

the potential match

Shortly after we started back to work after spring break we had a discussion with our caseworker. The two boys we were hoping to match with found their match with a different family. Its a weird emotion to experience joy for the kids' potentially forever match and sorrow for your missed match at the same time. That's adoption from foster care for you.

I'm told we will experience a lot of those weird conflicting emotions in our journey.


Our conversation was not all bittersweet though. We found out that our previous caseworker (the one we loved that went out on maternity leave) had been in contact with another caseworker about a different sibling group of children for us before she went on maternity leave. That caseworker hadn't said anything else since we made the switch to our new caseworker, so nobody had told Steve and I that there was a possible match in the works.

Turns out, there was. We have a match!

For those of you who have never been in this position, let me be the first to tell you: it is intense. Before, we worked in generalities for the most part.
Yes- we will consider these special needs.
No - we will not consider that diagnosis.
Now we have a specific set of children to consider with all kinds of specifics to pour over and make decisions about. How do we feel about this situation, can we handle that behavior.... Are we even capable of going from no kids to 4 kids practically overnight?

All of this within the context of forever. If we proceed with this match the end result is this set of kids becoming ours forever. This formal match process is the only time we have to decide whether we are the right adults to take on the privilege of parenting these specific children.

Do our strengths with regard to their situation and specific needs outweigh our weaknesses?

I promise I'm not trying to be a downer. I'm just trying to express what a complete mindfuck this last week has been. And I know those experiences have just begun.

Let me tell you what the next steps are... That's always the question I get asked by people when we talk about the adoption:

1) document presentation: Sit down with our caseworker and go over every piece of paperwork related to these kids since they came into care. Usually psychological evaluations, reports, medical reports, school records, IEPs if there are any... that kind of thing. It's exciting because you find out little things like names, birthdays, favorite foods, what they like to do... but also sobering things like why and when they came into care. Ours is scheduled for Monday afternoon.

2) formal staffing: meeting with everyone involved with the case - Steve and I, our caseworker, the kids' caseworker, foster parent, and regional adoption coordinator. We meet at the DFCS office in the county where the kids reside and Steve and I get to ask all of our questions about the kids we have based on their documentation. We also get to talk with people who actually know the kids and get their input since no kid is as one-dimensional as they seem on paper. This meeting is also when we create our visitation plan.

3) visitation - This is when we finally meet the kids. It starts with a brief meeting (around 2 hours, usually at the kids' foster home) and proceeds from there with visits gradually increasing in duration and eventually leading to visitations in our home with the kids spending the night.

4) move in - If all the previous steps go well, the kids move in with Steve and I permanently. We have them 24/7, every day. This period before finalization allows us to get an idea of what day to day life will be like with the kids. We experience getting them ready for school, eating dinner together, taking them to their various appointments and activities, interacting with friends and family.... the things that make up real life.

5) finalization - a minimum of 6 months from move in day is when finalization occurs. This is when we go down to the courthouse and a judge issues the final adoption paperwork. From this point we are officially, legally, a forever family.

If I haven't made this clear... I am BEYOND excited to begin this process and potentially meet my kids. I am trying to be cautiously optimistic, but I'm the kind of person who puts my whole heart into something or none at all. Staring down potential heartbreak is intense... but it is way better than the alternative of never experiencing something worth risking my heart for.