Adoption Classes - Check!

I've shared before that being an adoptive parent is no easy task, even from the get go.  But we have finished the first few things that are required before the state will trust us with more children.  


First we contacted an agency, in our case CFN, they sent out a Case Manager to talk with us and basically answer our questions, after we filled out a background check and some basic paperwork.  Then we attended 35 hours of classes, that ranged from basic first aid, to child rearing techniques, to what shaken baby syndrome looks like(go here), to how to parent trans-racially( here are two books I'm going to be reading Brown Babies written from the mother's perspective, and Growing up written from the child's).  


While we were doing the classes we were compiling another set of papers, like diplomas, shot records for our dog, getting health and fire safety inspections, FBI fingerprinted, and filing out the homestudy.  I think as it stands today, we are lacking two maybe three of the required paperwork and I will schedule our face-to-face homestudy today.  I will be asking for prayer during that time, it is sure to be hard.


With all the 'official' stuff finishing I will be concentrating on our photobook, basically our photo resume for our family.  And getting our house ready to have another child, just like I did when I found out I was pregnant.  We ran out and got furniture, toys, etc, we've got to get furniture for another munchkin and stuff like that.  It's a bit more complicated, since I don't know what size they'll be or if it will be a he or a she, but that's what Target is for, right Jen?


The big thing on our minds and in our prayers, because we had our cultural competency training last night.  Is what will need to change in our lives if the child God has for us is a different race than we are, and the chances of that are very high.  In our country we have a problem called disproportionality, for some reason there are more black children in the system, and more of them are permanently removed from their homes.  And so in order to raise my new child we'll have to make an effort to emerse them in their own culture.  It will be easy if we get a white child, I can do white ;-), but if I get a Hispanic child, and you are Hispanic be expecting a call from me!


Till next time
--A