Paper Trails

As my friends Hilery and Ted can probably attest, adoption paperwork is exhaustive and exhausting!

On Saturday we went to our first PS-MAPP class, which is what Iowa calls their certification process for foster and adoptive parents. It is a small class with about 8 - 10 couples and is taught by social workers who are both foster parents themselves. Saturday's class was just an introduction and overview . . . but I think the biggest thing we took away from the class is they really want us to let go of our gender and age preferences. The whole process is built to help us assess our own parenting skills and weaknesses and to best match that with a child. They focused it's more about a child's behaviour (emotional-mental-physical issues, attachment disorder, etc) and what we can best parent. So while we may want a baby boy, the one available may have behaviors that don't match our abilities -- meanwhile there's an 8-year old girl out there that could be perfect. Who knows??!? We are really excited to learn alot about parenting, etc., too because every day Ellie reminds us we're amateurs.

Anyway, so right now we've spent several hours of several nights just sitting here filling out paperwork. I think this paperwork goes into our homestudy. It's different than all the other paperwork we already filled out of basically the SAME questions and information just worded differently . . . but that went to Dept. of Health and Welfare for our file. I don't know who else needs a file on us but this could start to get paper-ugly.

It's kind of hard because I'm filling out my answers and I want to be sincere without seeming selfish or overeager, or like I'm just trying to say what they want me too . . . and then I start thinking, am I over-thinking this?

It's a good thing I have Darik to ground me or else I would just keep on thinking about thinking and never get anything done!