I don't know how many times I have been asked this question but this is my response. Absolutely! Really, who knows - he just turned 1 this past September... He is going to be treated like a boy who has the potential for greatness. We are going to give him every opportunity possible and treat him like he can achieve what he sets out to achieve and see what happens. The stars are the limit Grant!
For those of you who are curious as to what adults with Down syndrome can achieve, I encourage you to watch this amazing video. Have a great weekend everyone.
www.ndsccenter.org/morealike/flash
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Friday, February 26, 2010
Catch-up
Hello all and welcome to my blog. I am starting this because ever since we started the whole adoption process, I have had lots of people ask me the same questions and many of those questions require long and detailed responses so I thought this would be a lot easier and a lot more fun!
Why are we adopting? There are many answers to that question. I can tell you that I always wanted 3 children. When I was ready to start trying for a 3rd, Chris wasn't quite ready yet. When he was ready, I thought I was too old to go through that whole pregnancy thing again! We talked about adoption on and off many times and thought we would like to try to adopt a little boy or girl from the United States. After a lot of searching we determined that it is very difficult, if not impossible to get a child between the ages of 2 and 5 who is not extremely emotionally scarred. I started looking on the internet at different adoption agencies and different countries around the world where there were children to adopt. We chose an agency that has an office in the Nashville area and has an excellent reputation. From there, we filled out a preliminary application and got access to country information as well as "waiting children". Based on length of process, travel time, cost and degree of special needs, we chose Hong Kong.
This is where we are now: We have completed our formal application and the Hague online adoption seminar. We are towards the end of our home study. Many people think the home study is just a home visit but that is just the last step in a very lengthy process. We have filled out mounds of paperwork incuding financial statements, essay bibliographies, reference information and medical forms. We have been poked, prodded and peed in cups. We have been psychoanalyzed and scrutinized. We have been educated in person and online. Even our dog, Jake, was not excluded. Somewhere in a lush green forest, there is a bare patch where stately trees used to grow! As of this writing, we are waiting for our psych evals to be turned back into our agency by the Psychologist and then we can schedule our couple interview, individual interviews and lastly, THE HOME VISIT...
After that is complete, it gets submitted to Hong Kong and we get our next stack of paperwork to fill out from the United States government as well as the Hong Kong government. There are a lot of details to all of that but I won't bore you with them on this post.
Do you wish you could do something to help? You can. Say a prayer for us that this process goes as smoothly as possible. Say a prayer for our little boy a half a world away who doesn't even know we exist yet.
Why are we adopting? There are many answers to that question. I can tell you that I always wanted 3 children. When I was ready to start trying for a 3rd, Chris wasn't quite ready yet. When he was ready, I thought I was too old to go through that whole pregnancy thing again! We talked about adoption on and off many times and thought we would like to try to adopt a little boy or girl from the United States. After a lot of searching we determined that it is very difficult, if not impossible to get a child between the ages of 2 and 5 who is not extremely emotionally scarred. I started looking on the internet at different adoption agencies and different countries around the world where there were children to adopt. We chose an agency that has an office in the Nashville area and has an excellent reputation. From there, we filled out a preliminary application and got access to country information as well as "waiting children". Based on length of process, travel time, cost and degree of special needs, we chose Hong Kong.
This is where we are now: We have completed our formal application and the Hague online adoption seminar. We are towards the end of our home study. Many people think the home study is just a home visit but that is just the last step in a very lengthy process. We have filled out mounds of paperwork incuding financial statements, essay bibliographies, reference information and medical forms. We have been poked, prodded and peed in cups. We have been psychoanalyzed and scrutinized. We have been educated in person and online. Even our dog, Jake, was not excluded. Somewhere in a lush green forest, there is a bare patch where stately trees used to grow! As of this writing, we are waiting for our psych evals to be turned back into our agency by the Psychologist and then we can schedule our couple interview, individual interviews and lastly, THE HOME VISIT...
After that is complete, it gets submitted to Hong Kong and we get our next stack of paperwork to fill out from the United States government as well as the Hong Kong government. There are a lot of details to all of that but I won't bore you with them on this post.
Do you wish you could do something to help? You can. Say a prayer for us that this process goes as smoothly as possible. Say a prayer for our little boy a half a world away who doesn't even know we exist yet.
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