Summer so far

Wow where has the summer gone.  I can't believe it's almost August.

I started summer by falling in the lake on Memorial Day with my phone in my pocket. I hadn't gotten it into the waterproof case and into the Jet Ski compartment before the Jet Ski flipped sending Don and I into the lake.  Really was pretty funny, except for my cell phone. Accidents happen and thankfully I not only had insurance for a full replacement but I got upgraded as well so it worked out better than expected.

Google images

This summer our project has been gutting the master bath and redoing all the drywall, removing a build out and putting in a new shower/tub combo plus replacing the cabinets, counters, tile floor and toilet.  The plumbing was redone as well.  It looks great and took roughly 6 weeks to do.  We hired the plumber's, tiler's and drywall experts but did the rest ourselves.

We also tackled the garden boxes this year by not just weeding and planting but we also put down landscape fabric and mulch.  Everything is growing like crazy this year.  We have lots of tomatoes, peppers, and blueberries.  The grape plant is growing like crazy too but I'm not seeing any fruit yet. Soon it'll be time to make and can up salsa and homemade spaghetti sauce and roast up the peppers.

First harvest today

End of August we fly to Atlanta for Dragon Con.  I can't wait to see all our friends again. One of our friends who live in the area just finalized their adoption for their 2 boys.  I'm thrilled that when we see each other I can congratulate them all in person.  

There are a ton of celebrities and artists I'm excited to see this year so I'll be standing in a lot of lines for panels/photos this year and Stan Lee leading the parade is going to be awesome!

That’s our summer so far.

4th updates the Charm, right?

Where have I been after the disaster that befell us?

Well we took many months to look at ourselves and our goals introspectively. Adoption isn’t a certain; going to happen thing.  Yes, we do all we can to provide a glimpse into who we are and to put it “out there” but the fact remains you have to hope something resonates with someone to inquire because a  couple page brochure isn’t the whole of who you are. Then your agency goes under out of the blue so Stunned is an understatement. We had no clue what was about to happen.  After talking with multiple news outlets we got the story out there and so did so many other families affected.

Now, it’s June and we are into our 4^th update in our 4^th year. Updates are a redo of all your paperwork, medicals, fingerprints, and additional background checks. They are a pain to get done but we do it because we must if we want to adopt.  We have a new social worker, our other one has retired and while she’s reached out during our difficulties it does fall on our new Social workers shoulders.  We met last week for our current update and she is super sweet and wants to help anyway she can.  I was Super stoked she took some of our old printed IAC letters to alter and send to lawyers and hospitals to hold onto in case of an expectant mother wanting a placement.  I’m still worried it’ll never happen.  This is our last year and then I have to resign myself to be childless.  I keep hoping someone will see us and like us and contact us (who aren’t trying to scam us) but I’m honestly becoming deflated. The majority of my contacts are folks in Cameroon wanting VISAS and other such countries with the same expectations.

So I’m in the realm of independent adoption which means we are on the web, and we apply for situations through lawyers in our inbox.  I’m obviously still on Adoptimist and other websites for us such as our own website but it’s a scary place to be.

Besides that we have recently taken a trip to Miami and Key West with our friends and had a blast.  Now that may make you think of activity after activity but we just relaxed for once.  We walked, went to the beach, ate great food, and drove to the keys where we rented jet skies and shopped in town. It was the calmest vacation we’ve had in a while. We normally are a go see all the things but not this time.

The Golden Mammoth on the Boardwalk in Miami

Depression after failure - We need your help!

So With IAC going out of business it’s been a whirlwind of not only emotions but a WTF do we do now.

I can say we contacted our local news to bring to light the problems IAC had and while it wasn’t a perfect piece at least we had our voices heard.

http://komonews.com/news/local/i-just-want-to-be-a-mother-families-agonizing-after-adoption-agency-suddenly-closes

I had a hard weekend recently in light of the closure and then our Superbowl party where I met the 2 babies who should’ve been our babies BFFS as it were. If our placement hadn’t failed last August our boy would’ve been about 2 months older than our friend’s boys they had in November/December.  It was a gratifying day to hold the babies for 8 hours but at the same time it was devastating. I actually cried the whole way home in a snow storm meaning it took us 3 hours to get home.  Now I know it’s on me and my emotions, etc but seriously it’s been 4 years and I’m human.  The week leading up to this is what I think broke me.  I’ve not had issues when the others were born, except to be jubilant in their arrival. I love those kids as my own.  I watched their parents grow up and then have them so what’s not to love!

