Weekends suck! I know! I'm crazy right? See at one point, I did like weekends. That one far away point in my life, when my WHOLE life was not consumed by adoption. Now, on the weekends, everything slams to a stop. No posts with new situations on any boards. No e-mails from the referral agencies, cause THEY aren't getting any e-mails from any agencies, cause they are all closed. Don't get me wrong...I still check the forums everyday anyway. One never knows when there will be a baby "born" situation where an adoption worker was forced to come in on her day off an deal with it. Rare, but it could happen. So that's the story. Weekends are boring.
Then today, we get a CALL. I know I've said before how calls are good....mostly cause calls are rare. More exactingly (my blog, my made up words), Mike gets a call. I don't even really realize, he's on the phone. He pokes his sweet little face around the bedroom door and says to me. It's So and So agency, they called to say they got the profiles and wanted to touch base with us. It's all one sentance right? See the little bitty comma in there? Right between agency and they? That comma, as we all know, indicates a SLIGHT pause in his speech. During that slight pause, here is what happened to me...
My heart fell out of my chest. I wondered why they called Mike's phone and not mine? I concluded it might have just been that Mike's was listed first on the paperwork. I wondered if she was in a hurry so she called the first number on our paperwork. I wondered if there was an emergency match! I pondered what we had in our checking account for immediate tickets to Ohio. How long would it take to drive to Ohio? Should we rent a car? I can't believe she's calling on a SATURDAY? What? Hun? Oh...she's just calling to touch base...."Okay give me the phone." Really...all that in the space of a comma. Comma's a big thing....
Anyway, she was very nice, and she said our profile were great, and she was sending it right over to the social worker that was working with the expectant mother we wanted to submit to.
It was still a pretty big deal for us. We really feel great about this agency. They are excellent fee wise, they CALLED us just to tell us they GOT our profiles, and they made that call ON A WEEKEND! I will now forever hold hope that we'll get weekend calls from this agency. Weekends are a little better now.
Still no word on our bricks. I'm starting to think the guy was a brick tease. :)
Showing posts with label ohio agency. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ohio agency. Show all posts
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Family Updates.
Most of our family and friends will have read this update already, since I e-mailed it to them...course, even since I e-mailed it, things have changed, so read the new info at the bottom!!
Hello Family and Friends!
I know people are starting to feel weird about always asking how things are going...honestly, we don't mind answering, but I thought I would send out a quick update to let you all know where we are at. Some of you we just don't see as often as we would like to, so we figured you might like an idea on what's up too :) Anyway, we got all our approvals, and home study in hand in mid December. It wasn't without it's trials. Our social worker lost her mother right before Christmas, so our thoughts were with her during that time, and not very focused on our own progress. She's just about ready to get back to work now, and we've gotten excellent support while we've needed it from the main office.
We're currently listed with several agencies, though we aren't thrilled with all of them. One is out in Utah, and although it's renowned for it's fast placements, they do everything via telephone. It makes it hard to keep in touch, and they never seem to return calls in a timely manner. They were pretty expensive anyway, so we're pretty comfortable writing them off :) Our other agencies are located in Ohio, and Georgia. We found them both through an amazing, wonderful, fantastic (yeah, we like her) referral service out of Ohio. She's an advocate for trans-racial adoptions, and adoptions with reasonable fees (gotta love that). With her guidance we've found a couple agencies that are not only with in, but well below our budget. We are comfortable that our baby can find us through these agencies.
Current situations that we are submitted on...sometimes it's hard to recall exactly who has our profile where, since we basically get e-mails or phone calls, and give a yes or no based on preliminary information. As far as I know, we are only in one, with one on the back burner right now. Most agencies were closed during Christmas and New Years and they are all still playing catch up. They all "expect" there to be an influx of expectant mothers in the next couple of weeks.
We got word today that the last of the 5 situations in Georgia did choose a family..obviously it wasn't us :) They do expect updates this week and next from the intake coordinators in Georgia. This agency seems to work in "batches" where each coordinator will take on a certain number, work with them, and then pass on the ones ready to match. They match at a main meeting once a week or every other week. They have our info, so we should be hearing if they have any situations that might be a good match for us.
