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Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Waiting game

I feel like it's been forever since I posted, but it was just last month! So much has happened and so much has changed since then.

First, I have finished my PRIDE training and all three of my home visits. All of my background paperwork, fingerprints, etc has been turned in and is back with no issues.  The last home visit was this past Monday and that is when the social worker came to meet my sons and it went really well. I am so comfortable with this office and all of the social workers that I have been involved with and I love that! I was a nervous wreck before and was always on edge before home visits and this time I have been totally chill. I even told him the second time that I didn't have time to clean for him and he was just going to have to accept us for who we are and he laughed and said his house is a whole lot worse than mine is.  Feels good to be on that comfort level because I know it is not realistic that my house is always perfect and spotless.

When I started the process to becoming a foster parent, I only wanted baby girls between the ages of newborn and 2 years old. This time we will be licensed for up to three children between the ages of newborn and nine years old. We prefer to only take in two children but are willing to take a third if it is a sibling group or if one of the bios has a baby while we have her other child/children in our home. The only way we will take an older child (school aged) is if the child is a boy (to share a room with my bio son) and it has to be a pretty significant need since we are not in the same city as the social services office and they do not like to move children that are already in school to a different city.

For the last part, I accepted a new job.  I will still be working as a Realtor but I also accepted a position that is a work from home Mon-Fri 9-5. This way I have more flexibility and I have a steady income for those slow months that occur mostly around the winter months (like right now).  Taking on this new positions allows me to take newborns without having to worry about daycare for the first six weeks as I will be able to have the baby here at home with me. I will be putting my fosters in daycare after the six week mark because I do have to work obviously but this allows for a whole lot more flexibility if one of the children is sick or has appointments (new job is really great about allowing for time off for appointments).

I am really excited to get started and according to the social worker, I should be licensed in January unless a situation comes up where I would be the perfect fit for a foster or fosters. If that is the case, they will rush my license to get the child/children placed immediately.

Wish me luck!!

Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow!!

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Here we go again

This past week I went to an orientation with a co-worker for a foster agency in our area.  I have been to an orientation with this agency before due to the baby girl I had last summer. Her sisters were placed with the same agency and when she was born, she was placed with the same foster mamma. I went to the orientation with the agency at that time knowing the baby was placed with them and when I got custody of her, I decided not to move forward with getting licensed with them.

The reason why I went to the orientation last week was because one of the girls I work with wants to be a foster parent too and she ha signed up to go to the orientation. I told her I would go with her to this orientation if she was willing to go with me to my orientation next week. She happily agreed knowing she didn't have to go alone. It became clear very quickly that this agency is not for us because they do not get children in the age groups we are looking for. I want to get babies and my co-worker is wanting children under the age of three years old.

I am really excited about going into this with a co-worker who has become a friend. I had no idea she was wanting to get into fostering and this makes going to PRIDE classes so much more exciting knowing I am not going to be alone! We have talked about being back ups for each other and her daughter is going to be my second back up because she lives in the next street over from me and is a stay at home mom.

I am beyond excited to get started with PRIDE classes and getting my license again. The classes will be done by the beginning of November and that means I have less than a month to get the nursery ready to go.  My little sister is coming to visit me this week and maybe, just maybe, I can get her to help me put the nursery together.

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Guess who's back?

Mamma's back!! 

I haven't posted on here in a really long time, so I thought it was time to give a little bit of an update.

Let's start with summer of 2015.....yes, 2015!

My oldest son is going to be turning 20 next year and of course has friends that are just as grown if not a little bit older.  June 2015 one of the guys he knows came to him and told him that social services took custody of his newborn baby at the hospital. Come to find out, the mom had two other children that were taken from her and for this reason, this little baby was not allowed to go home with her either. Dad had to do a DNA test and social services wanted to do some background checks on dad and his parents (dad lived with his parents). Until that was all competed, the baby would stay in foster care with her two older sisters. My son told dad about me and my desire to be a foster parent and told dad to come talk to me to find out what I can do to help.



Long story short, I ended up with custody of this beautiful little girl when she was 3 weeks old and I had her until she was 8 weeks old and went on to be with her new adoptive family (the uncle and his wife ended up agreeing to adopt her). My five weeks with this little beautiful girl made me realize just how much I want to be a foster parent.  I loved her something fierce and never in a million years thought I could love someone else's baby the way that I loved her. It hurt to my very core when she left to move to her new adoptive home and I cried like my heart had been ripped out of my chest and taken to someone else's house.  But.....as much as it hurt, she is in a good place and when I saw her a few weeks later, I could see how much her family loved her and she was happy there. I knew I had made the right move by being there for her during those five weeks of her life when she needed me. I needed her just as much as she needed me.

Now, on to the next part of my journey....

I graduated from college in May 2015 and finished my very last course just around the same time that little mamma came to live with me. I started my career in March of 2015 and have a stable good life. I decided to move to a bigger and better place and am now living in a house with an extra bedroom, the bedroom we refer to as the nursery.  I plan to set up the nursery with two cribs and am open to taking in one or two babies.  

Tonight I am going to an orientation for the city next to mine and in September I will be going to the orientation for another city on the other side of mine. I have decided that I do not want to be licensed in my city because they are not supportive of single parents and do not allow babies under the age of 18 months to be placed with single parents. I want to have infants and that is not going to work if I decide to stick with my city.  I have decided to check out the orientations to a few different cities (I live in an area that has 7 cities all really close together and within a 30 min drive I can get to any of these cities) and see which city best suits my needs. I want to be able to find the agency that offers the best support and the agency that is supportive of single parents and don't use that against me.  

I am really excited to start my journey all over again and looking forward sharing the journey with all of you.