Our Adoption Story – Part 2

You can read part 1 here.

A few things to correct – I pulled out our scrapbooks! lol – it wasn’t April 1996.  It was May 17, 1996 that we got the phone call that we had been chosen for J1.  At least I had the Friday part right! lol (yes, I looked – I’m a bit of a geek!)

The next Monday I’m sure we were calling Judy even as she walked in the door! lol

Our first visit with J1 was at his foster home on May 22, 1996 – a Wednesday and the day before our 9th wedding anniversary.  J1 was 16 mos old and from the pictures it looks like he was really into chewing! LOL  We took him a small Sesame Street radio that he carried our whole visit.  To him we were just another set of adults visiting, but our whole life was changing.  It was hard to leave without him.  We went home and tried to prepare our home and our hearts.

On May 24, 1996 we had another visit with J1.  We were able to take him out of the home so we drove him up to my Dad and step mom’s home in Battle Ground, WA.  My dad took some great pictures of the three of us!

On Tuesday, May 28th, we brought J1 home.  I remember J1 walking through the house just checking everything out.   Four days later – on June 1st – our church threw us a baby shower.  Our friend, Debi Stinson, organized it and it was SO nice.  But I realize now I was a bit overwhelmed with everything and don’t remember much.  Thank goodness for photos!!

Even though J1 was home with us, our adoption was not final.  There is a waiting period of 6 mos and then there is all the time that the courts take to finalize the adoption.  But just having him home was good enough for us!  That summer we took a couple of trips, had TONS of visits from our California family members and we worked on finalizing J1’s adoption.

Even though we’d be a couple for 9 years, it really wasn’t all that hard for us to go from a couple to a family.

Looking at my scrapbook, I see that in September, 1996 my mom came for a visit and we took a trip to my sister’s home in the Newport, OR area.  Grammy and J1 played in the sand for the first time.  Little did we know that J2 was born that month and destined to join our family!

After your child is placed in your home, during the waiting period, you continue to see the caseworker once a month.  Some have resented these visits but we always enjoyed them.  It was a chance to share all the new things our child was doing and to talk about the transition.  I remember pretty early after we brought J1 home that we were asked if we would like to adopt again.  We told our caseworker that we would but we were in no rush.  We wanted to enjoy J1 for awhile.  Maybe in a year or so.  So when we got a phone call in  September, 1996 asking us if we were interested in adopting again, we replied in the same way.  And, then anonymous-caseworker said “Well, J1 has a little brother.”

I think you could have knocked us over with a feather!

~~~to be continued~~~