It’s Surprising!

As many of you know, Jason threw me a surprise party for my birthday this past weekend! It was Asian themed. Apparently, Jason and my good friend Rebecca had been planning this for a while. Looking back there were some clues, but not many and at the time I did not notice them, so I was very surprised!

His cover story was that my in-laws were coming into town to visit our new nephew (born on April 17th). We were cleaning the house to host Jason’s mom and dad. He did A LOT of the cleaning and I helped a little. I had to work a lot this week so he was left to do most of the cleaning.

He got me out of the house to decorate and get the house ready by having Rebecca invite me over to her house for dinner and a craft. Afterward, we were going to sneak back to my house to play the Wii. So, I thought that it was just going to be the two of us playing Wii, but instead I was greeted with a load “SURPRISE!!!” by my friends and family as I entered the house.

The house was decorated with paper lanterns, bamboo sticks, Asian vases, a “Surprise!” sign written in Korean (which actually translated as saying, “It’s Surprising!”), and a lot of people were wearing Asian hats. The food was take-out from Leeann Chin’s (YUMMMY). They had planned activities such as: Origami, fortune writing, and a 20 question “quiz” about yours truly. They handed out party favors that were chopstick pencils, actual chopsticks, and Korean drum ornaments. I think that the biggest surprise was the gift that Jason got for me. He ordered a traditional Korean dress call a Hanbok weeks ago from eBay. It is beautiful, and I wore it for the party.

The party was a lot of fun. I was so touched to see all of my friends and family there to surprise me. Some people had to travel a long way to get there and I really appreciate that!

Thank you to everyone who helped with the party and kept the secret. What a fun night!

Here is a picture of the Hanbok




Here is me next to the sign that says "It's Surprising" in Korean



Here are some pictures of the house decorated

Parenting Class

We went to a parenting class that the adoption agency put on this weekend. The class was with other families adopting internationally. There were about 8 couples there and 1/2 were adopting from Korea and 1/2 were adopting from Ethiopia. A retired nurse who used to specialize in international adoption ran the class. It was very informative. Since we will not be getting a new born it was nice to get an idea of what developmental stage the child will be at. It will be sad that we will miss some important stages of growth: such as the first smile, learning to crawl and first words or sounds, but something that we are not going to feel cheated about missing is the sleeping schedule of a new born! : )
We also got some ideas of how to "baby proof" our house since we will be getting a child that is already on-the-move! As a gift they handed out outlet covers, a good place to start! To celebrate completing the class we went out the lunch and did some shopping together (something we wont be doing much of once the child comes - so we hear!)

Children's Books

Many of you might be wondering what to do as you wait with us. I have an idea. We received a list of children's books that deal with adoption: both domestic and international. Here is a list of the ones that I like so far:

We Adopted you Benjamin Koo
I Don’t Have Your Eyes
We See the Moon
Over the Moon
Through Moon and Stars and Night Skies
Red Thread: An Adoption Fairy Tale
Tell Me Again, About The Night I Was Born
Adoption Is for Always
Little Miss Spider
Horace

You could check out these books and buy some for your house... it would be nice to have them around at grandma/grandpa's and memaw/pepaw's and aunts/uncle's houses too. OR you could buy them for us to have at our house : ) For those of you with kids already, this might be a great way to introduce the idea of adoption.

Fingerprints

We had our fingerprints done today to finish our I600A form (the form we had to fill out to be allowed to bring an immigrant into the country) we had to go to the USCIS (United States Customs and Immigration Services) office which was in St. Paul off of Snelling Ave (not too far from the state fair grounds). Our Appointment was at 8 AM, of course since it was so early it was also snowing to add to the excitement! We arrived about 20 minutes early and had to wait until 8:00 exactly, for them to open the doors. Once inside we had some more paper work to fill out, and then it was on to the fingerprinting!

I have to say I was quite impressed with the fingerprinting capabilities that they had. They were able to scan all of finger prints into the computer, so there was no ink!! We left with squeaky-clean fingers!

So, now it take 90 business days for them to process our information to give us permission to bring an immigrant into the country. This must be done before we can travel. Since we are getting this done now, it should not interfere with our travel arrangements when the referral comes (which might not be for a while anyway).

So now we have officially done everything we can do (except pray and wait)!

We’re on THE LIST!