We just got a call today (calls are good, that's means it's a more pressing event) asking if we would like to submit on an expectant mother due Feb 14th. I guess the mother "thinks" she will deliver earlier...I think a lot of expectant women think that, but we'll wait and see :) It's a great situation, and we gave them the go ahead to show our profile. This is an agency that is traditionally very low in numbers for their pool of families accepting infants that are not full Caucasian. They did 5 non Caucasian placements the week before Christmas, so their pool is even lower now. This particular mother is young, very healthy, and has stated she is drug and alcohol free. I can imagine that there will be some competition!
We are also being considered, though conditionally, on a situation in Pennsylvania. The expectant mother is due in early February but is already having contractions. She wants to match now, although all the numbers aren't in yet. We agreed to be submitted with the understanding we are working on a budget, so if she didn't fit that, in the end we wouldn't accept a match. Pennsylvania is also a 30 day revocation state. 30 days is longer than we would have hoped for but not unheard of. The fact we could drive there and save on airfare would be a bonus. We'll wait for the numbers to come in on this one before we get too excited.
As always, I'll keep everyone up to date as things change, without flooding your inbox of course.
Happy and Healthy 2008 to everyone :)
Amy and Mike
***In the 6 hours since I sent that e-mail we've also submitted on additional situations so the excel sheet I'm now keeping has the following potential situations
Submitted: Ohio, baby girl due 2/15; Ohio, baby boy due 2/15; Tennessee, unknown gender due 2/12;
Monitoring: more info required: PA baby girl, due 1/23
I'm sure you can all see why I don't e-mail an update every time the situations change :)
Hopefully I'll atleast stay organized!
Hello Family and Friends!
I know people are starting to feel weird about always asking how things are going...honestly, we don't mind answering, but I thought I would send out a quick update to let you all know where we are at. Some of you we just don't see as often as we would like to, so we figured you might like an idea on what's up too :) Anyway, we got all our approvals, and home study in hand in mid December. It wasn't without it's trials. Our social worker lost her mother right before Christmas, so our thoughts were with her during that time, and not very focused on our own progress. She's just about ready to get back to work now, and we've gotten excellent support while we've needed it from the main office.
We're currently listed with several agencies, though we aren't thrilled with all of them. One is out in Utah, and although it's renowned for it's fast placements, they do everything via telephone. It makes it hard to keep in touch, and they never seem to return calls in a timely manner. They were pretty expensive anyway, so we're pretty comfortable writing them off :) Our other agencies are located in Ohio, and Georgia. We found them both through an amazing, wonderful, fantastic (yeah, we like her) referral service out of Ohio. She's an advocate for trans-racial adoptions, and adoptions with reasonable fees (gotta love that). With her guidance we've found a couple agencies that are not only with in, but well below our budget. We are comfortable that our baby can find us through these agencies.
Current situations that we are submitted on...sometimes it's hard to recall exactly who has our profile where, since we basically get e-mails or phone calls, and give a yes or no based on preliminary information. As far as I know, we are only in one, with one on the back burner right now. Most agencies were closed during Christmas and New Years and they are all still playing catch up. They all "expect" there to be an influx of expectant mothers in the next couple of weeks.
We got word today that the last of the 5 situations in Georgia did choose a family..obviously it wasn't us :) They do expect updates this week and next from the intake coordinators in Georgia. This agency seems to work in "batches" where each coordinator will take on a certain number, work with them, and then pass on the ones ready to match. They match at a main meeting once a week or every other week. They have our info, so we should be hearing if they have any situations that might be a good match for us.
We just got a call today (calls are good, that's means it's a more pressing event) asking if we would like to submit on an expectant mother due Feb 14th. I guess the mother "thinks" she will deliver earlier...I think a lot of expectant women think that, but we'll wait and see :) It's a great situation, and we gave them the go ahead to show our profile. This is an agency that is traditionally very low in numbers for their pool of families accepting infants that are not full Caucasian. They did 5 non Caucasian placements the week before Christmas, so their pool is even lower now. This particular mother is young, very healthy, and has stated she is drug and alcohol free. I can imagine that there will be some competition!
