adoption badges

I couldn’t find any simple adoption badges/buttons in the best directory there is at gtmcknight.com/buttons so I made two of them - one a boy and one a girl. Feel free to grab them if you’d like them.

moms, part I

For a lot of reasons, Hayley hasn’t spoken to her first mom G since the fall of 2004 since they spoke at her goodbye meeting after the TPR was done. They exchanged cards, letters, gifts and emails but that was the extent of it. I knew G was not happy because other people were getting to talk to and in some cases see Hayley.

The levels of contact with Hayley are something I manage very closely, with input from her former therapist, her psychiastrist and others. Then I talked it out with Jeff and sometimes even my mom about the impact, etc. I have a very specific plan and guidelines for contact, we call them ‘baby steps’ and even Hayley understands them.

Until more recently, I didn’t think Hayley was ready for that and her therapist agreement. Plus her birth mom wasn’t taking advantage of the options she DID have to contact Hayley, so adding more wasn’t something I was going to do.

Last year I send her first mom a tough letter about what she needed to do to be a bigger part of Hayley’s life. It was pretty harsh but it was valid. It was about having regular consistent contact with letters or emails, about what was acceptable to talk about and what needed to happen. At the same time, other people in G’s life were telling her the same things - people who had already established that they understood the rules of contact.

G really took it to heart and her response was excellent. Regular acceptable letters started coming and Hayley was really happy. It made me happy too, I even sent G a gift certificate to shutterfly.com so she could print more of the photos off our website - just sort of to encourage the good direction.

After about four months, I knew it was time to consider where to go with this. Could we step up the level to phone calls? My #1 guiding principle is HOW WILL THIS AFFECT HAYLEY? I decided to think hard about it, talk to my support system and watch for signs.

The biggest sign was a call from school on Wednesday that she loved me but missed G too and she was sad. I think it was over birthday party planning stuff but I’m not sure what triggered it. She has never done that before but I was glad she feels she can express herself honestly to me about G and that she can express her feelings in general!

I have a lot of conflicted feelings on several levels. I don’t want to share her but just by her existence in this world, I must. I supposed I could have been one of those mothers who pretended our daughter wasn’t adopted or ignored her birth family. But we’ve allowed everyone else into her life from her birth family except her first mom after they’ve agreed to our terms.

On the other hand, I cannot imagine how G must feel knowing her child is in the world and she can’t reach out and touch her. I will never know her role in what happened to Hayley. I thank her for carrying and keeping Hayley but so many other things happened to this child that I can’t understand.

My mother says I have to stop thinking that everyone in the world thinks and feels like I do. I may be a tough cookie but I wear my heart on my sleeve. I cry at the drop of a hat. Emotions take a toll on me.

I talked to Jeff and we felt like G had done what we had asked her to do and this was the best thing for Hayley. So I picked up the phone and called G to talk to see if we could set something up.

breakdown

On Thursday, the big TV downstairs (a lovely Sony Wega) died.

Then Hayley’s birthday party needed to be rescheduled, then completely redone at a new location.

Laundry is through the roof.

Oh and Hayley forgot she had a project due tomorrow.

save me now. Jeff won’t be home until 10.

positive effort

Jason’s family and church want photos of him as Ramses and other ones so I was so happy to be able to send all those fun photos to them for a slideshow of him at the memorial.  It felt good to be able to do something positive for his family.

Goodbye Jason aka Ramses

I don’t know how many of you know the story but the student who plays the UNC mascot was hit this weekend walking to his hotel from a convenience store. He was with the Carolina men’s basketball team in New Jersey and suffered a freak car accident, which eventually took his life on Tuesday morning.

His name was Jason Ray and he was a senior who by all accounts was just amazing. An Eagle Scout and devout Christian with a 3.6 gpa and a job lined up after graduation - just starting his American Dream. He loved being the UNC mascot, he told people since this was his senior year he was going to just ham it up and be as crazy as he could.