Today we had our 2nd home-study interview with our Social Worker (SW). This time it was in our home. Let me give you a glance of our life leading up to this home visit:

Fawnda- cleaning the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, living-room, dusting, vacuuming and scrubbing the tub. Trying to calm Jason down from being totally stressing out about the SW coming to our house and having it be clean enough to parent a child.

Jason-cleaning the basement (including the storage room and laundry room), cleaning the office, vacuuming the whole house again (stupid dog hair) and the stairs, scrubbing the top of the stove, going back over all the parts of the house that Fawnda cleaned to make sure that she did a good enough job.

Thankfully we did not get into a fight about the house and we were able to get it, as Annie would say: “Shinning like the top of the Chrysler building!”

Our SW showed up at exactly 12:30 and we gave her the official tour of the house. We then sat down in the dining room to finish our interview. We talked about our parenting philosophy, our support systems and our plans to share our adoption story with our family, friends and our future child. After we were done with the interview she had some papers for us to sign, approving us for the adoption.

So our next question was: “What is our next step?” to which she replied: “you are now done with the home-study and your name is going on THE LIST!” So we are OFFICIALLY waiting. Our names are now in the Korea Program waiting to get to the top of the pile and to get our referral. This could be a long wait, and we may not see a referral for several months.

I am still in shock that we are done with all the paper work and home-study. We just have to get invited to be finger-printed for approval to bring an immigrant into the country, and to wait some more. We thought that there were still more steps to be done. I think that this waiting is going to be the hardest part because there is little we can do; up to now we have been very active in getting to the next step. Now we just wait. To help with the wait, there is a support group for waiting families that meets once a month. I am thinking of attending next month to get support and also, hopefully, to meet other adoptive families.

After we get our referral, we have to wait 12-14 weeks to travel to the country to pick up our child. We found out today that we have some time during our stay in Korea to do some site-seeing. It will be cool to go on some of the tours and learn more about the culture.

Home-study Interview #1

We had our first interview with our Social Worker (SW) today. The whole weekend I was waiting to feel nervous, even today as we were walking up to the agency I thought that I would get some butterflies in my stomach, but I never did. I felt calm and confident the whole time. I could tell that people have been praying for us and that God was working in this situation! Our SW did a fantastic job of making us feel comfortable and relaxed during the whole interview. The SW’s job is to advocate for us during this process so in order to do that she wants as much information about us as possible.

The interview started with us asking the questions that we had for our SW. Then, our SW went through our self study and asked us questions to help her clarify our self-study responses. Most of the questions our SW asked of us were repeats from the self-study, but I am glad that we had completed the self-study so that we had already thought of our answers, instead of coming up with something on the spot. We seemed to really gel with our SW and we feel confident in her ability to work with us, which is a huge relief!!

Our next step is the 2nd interview, which is in our home. It is scheduled for March 6th (which is next week already!) So, I need to stop typing and start cleaning, cleaning, and some more cleaning!!

We have a Social Worker!

We got a call last week from our social worker to set up our first Home-Study interview. We are very excited to say that we are finally in our home-study, and it is great to have the name of our social worker.

Our first interview is set up for Monday, Feb 25th at 10 AM. We will be meeting with her at the agency. She said that it usually takes between 2-3 hours to conduct the interview.

So our next step is to finish the first interview at the agency on the 25th. We will then schedule another interview to take place in our home. After that second interview, our Social Worker will write up our Home-Study, and pass it along to the Korea Program. It really is great to reach these milestones, and to see some more coming in the foreseeable future.

Self-Study DONE!!

We had to stay up past midnight on Thursday night, but we are DONE with the self-study and Jason dropped it off at the agency on Friday. We cannot tell you how happy we are to be done. The questions were very thought provoking, and very difficult to answer on paper. Here are some samples:

Personal History
Describe your childhood and adolescence. What memorable events stand out? How were you encouraged and disciplined? What methods of discipline were more and less effective? What was your relationship with your parents and siblings? How did you deal with the transition from adolescence to adulthood? Briefly describe your current job. What do you like best/least? Do you plan any changes? How important is it to your toal life? How would you describe your state of health? What kinds of illnesses have you had or do you have? Describe your use of tobacco, alcohol or medications. How have you handled infertility in your family? What do you do to promote your health/wellness and that of your family?
(Thus concludes question number one, only eighteen more of these to go.)

