Adoption #2 - The Process

As Andy noted in his latest post, we have officially submitted our application to our adoption agency (OA&FS)!  Over the past few weeks and months, our blog has been rather quiet.  Dominic has kept us busy and in effect, our adoption blog didn't have any adoption-related things to post about.  However, now that we are back in the middle of the adoption process again we'll have lots of fun things to post about in the coming weeks.  Being the engineer that I am, I tend to like lists and schedules which means I'm going to use this post to outline as a refresher on the adoption process.  If you have any questions about our process or are potentially interested in an adoption with OA&FS, this post is a great starting point!

Adoption Process
This time around, getting the process started has been rather easy as we're veterans.  We've already picked our agency and completed our application paperwork which we started back in November.  So what's next?  Officially, our agency has a list on the Steps to Adopt on their website which shows a summary of steps from the beginning all the way through legal finalization.  The last time through, we put together our own list which was similar but had more detail on the early portion of the process:

• Information Meeting
• Pre-Adoption Seminar
• Application Submission
• Application & Intake Interview
• Homestudy Interview #1
• Homestudy Interview #2
• Homestudy Interview #3
• Homestudy Interview #4
• Homestudy Completion
• Pool Entry
• Waiting in the Pool
• Chosen by Birthfamily

Out of these steps, we're already pretty far along!  This is because we have already completed one adoption with OA&FS which gives us a bit of a head start.  Back in February of 2012, we attended the Pre-Adoption Seminar for our first adoption.  That seminar can continue to satisfy a few adoption requirements for several months to come, so we don't have to redo the full 2-day seminar (woo!). 

Looking ahead, we won't have anything else that we can jump past.  There will be meetings, papers to fill out, and plenty of other baby prep to do.  Last time when we blazed through the process to get into the waiting pool, it took about 6 months.  This time around, we started in November, and might target getting into the waiting pool before summer starts.  Speaking of the waiting pool, we had a series of posts last time around that tracked some basic statistics.  For those of you that enjoyed those posts, we'll be doing the same thing this time around too in the near future!

Welcome 2014!

Happy New Year to everyone! With all of the reminiscing that's been going on the past few days, I thought it seemed an appropriate time to fire up the ol' blogging machine and send out a quick update.

January 1, 2013
Dominic's ready to root for Big Red!

It's amazing how much changes in a year. One year ago, Dominic was 7 weeks old, we were new parents, and our entire lives seemed majorly in flux. I wouldn't say that we were in over our heads (not completely, anyway), but there was definitely a steep learning curve. Lucky for all of us, I think we made it through all right!

Fast forward a year, and Dominic's an entirely new person: he's walking, talking, and eating real food like a pro. Where he once seemed helpless, he's now asserting his independence and learning new things every day. I'm so thankful that he's a part of our lives now, and I can't imagine things any differently.

So... on that note, it seems an appropriate time to mention that we're about to make things extremely different! Today we mailed in our application forms to OA&FS, officially starting the adoption process again. Sometime within the next few years, Dominic will have a little brother or sister!

January 1, 2014
Going for a run in the park

I'm not entirely convinced of our sanity right now. As much as Dominic's grown, he's still just over a year old and we've been extremely busy just keeping up with him! But I think we're ready, considering the timeline. The paperwork took us approximately 6 months last time, and I think it'll take around the same amount of time now - we've already done it once and can use that as a base, but we also have to do it while caring for Dominic! Once that's finished, the average time waiting in the pool of prospective adoptive parents is around 18 months. We got picked quickly last time, but there's no telling how long or short it'll be this time. All in all, the back-of-the-envelope calculation says we're likely to adopt again when Dominic is 2 or 3 years old, which seems just about right to us.

No matter what, though, we'll make it work. If we get picked right away (like our friends who got picked 5 hours after finishing their homestudy!), it'll be a bit of a stretch but I'm sure we'll handle it. And if it takes much longer than expected, well then we'll have more time to prepare and make sure Dominic's ready too. Either way, it's an exciting way to start 2014, and we're looking forward to chronicling the process again!

Football Season & Dominic

With football season rapidly approaching, I've been getting rather excited.  I am a huge college football fan, follower of the Seahawks, and put in far too much effort maintaining fantasty teams.  However, this football season will be a little different for us.  First, it'll be our first full football season with three of us at home.  Dominic was born in November of last year, so he was around for a couple of games.  He just didn't get overly excited about them... or notice them.  The other reason things will be different is that one of us will be wearing some new gear for a while.

Dominic's head from the top down

Being the overly protective parents we are, we've been watching out for Dominic on all sorts of things.  Sterilizing every single bottle, slowly testing out new foods, and repeatedly checking for developmental milestones.  On many fronts, he has done extremely well.  His favorite syllable is "da" (we're still working hard on "pa" though).  He officially has 3 teeth with at least 3 more about to come through.  He can sit up, roll all over the place, stand up with help, and nearly crawl.