Outside of just running into him at games all the time, our special connection to him was that he did Hayley’s birthday party last year. It is about time for her next birthday and it just hit us so hard. I had to tell her because all her soccer friends and parents were at the party last year - and she had a soccer game on Saturday, so I had to break the news that he was hit and very ill.

She was upset. She cried and asked a lot of questions. I told her we should pray as much as we can for God to look after him and his family. She named a stuffed animal after him and seemed down for awhile. She has a lot of questions about how and what happened. I tried to spare her the worst.

By the next day when things looked very bad, she asked if she could go to his funeral if he passed away. I didn’t want to consider that but then he did passed away on Tuesday. I knew it was coming by the things they were saying and as much as I love Carolina, his accident made me so much less concerned about the NCAA games. I always get emotional at the end of the season. I’ve been attached to the senior basketball players in some case for six years - watching them in HS and college, picking our favorites, meeting them, photos, games, autographs. The cycle has gone on for me since I was small and Hayley does it now too. The first player she ever met, ever took a photo with is graduating - Reyshawn Terry. She cried over his departure, she cried over Ramses. We just had a cry-fest for awhile over it all.

Our contact with Jason wasn’t very extensive but he was magnetic that afternoon. Hysterical, wonderful and the kids adored him. He did things in that Ramses suit I was sure I couldn’t even do in my own body. When he went down the big inflatable slide at Pump It Up, I nearly wet my pants laughing. He was the highlight of the party.

My heart is broken for his family and friends. Keep them in your prayers

webkinz

Webkinz. It seemed like such a fun thing when we heard about it. Most of her soccer friends were involved in it and for a minute I felt clueless and like a mad mom. I know I shouldn’t feel that way over commercial stuff but at times I do.

So it turns out they are this stuffed animal you get with a code to login to the Webkinz.com website where you get a virtual pet just like the stuffed one. The online pet has a room you can outfit and the site has all sorts of games. Think of it as a kiddie cross between The Sims and Second Life.

We are very conscious about Hayle’s online activity. Her PC isn’t online so she gets online on my or Jeff’s laptop, in the living room with us. My first concern with this was the way they could communicate with friends on there. Fellow parents assured me it was all preset options, meaning all the interactions are from a menu of already scripted comments and completely safe. So I got her the small version of the stuffed animal and away we started down this path.

I was surprised to find it does have some educational uses. Some of the games are educational, you have some elements of budgeting and the pet does better with healthy food. But it does encourage too much commercialism in my eyes. I try to play with her and direct her towards a healthy balance of fun and educational games. I found myself playing some of the games just to kill some time and then I found myself logging in to get certain deals for her.

Jeff and I are both gamers. We’ve allowed Hayley to play with us at times at our games and we’ve got several games systems at home. I’m online frequently because I develop sites and I work from home. I think we’ve done some lousy modeling because Hayley is so interested in playing webkinz. She wants to call her friends and have them get on ALL the time. She wants to play it as often as possible and she ends up not playing it often because she has pestered and pestered us for our laptops. UGH.

Did we create this webkinz monster with our playing our games in front of her? Does she think my being online for work - and for pleasure, including my sanity-needed blogging, is just one big game? Does she think that — ooo wait, that pink chair on sale from 2pm-3pm, I gotta run buy it for her.

three little letters

Three little letters sent me into a dizzy.

A whole other stage to enter. More grownup issues for us and our growing up too quickly girl.

How do I talk about this? What do I say? This is so much earlier than I dealt with it.

And where do I buy it???

Nope, not the three letters you thought, not S - E - X.

Three other letters - B - R - A. She wants a bra and is just starting to be at the point where she could wear the very basic training bras.

