Saturday, April 02, 2011

M.A.P.P. Class One

So our first class was today and amazingly we made it on time! Those of you who know my lovely husband in person know that Cris is on "Ecuadorian" time...which means always late. He has been so great through out everything so far! We are in a class with about 28 other people. Class was interesting and very interactive. And the participants definitely took part. Which is nice!

Class started with a 5 minute presentation of Foster Care and Adoption through the eyes of a child ... it made me cry. I am such a sap. Today's discussion was mostly about how children end up in Foster Care.
The class is filed with people from all walks of life and some are there to be Foster Parents and some for Adoption. I know I could never just be a foster parent, I would not be able to keep unattached enough to not be broken hearted when a child goes back to their family. Most  of the people seem cool, I was surprised at how many people were much older, many were grandparents. Those people were there to do Foster care. There were a few couples that want to adopt. I meet some cool people which I can see becoming good support for each other through out the process and after, once we are all thrown into being families. Cris and I clicked with one couple in particular... Leigh Anne and Jerel. And I also liked this other couple Mary Elizabeth and her husband Roger...they are adopting for the 4th time. Mary Elizabeth grew up about 30 minutes away from where I did. Leigh Ann and Jerel seem to be the most like us . They are dog people like us :o)
Most people seemed to be looking for children around 6. They told us that 93% of the children in the system right now are African American with an average age of 11. And that they also work cases for the older children first. Since we have a range of 6-12 I am hoping we will get good placement in line.

I am glad we finished our million question profiles because we received homework... another 23 essay questions.

I have a little editing to do on my scrapbook, but overall I am very happy with it!
Waiting to hear back on our fingerprints and then we can have our home study.

Cris is still interested in pursuing the surrogate route using his sperm and a donor egg in Ecuador but is going to hold off for a couple years yet. We are going to concentrate on this now and then eventually look at expanding our family either by surrogate or adoption again. I get nervous about the surrogate route because we would have to deal with Immigration again, and that was nerve wrecking getting Cris his permanent status. But we will cross that bridge when we get there.

Cris had to go into work for a bit, so I think I will work on editing the scrapbook :)

3 comments:

  1. It sounds so exciting! It is great that you met some other couples, you can talk together about the process and how things are going. Maybe you can even have play dates later! :D

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  2. Boy it sounds like a lot of work but I know the prize at the end will be worth every minute!!! How great that you were able to bond with some other couples, too!!

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  3. Sounds like things are moving right along for you. And you know, if you used a state side surrogate you would not need to deal with immigration. If you want to talk more about this, let me know and I can give you any guidance I can. So very happy for you!!

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