Another opportunity

Yesterday, I was hanging out at work -- and up pops another email from our consultant. There is an opportunity with a birthmother in Colorado that we were presented with. Todd & I were both conflicted b/c we already had one book out -- and how do we know which may be the right opportunity?! Which is the right one to pursue?

We analzyed the pages that were presented about the birthmother and birthfather. I talked to a neighbor awhile about it, which was helpful... then slept on it. We decided that we would pursue the situation IF our consultant thought we could. There's two "preferences" that the birthmother had of the prospective adoptive parents: that they're fluent in 2 languages and that they already have children. I speak a little bit of french... and would LOVE to brush up on it & teach a child another language... but we don't have children. I believe that the birthmother wants the child to be raised not as an only child, but with siblings. We do plan to bring 2 or 3 children into our home, so I hope that this will suffice!

Our consultant said not to let the "adoptive parents with children" deter us from submitting a profile. If the birthmother feels moved by our profile book and makes a connection with us, they have seen birthmothers stray from their original preferences. Our consultant also green-lighted the sending of the profile book because the one we sent out last week to the prospective birthmother in Arkansas was not shown. She postponed (or cancelled?) her appointment with the social worker.

It has been hard for us to connect with the birthmothers in reading some paperwork that is submitted to us because there's not much information about personal things -- mainly medical information and family history is included. But, there was something that we feel is a unique opportunity with this birthmother (excerpt from our consultant's email): The baby is actually the biological sibling of another client's adopted daughter. Unfortunately, our client is unable to adopt the second child because of financial reasons. However, they greatly hope that they can maintain contact with the adoptive family since their daughter would be a sibling. They are a very nice family who live about 1/2 an hour north of you.

Isn't that cool?! We would be SO willing to share in this little girl's life b/c that would mean that the baby would have an automatic connection to a sibling! For both of the children's sakes, we really hope that this situation will work out! It would be AMAZING for them to be a part of each other's lives!

We got our FBI fingerprint cards in the mail yesterday -- no arrests. whew. (kidding - we knew it would be clean, but it's good to have them back. This was to have the longest lead time on our homestudy process.) Todd also had his full medical exam yesterday. I re-scheduled mine from the end of February (with my doctor) to the end of January (with his doctor).

We are taking online training this weekend (one course called "The journey of attachment" and another dealing with adoption of a multi-cultural child, since we are open to this.) We're getting close to finishing the homestudy process!

I was volunteering at a street clean tomorrow morning, but it's been cancelled. We're supposed to get snow starting around 6 am / continuing through lunch. Yay! I wonder if my yoga class will still be held? We are still planning Soup Night for Saturday, and have a number of people coming from various parts of Atlanta. I bet the snow will deter some of them from coming. I think we've had ice at one of the Soup Nights & our only guests were neighbors -- which is understandable. We'll see what happens! That's the beauty about Soup Night. It's always a surprise!

Stay warm, C