Doesn’t she know this is just a hassle? Just like shaving your legs… they may be rights of passage but they are pain in the butts for women in my opinion. I certainly don’t want mine down to my knees but some days I want to burn my bra. There is no such thing as a really comfy bra. Just like there really is no easy way to remove ALL the hair from your legs. UGH. I’m not even getting into PMS yet.

I picked up a couple last night. No idea if they’ll work but we’ll go from there. She saw them in the bag in the back seat and spent the morning clammering to wear them. Begging and pleading as intently as she did for the candy she wanted last week. I told her tomorrow. I want to talk about this and make sure they fit, do things right, while of course she wants to run headlong into impending tweenhood.

Hayley, I know you want to grow up so quick but really REALLY, I advise you to stay young - for my sanity and yours.

Then and now…

Then - first photos we ever saw of her.

Now - two weeks ago before school

Dreams

I had a horrible dream that we had lost Hayley back into foster care and she was missing in the system basically. That somehow when she was still a foster child, she had gone for a visit and on the visit, they decided someone else should be her parents. I was fighting with social workers and then driving around some rural community trying to find her.  None cared. Files were missing. Doors were closed to me. My lawyer friends weren’t answering their phones. It was terrifying.
We were lucky in the real world, she came to us with a TPR already so we never had that time of uncertainity once we met her.  We had to go through a rough selection process but that kind of thing is my forte and I enjoyed the challenge (former debater/poli sci major). I’ve been involved with politics and government, so I know how to manage things.

So here I am, in this vivid dream watching some old house to see if she is inside it. I don’t even know what I would have done at that point. She was stuck in some bureacratic nightmare that I could not save her from - something doubly frustrating to me.  I could not manage this situation.

I awoke drenched in sweat but very glad she was next to me hogging all the covers. I laid there, rubbing her head and I tried to sort out what this was about in the present.

Aim I afraid that I can’t manage her future? That no matter how much I plan things out, that life will go it’s own way no matter what?

Is this my attempt at subconcious empathy for her birth family?  A complex situation there but no matter what I cannot imagine the horror of losing a child to the DSS system. Guilty or innocent, to have a child lost from you to the bureaucracy must shatter you.

Hayley rolled over and slung herself under my chin. She’ll stay there about a minute and then flay out, still gripping me.  She opens her eyes and says Momma and does her funny voice and stretch we call ‘baby pterodactyl’.  I snuggle her up in the blankets and we doze some more before school. Maybe her opening her eyes and saying Momma is all the answer I need. That I am her mother and losing her would break my heart, however it happened.

Our timetable

Some of you dear readers have asked how long our adoption process took. That isn’t really an easy question because of the parameters involved, so the logical thing was to post a timeline.

Yes, this happened much quicker for us than EVERYONE told us it would. I’ve always felt like it was a combination of our working our butts off and fate/God/Karma/guardian angel grandparents.

Our adoption timeline
December 2003 We applied to agency
Early January 2004 first meeting with agency
January 2004 lucked into MAPP training starting in; same time I launched into the paperwork piles
March 2004 finished MAPP classes
April 2004 had final approval to adopt and were waiting for licenses as foster parents; started looked at profiles of kids around then
June 2004 looked at two kids but nothing serious and didn’t work out.
Late June 2004 started getting antsy and looking at out of state kids in
Monday June 19th, 2004 at 4:25 PM got an interesting email about a child that was a fit with our profile
Monday June 19th, 2004 at 4:30 PM called, email and begged for our profile to be sent for that child,
August, 2004 found out we were in the final group to be considered.
August 13th, 2004 interviewed up in the county Hayley was from. Eight people at table but we wowed them. We knew then no one could be a better fit for her.
August 24th, 2004 a call on my cell phone changed my life and let us know we were going to be parents to Hayley!
September 26th, 2004 our first meeting with our daughter
September to October, 2004 series of visits there and here with her.
November 3rd, 2004 Hayley moved in for good
February, 2005 her DSS started final adoption stuff for us.
May 27, 2005 final adoption decree from Wake County!!