The only thing that has had us worried has been his head shape.  Despite our best efforts, his overall head shape has ended up being asymmetrical.  The image to the left shows some laser scanned images that were developed to analyze his head shape.  Looking at Dominic in person, his hair is growing in well enough that it really conceals the imbalance, but the images here show a mild to moderate slant.

Overall, this is not a major issue long-term.  As parents though, we want to correct his head shape now while he is still growing since it is not self-correcting.  To make that happen, he's getting some snazzy new head gear that we're calling his helmet.

Helmet view from the front

Helmet view from the left side

The helmet itself is pretty simple.  The concept is that it is sculpted to focus the future growth in areas that will round out his head shape.  Other areas will be held in place by the helmet allowing those "future growth" areas to catch up.

With football season rapidly approaching, Andy and I may be tempted to add one bright red "N" sticker and another "ND" sticker to each side of the helmet so that Dominic will always ready to go for game days!

Father's Day!

We're only a few hours in to Father's Day and our first one has already been wonderful.  Andy's mom has been visiting and let both of us sleep in this morning which was a rare treat!  As I'm typing this, Dominic is actively rolling all over the floor on his blanket while Papa is out in the neighborhood for a run.  This is really relaxing which sort of fits the style of this post as the rest of the content will be done 'grab bag' style  :)

In honor of Father's Day, I wanted to share a link to an article I saw on msnbc.com earlier this week.  It's all about new dads and paternity leave.  Sort of an interesting topic as it's something many fathers out there have to make a decision on.  Our society has a long ways to go on paternity leave.  The telling sign?  A survey question in the article asked what the appropriate amount of time was for new dads to take off from work.  The options?  None, 1 week, 2 weeks, and 'the same amount of time as moms'  The general idea that 3 out of 4 options barely provide any time at all shows a real disconnect in allowing dads to have bonding time with their new son or daughter.

On a personal level with many Father's Days celebrated with my own dad, we would go to College World Series baseball games in Omaha each year and those experiences were always a lot of fun.  I might flip on the tv with one of today's games in honor of our past outings.  Happy Father's Day Dad!

Sitting!

Looking at this picture of Dominic from this morning, it's amazing to realize how far Andy and I have come since last Father's Day.  Last year, we weren't even fathers, but we were just about to enter our adoption agency's waiting pool.  Since then, we were picked by a wonderful birthmother and have been raising the best little guy in the world.  We have been incredibly lucky to experience so many things with him.  Lately, he's been able to sit up on his own (for brief periods), try new foods (pear, avocado, and sweet potato in the past week), and watching him smile as he reaches out to pet one of the cats is one of the most adorable things ever.  Of course, I might be biased on that last one.  I am his father after all, and this is my day...so I think I'm allowed to exaggerate a little!

New House!

It's weird to realize it, but tomorrow marks the one-month anniversary of our family living in our new home.  The entire month of May went by really fast.  As we moved out of our old condo into the new house, we were unpacking boxes, painting, coordinating the remodel of our condo...oh, and taking care of Dominic!

This time has been very exciting for us as a lot of this move has been with him in mind.  We've gone from a condo that had no neighborhood or parks to speak of, to a house on a quiet cul-de-sac.  Our neighbors have kids.  We can walk to a great park with baseball fields, beach volleyball courts, a giant playground, green space, and a beach!  There's also a fantastic commercial area with loads of restaurants, coffee shops, and local stores.  Given the presence of two frozen yogurt shops, I foresee lots of "walks" in our future.

Wall removal

Speaking of the future, we've made a lot of progress with the house.  In the 3 weeks before the housewarming party, we had a fair amount of work done.  After having a structural wall removed, we got to work painting our den, remaining arch wall, living room, and kitchen.  It was exciting to share our progress as well as our brand new digs with so many of our friends and family in the area.

Painting the den

We still have a long ways to go to paint the rest of the house and fill it out with furniture and other essentials, but we're starting to settle into a more casual style of updating the house.

Part of the slowdown is due to our general sanity, but the other part is due to selling off our old condo.  It's about to go on the market later this week, and we certainly have our fingers crossed that we'll be able to sell it for a decent price.  Once we're free from that major financial anchor, it will give us a lot more freedom to invest in the house as well as look to the future.

Today's newly installed countertop at the condo!

We've mentioned in the past that we're a ways out from beginning the adoption process again.  The earliest we could start things up again is in November.  Being able to complete our move and sell off the condo will help erase a lot of our economical question marks before we establish enough savings and begin Round 2 of the months/years-long process.

As we have a brand new house with a bedroom just waiting for Dominic's future brother or sister, I know that I'm really looking forward to the days, weeks, months, and years to come in our new home!  I know that Dominic is already enjoying the new digs as he's had plenty of parties with his wild stuffed animal friends  :)