Today, I find we’re at cross-roads.  I’ve contacted, many lawyers and none have contacted us back.  There was a lawyer in our news piece that I left a message with and here we are 5 days later and no response to our message I left for her.  I had also contacted a lawyer in Seattle and he took my name and number but never called me back; even after our social worker emailed him so ya that doesn’t breed any confidence. These are AAAA Lawyers so how are we supposed to be confidant with them handling our potential situation.  The answer is we aren’t.  Thankfully the lawyer we had with our failed placement is available but I haven’t reached out yet. This is on my to do list.

We are lucky to have own website on top of other social media but so far the biggest issue we’ve had is no one shares our pages.  Everyone says oh hey grats! hope it happens soon but no one steps up and shares us. So please if you follow us or even just read our blog please for the love of all please share our journey because now without an agency we’re stuck on word of mouth/social media. 

Our personal website is http://www.dndadoption.org/

Of course we still have FB, Twitter, Pinterest, Adoptimist, and you tube.

WTF IAC - Time for a new direction

Today was not a good day because our agency of almost 4 years has shut down, blacked out, without reason. They have our documents that we need (and all the other families need and no word on how to obtain them!).

Ok sure they say it’s because of a changing climate that they can’t handle it but what of the 550+ people you took money from and aren’t following through with and I mean especially those families who just paid you a few days ago.  What of the Birth families who are supposed to have life time counseling that will no longer receive it?

I’m upset and so are all the other families.  This was done in a most shoddy way.  Of course no one employed by the agency can talk of it and neither can the board of director’s which 2 of them are my Facebook Friends so great but I’m not standing down.

This is complete bullshit in how it was handled and the CA AG will be hearing from me tomorrow along with whoever I can call.

I called an agency today and their response; I know we were completely taken by surprise – We’ve been working with IAC on a case we have and all was fine yesterday at 4pm when we spoke.  Now you might wonder why that is and the answer is the Board and those in charge of the IAC didn’t inform the staff that they’d be losing their jobs today and so for all IAC it was business as usual.

IAC handled this in the absolute worst fashion than they could have.  They really should have informed clients of the possibility, not taken on new clients or taken new fees towards PPC (google ads), and enlightened us who were waiting.  They could have sent the email before alerting everyone by disabling our community pages. They could have allowed us the time to request our records be returned to us.

Now we are all scrambling for new community pages, help, and just plain support! Our ACs are gone stuffed into a black out with the bankruptcy.  We can’t even thank them for their service and support.

The official press release said we were all notified and yet only about half of us were and after the fact.  I got the email about 12:30pm and some others never got it at all (like my husband and many friends’ waiting to finalize). Whatever is going on here isn’t normal and needs to be investigated.  I’m calling the DA in CA tomorrow. 

If you are a part of the IAC don’t stand by – make your voice heard.  Call the press, write the press, and make it public how all of us in the triad have been mistreated and our money and hope stolen from us!

I’m honestly appalled after 4 years and it’s going to take some time to sink in.

I now have to edit all our pages and websites to delete the now defunct IAC and as of now I have nothing to replace it with.  Ya I have a lawyer on speed dial but I had hoped for what IAC promised and it’s gone.  Time for more research! 

I'm not dead and we're still trying to adopt

So my last post was all about yay! A contact but then she turned out to be working with multiple agencies.

BIG FUCKING DISAPPOINTMENT!

So instead of matching with her after texting for almost 2 weeks we said good-bye and good-luck.

So now it’s December, almost the end of it actually and I realize I’ve seriously neglected the blog.

We were featured in our friend’s blog post this month and for that we were extremely grateful.  She was lucky to adopt this year after an excruciating wait and for her to feature us and a few other friends still waiting was a blessing to all of us especially since she doesn’t update the blog often because you know new parent, work, and school. She’s quite busy and extremely happy to be.  I can’t express how thrilled I am for them, seriously even though we are still waiting it’s amazing to see our adoption friends become a family.