Current Relationships
Describe your spouse, including stengths and weaknesses. What would you like to change about them? Describe your marriage, including communication, roles, areas of conflict, handling of disagreements, decision-making process and feelings towards spouse's parents. How will adoption impact this relationship? How will you take care of and maintain your marital relationship?

Personal Characteristics
Describe yourself, including strengths and weaknesses. What would you like to change about yourself? How do you react when you feel unappreciated? How do you express feelings such as frustration, conflict, and anger?

Parenting Skills
Describe your parenting philosophy, experiences and skills. Include plans for discipline and nurturing. Describe future goals and aspirations that you have for your child. What about parenting gives you, or will give you satifaction? What parenting skills/techniques have you used before? Have you had prior experience with your local school system? Do you feel prepared to advocate for your child as needed?

Adoptive Parenting
a.) Please describe your personal experience with adoption.
b.) What motivated you to adopt? Please discuss infertility if applicable.
c.) Describe the attitude of your extended family and friends toward your adoption plan.
d.) How do you plan to talk to your future child and others about adoption?
e.) What do you think your feelings to your future child's birth parents will be?
f.) What are your fears, concerns, and hopes about parenting through adoption?

Each of these sections is considered ONE question. There were 19 questions in all. And NO! you may not read our answers, and we don't need any suggestions as to how we should have answered. :) Can you imagine completing all of these questions, packaging them up, and mailing them off to a total stranger who will decide your fate in becoming a future parent? [insert sarcastic comment here] Maybe we should take a poll - how many of you have, or would care to answer all of these questions for your family?

So the next step is to wait for our Social Worker to call us and set up an appoinment for our first interview for our homestudy. There are a total of two interviews - one at the angency and one at our house. It really feels great to have this step done!

The PAC Experience

We attended PAC (Pre- Adoption Classes) a week ago. It was 2 days of really helpful sessions, designed to educate and support us through the adoption process. I will try to give you a simple break down of our time there.

Day 1
The classes started at 12:15 so we got to lounge about that morning, which was a nice treat for us. We were first put into a small group of couples with a social worker. We discussed topics such as adoption language, what adoption is and is not, and the gains and losses of adoption. These were all really insightful topics to talk over with others who are also adopting. We then attended a session on attachment. The session focused on how a child being raised in an orphanage or in foster care experiences attachment issues that are different than a biological child who is with you since day one. It gave us a lot to think about. During our dinner time, our social worker went through our next steps in this process. After dinner we listened to a panel of adults, who were adopted as children. These people had a great perspective on the process. This panel was followed up with a panel of birth moms. It was really enlightening to hear their stories, and it made me really appreciative to hear their side of the story. That was the end of the night, and we went home with our minds absolutely reeling!!

Day 2
The classes started at 8:30am, so we were up earlier that morning. The first session we went to was on China. The Chinese program has a 2+ year wait time right now, and it keeps getting longer. Afterward, Jason and I had to split up to go separate sessions on Korea (Fawnda) and Russia (Jason). The Korean program is very stable, and the coordinator was really personable and spunky. : ) The Russian program is unpredictable, and bureaucratic. After the country sessions were over, we had lunch with our small group. After lunch, we attended a session on trans-racial families. This was packed with eye-opening information for us. It gave us great ideas about how to embrace the heritage and culture of our child. It was also a good reminder that if we adopt a child from another race, we will not longer be a “white” family. We are excited about becoming a multicultural family, but it seems to come with its own set of issues as well. Then one of the social workers talked about the post adoption services. It is amazing what they have to offer for support after our adoption is finalized. This discussion made us feel even more confidant in our decision with this agency. The day ended with a panel of adoptive parents who were sitting in PAC about a year and a half ago. It was encouraging to hear their stories, and to think that some day we might be sitting on that panel.

After attending all of the country sessions we have decided to go with the Korean program. We are definitely excited to start researching Korea, and to start collecting knick-knacks, books, decorations, clothes, etc from Korea. I feel like we now have a closer connection to our future child!!

Due to Technological problems...

We have not been able to update out blog. Our computer is on the fritz and is in the shop being worked on. We are going to update the blog about the wonderful PAC we attended as soon as we can. Thanks for checking in and we hope to update soon.