Since Keely has been gone things have been so quiet and I keep thinking "gosh I wonder what Keely is doing, she sure is being quiet." But have to remind myself she is not here. I talked to my mom today and Keely is doing great and having fun with everyone. Tatum is still not walking today. She is crawling around a little bit more and has put some weight on her legs but not taken steps on her own. She is still eating well and we are thankful for that so she can continue on without her feeding tube.
I have been wanting to do some writing about our adoptions and since things are quiet today I thought today would be a good day. When Scott and I decided that we wanted to adopt we had no idea what a challenge it would be and all that would be involved. For our first adoption we worked with an agency in Omaha who networked with many agencies around the U.S. Since we lived so far from Omaha they hired someone in our area to come and do our home study. A home study is required for any adoption no matter what so that was the start of the whole process. We started the process of our first adoption in July of 2006 and after all the paperwork and meetings we had to attend our home study was approved in November of that year. Once you have an approved home study then you are approved to adopt. The last step was for us to create an adoption profile and it includes information about us that will be shown to birth families wanting to place their child for adoption. In it we included information about us, where we live, our openness to different race children, and also a dear birth parent letter. We also included many photos to give birth families a little insight into our lives. Our profile was approved in December and we got the call about Tatum three days later. The first call we got was to see if we wanted our profile shown for this baby and we were given all the details they could about her. The next day we got the call that the agency had chose us to be Tatum's parents. I can't even explain the feeling that we had, it was the most exciting day with tons of emotions. We traveled to Mississippi a week later and got to meet Tatum for the first time. We had to wait the weekend in Mississippi and went to court on Monday to get temporary custody. Then we had to stay for a couple extra days for ICPC to go through. ICPC is required for adoptions that go across state lines. It is a bunch of documents that have to be approved by both our state (Nebraska) and Mississippi and takes varying amounts of time depending on the states involved. We were able to finalized Tatum's adoption a couple months later and didn't have to return to do this. When Tatum was about 1 we decided we wanted to keep our home study up to date and had it updated. Home studies are only good for one year then they have to be updated. We decided for our second adoption we would work on our own and research agencies ourselves. In December we finally decided to work with an agency in KS who also network with many different agencies in MO. In February of 2008 we got a call and said we had been chosen by a birth mother who had a baby girl who was 6 weeks old. This was another great day and we were so excited for Tatum to have a baby sister. We traveled to Kansas City MO at the end of the week and had to go to court again. We had planned on staying the weekend because we figured ICPC wouldn't be approved until the next week. Surprisingly we got a call on that Friday evening saying our ICPC had been approved and we could go home. What a relief and I think a record for ICPC approved.
With two children that are 14 months apart there are times that are challenging but way more that so enjoyable. We love that they are so close though and hope they will be the best of friends someday. They have so much fun together most of the time and its great seeing them learn together. Now that the girls are 2 1/2 and almost 16 months we are beginning the adoption journey again...
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