Christmas is upon us and I’ve been ready for a few weeks.  I called early in the month for gift ideas, made my choices and they’ve been delivered and wrapped beneath the tree for a couple weeks.  This year was an order, ship, wrap season.  I hope everything we got works for everyone but if not I tried my best with my limited knowledge.  Turns out we’ll be having 16 people for Christmas this year  (I thought we’d have 10 which is doable) and my @400sq ft is going to be stretched to the max.  You see our house is a 2 story so most of the upstairs is bedrooms/bathrooms/kitchen leaving about 400sq ft.  The basement which we turned into our living room is also about 400 sq ft so not much respite there.  If I had known we’d have so many folks I’d have suggested a restaurant banquet space so we’d all have room and seats. 

What bums me out is I can’t cook us a Christmas dinner.  I mean I can but no one has a place to sit so I opted for appetizers this year.  I’m going to miss the family dinner. I love cooking for family and so this is a huge bummer for me; although I am still making my cheesecake (drunken cherry cheesecake) for dessert.  I refuse to give that up.  I’m also making my Pumpkin bread to share. 

I find myself this season giving all kinds of positive reinforcement for others in our agency and it’s often not easy (seriously for how long we’ve been waiting this sucks not because they don’t deserve it but because we’ve been passed over so often! But I refuse to be a Debbie downer it’s not me) but you know I know it makes a difference. The waiting sucks!  Period! No matter if its 5 months or 5 years but the difference is those waiting 5 years are seriously thinking it’s about time to quit vs those who just signed up thinking it’s gonna happen anytime.  I remember those days and then watching those days slide past as others dreams came true.

I can only hope that our dream can come through before I say enough is enough.  I’m tired of the almost, the failed matches, the failed placements.  I try to keep the faith that our family is out there. Since our resent contact was contacting multiple agencies and therefore we didn’t match with her my faith is restored in our agency diligence but I wish it’d been before we’d been contacted. It’s the downside of open adoption.

I’m also disappointed in our other agency who called me after we opted for a small partial refund (thus ending our contract).  As soon as the check cleared our account we received a call asking if we’d entertain an EM due a month from now.  I was asleep and even my asleep self said No. You aren’t getting me to re-sign up after our failed placement.  If you had this mom you could have presented her before we said no thank you. I have no faith in them and I’m done but it doesn’t mean I don’t get upset saying No, or that I don’t cry with the possibility I just turned down because I do.  I get upset every single time!

Someday we hope to be parents but I hope it happens before we say no more as each year looms closer to the no children option. When May rolls around and we have to update our home study and FBI clearances I guess we’ll see where I’m at.  It’s not a cheap process and if you have not gotten leads it’s a discouragement and a why? I’m also bummed our social worker is retiring this month so we’ll be working with someone new next year.

I love our social worker and am so bummed she wasn’t/won’t be here to witness our family being built. She adopted her 4 kids and has shared such great stories; I’d really hoped she’d been in our corner but 4 almost 5 years in she’s retiring. I sent her a card I hope she’s received.  She can’t explain why we haven’t been chosen and then neither can we or our AC so you know we just plug along.

So that’s December – It’s an emotional mix of emotions and themes.
So here’s Our Christmas tree this year and some of the presents under it.

A Trifecta? Maybe and I hope so....

The Trifecta?:

Ok, It’s a normal everyday Monday and I had to run errands because, well lazy weekend.  I got our 3 year LMHL letter in the mail today.  YAY!  Now to fill it out and send it in!

Then our AC returned our call from late last Friday regarding some up-coming changes to the website I had some questions on.  While she couldn’t answer them outright she did send for more info so I should know within a few days.  Again I see this as a win.

Oh, look a call from ?? from IAC ok why are they calling.  Holy Moly someone is looking at us and uh YES!