We are also being considered, though conditionally, on a situation in Pennsylvania. The expectant mother is due in early February but is already having contractions. She wants to match now, although all the numbers aren't in yet. We agreed to be submitted with the understanding we are working on a budget, so if she didn't fit that, in the end we wouldn't accept a match. Pennsylvania is also a 30 day revocation state. 30 days is longer than we would have hoped for but not unheard of. The fact we could drive there and save on airfare would be a bonus. We'll wait for the numbers to come in on this one before we get too excited.
As always, I'll keep everyone up to date as things change, without flooding your inbox of course.
Happy and Healthy 2008 to everyone :)
Amy and Mike
***In the 6 hours since I sent that e-mail we've also submitted on additional situations so the excel sheet I'm now keeping has the following potential situations
Submitted: Ohio, baby girl due 2/15; Ohio, baby boy due 2/15; Tennessee, unknown gender due 2/12;
Monitoring: more info required: PA baby girl, due 1/23
I'm sure you can all see why I don't e-mail an update every time the situations change :)
Hopefully I'll atleast stay organized!
Saturday, December 29, 2007
My first new blog post!
Well I'm not crazy about the blogging aspects of myspace, so I thought I would give a new method a shot since I do enjoy blogging :) I'll hope to get on most days, but since life is busy, but not really that interesting...I can't promise that.
Case in point, our interesting topic for today is bricks...no really, it's bricks! More specifically a score of bricks from a chimney being taken off a house over 100 years old. We recently took down the extra chimeny off our own house, and saved all our bricks to add a patio on the side of the house, with these extra bricks, hopefully we'll have enough! We're going to reclaim part of the back yard from the dogs, and make the patio run the whole length of that side. Hopefully there will be enought room for a few lines of clothesline to hang out some clothes, but we'll have to see...
So YEAH! Bricks :)
Nothing new on the adoption front, right now we are submitted on two situations, one boy, due Feb 15th, and one girl, who was due today. We haven't heard 'no' on the one due today, so we'll keep hoping. That expectant mother is due in a state with a 10 day revocation period, so those agencies do tend to notify the choosen family after the baby is born...We'll just have to see! We went over to Erina and Brad's tonight though, and she helped me bang out 6 more profiles so we can get them mailed. Those things are so time consuming! We are sending 8 to an agency in Ohio since we heard they have an extremely low pool of families accepting infants that are not Caucasian. I guess they did 5 infant placements about a week ago that were all African American, so their pool is even lower....sounds good to us :)
Well make sure we let you all know as soon as we hear more on any of the potential situations!
Case in point, our interesting topic for today is bricks...no really, it's bricks! More specifically a score of bricks from a chimney being taken off a house over 100 years old. We recently took down the extra chimeny off our own house, and saved all our bricks to add a patio on the side of the house, with these extra bricks, hopefully we'll have enough! We're going to reclaim part of the back yard from the dogs, and make the patio run the whole length of that side. Hopefully there will be enought room for a few lines of clothesline to hang out some clothes, but we'll have to see...
So YEAH! Bricks :)
Nothing new on the adoption front, right now we are submitted on two situations, one boy, due Feb 15th, and one girl, who was due today. We haven't heard 'no' on the one due today, so we'll keep hoping. That expectant mother is due in a state with a 10 day revocation period, so those agencies do tend to notify the choosen family after the baby is born...We'll just have to see! We went over to Erina and Brad's tonight though, and she helped me bang out 6 more profiles so we can get them mailed. Those things are so time consuming! We are sending 8 to an agency in Ohio since we heard they have an extremely low pool of families accepting infants that are not Caucasian. I guess they did 5 infant placements about a week ago that were all African American, so their pool is even lower....sounds good to us :)
Well make sure we let you all know as soon as we hear more on any of the potential situations!
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