Since my last post we have slowly been moving forward. Work right now is extremely busy which has caused a few delays in adoption stuff but you have to make money to spend money.
Last week I signed us up for the Canada Adopts website. Out of the three websites that have a waiting parent registry we liked them the best. They seem to be the most well known and have been around the longest. We managed to get the questionnaire they require filled out but I am still working on condensing our 16 page profile into 1000 words and 8 pictures. I need to find a few minutes of quiet time to give it a final read over and possibly send it off to one more person to proof read. Once we e-mail it to Canada Adopts they will proof read it again and it should be up online in a week or so.
I also sent off our registration to Beginnings Family Services in Hamilton. They are an adoption agency that came highly recommended. I received an e-mail as soon as they processed our registration asking for a copy of our homestudy and profile. They also made it clear that they had a 3 to 4 month waiting list and we would be contacted somewhere in that time frame to talk with their adoption practitioner. Once we talk with her we will go on their official waiting parent list. The 3 to 4 months is a bit longer than I anticipated but not much we can do.
We have an appointment this coming Tuesday with the lady in charge of adoption at the Picton CAS. She is going to come by the house to take a look around and get to know us a bit. She seems very nice so we are both excited to meet her and see what she says about the adoption program in Picton and the surrounding areas (Quinte and Hastings). I mailed her our profile and homestudy so she has an idea of what to expect.
We also had a great meeting this past Tuesday with a women named Sandra Webb. She is an adoption practitioner and also provides counselling services for parents and adopted children. She has visited orphanages abroad, worked with the CAS and now has a private practice. Her office is located in Cobourg which was a little over an hour from us. Overall Nic and I really enjoyed talking with her. She asked us a ton of questions about our past, present and future. We explained our adoption journey to date and she gave us some excellent feedback. It was nice to hear her say she felt we were in a good place and had done more research than most people do. She felt we were prepared to make an educated decision about what type of child we would accept from either the public or private systems. Since we have done allot of this without guidance from our current practitioner it was reassuring to know we were still on the right track.
Overall Sandra was very nice and we enjoyed talking with her. She said some of the same things that a woman I have been talking with from the Ministry of Child and Youth Services has been saying. That right at this moment we do not necessarily need a practitioner. Because we are mainly applying to places and talking to people we can do this part on our own. She said a practitioner is wonderful when you are matched with a birth family and need advice but until then we should be okay on our own.
We are still planning on meeting with at least one more practitioner. If nothing else we are doing some networking which can't hurt. We are looking forward to November when we can go to our open adoption seminar put on by Jennie Painter who is the founder of Adoption Resource & Counselling Services. She sounds like a wonderful women and everyone we talk to that has been to her seminar has gotten allot out of it. We have already learned allot about open adoption and our views on it keep growing and changing. We know this seminar will help with that process. Once we have completed the seminar we can make an appointment with Jennie and hopefully they will have room for us on their waiting parent registry.
When we have some time we are planning on researching a few more agencies to apply to. I have sent e-mails off to a few lawyers in Toronto that I heard were often approached by birth parents but have not heard back. Sandra said there was an agency in Ottawa that I should look into as well.
It is very exciting to be getting so much done and moving forward. I have already sent out the three profiles I had printed so I think I will get another 6 done this week so I have them on hand. They are pretty quick at Staples getting them printed but I don't always have time to run over to Belleville to pick them up.
Next to adoption stuff Nic and I have been trying to enjoy our summer. We have been doing lots of camping with our new to us trailer and seeing lots of friends. It had been busy but allot of fun. A nice change from our usual summers chained to work and the house.
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