Oh but wait what I actually said is please find out more because we just had our lives shattered a few months ago and I don’t want to be considered if we won’t be a good match.  Now you know 6 months ago I’d have immediately jumped yes, yes, yes call me!; Today not so much.  I am THRILLED we are being considered but I want to be sure it’s a good fit.  This is the sad face of adoption.  This is the reality that happens that most of us don’t talk about if we’re long waiters. I want this to work out and be the ONE but I’m also resigned to the fact she could choose another family or to parent.  Adoption is amazing and beautiful if a painful, emotional route to a family but I still keep the faith it’ll happen for us one day.

To me, on paper she is a perfect match for us but until we talk I won’t know. Here’s the one thing I do know, this potential match if it happens, no one will know.  I cannot put my family and friends through what we went through previously.  Only if it’s a success will anyone know.  Sorry family and friends but it benefits us all in the end.  Yes, I’m all for Open adoption but not the heartache that can happen from it not happening.  (Believe me someone or two or three in my adoption circle will be hearing from me because um high emotions but I trust them to say nothing and let me vent). I’m hoping our check in tomorrow gives us good info to move forward. I hope we can connect and get a rapport going.  So many emotions on all sides if you haven’t been here you don’t explicitly understand. I don't expect you to but please don't suppose because I posted this that we are matched; we aren't. It's  simply a contact and most of those go with the wind, I hope not here but I always hope that way but the fact is until we match, get relinquishment, and then get home it isn't a done deal. Even then we have to go through extensive post-placement reviews by the state to be sure everything is going as it should. So it's a brutal few months even after the birth/placement (should it happen). 

I may sound harsh or cold but honestly I’m not.  I’m protecting everyone’s’ hearts, including our own and the mother in question, it’s her child until she signs relinquishment's. I want nothing but the best for the child and their mother and I do hope it’s us but if it isn’t; it isn’t. I can’t help and won’t change who we are or what a mom may want for their baby. I want nothing more than to have a mother we really connect with who has a support network and open adoption in her heart.

Let’s rally! Go team Davis!

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September

It’s been awhile but we did go to Dragon Con.  We had an absolute blast with our friends.

We did discuss what happened in TN and then we moved on.  It was the best medicine!

We went to concerts, Balls, and a rave.  We had our Best. Con. YET!

We can’t wait until next year! Our tickets are bought and another of our friend’s from Seattle is also planning to go.  We’ve asked her to go the last couple years but it hasn’t worked out so next year should be great as well.

The unfortunate issue is Don picked up a cold and on our flight home it started to manifest.  A couple days later I was down for the count.  His was a head cold of a few days with a slight cough that cleared up within 5 days.  I got the lung infection of Bronchitis that had me way under.  When I first got sick I thought ok in a few days it’ll go as his has; that didn’t happen ( I haven't been sick like this in years - a couple days of sniffles but not down and out sick like this was!).  I got the cold and it started on day one as a sore throat and a head cold and by day two it was in my lungs.  I waited it out with over the counter meds and lots of sleep for a week but then it was clear it was more than a cold.  I went to the clinic and the doctor was worried I might have a severe case of Phenomena.  Luckily my X-rays showed it was just Bronchitis. A bunch of prescriptions later I was sent home.  So for the next couple weeks I took my steroids, Antibiotics, inhaler, cough medicine, and cough syrup and I was beginning to feel better.   So that was my September. 

I was fortunate to be better and was able to make my friend’s wedding.  I was thrilled to be a part of her special day.

Now it’s October and it’s a reminder that soon we’ll be a part of the National Last minute Hospital List for our agency.  Honestly I thought we’d have the paperwork by now but I guess it’s a couple weeks out so there is still time for the letter to arrive.

What is the last minute Hospital List?

It simply means we’re on the list for all the areas our agency is involved in (meaning where they have offices). It’s really just a finite second chance because they really don’t have that many last minute placements but it is something better than nothing and a hope for a future of becoming parents.

So I await that letter so we can be included in Last minute hospital situations. We are also not far off from the top 50 longest waiting families so again more hope of even more exposure in our wait.

Until then I look forward to friends and family days (yesterday was a friend game day and it was 13 of us so I can't wait to see how it happens the next few months!) and look forward to the holidays this year.  My brother and his family moved home in August so I can’t wait to spend it with them after 4 years away. I’ve really missed them and am looking forward to this year. Today they were supposed to come visit but something happened and they couldn't so hopefully soon they can come visit.

Our agency site