Adoption Appointment 4/13

We made an appointment to go to American Adoptions in Overland Park to talk with our Adoption Specialist, Kelli, about our APQ (Adoptive Parent Questionaire). Usually they do this over the phone by conference call, but I emailed her and asked if we could come in and talk to her face to face instead. They always seem delighted to get to actually meet with you. So we showed up and got to meet Kelli face to face. She was very nice, easy to talk to and enthusiastic. She didn't talk she bubbled, and she smiled the whole time. One thing I really like about these people is that they seem to really be enjoying what they are doing! They instantly put you at ease, and you feel, within seconds, that you have known them your whole life! I was a little nervous that the APQ would need to be changed a lot. Kelli kept saying how wonderful it was that we were so open and broad in our APQ! She said that because we are so broad with it, that we will be exposed to a lot of birth mothers and have a great chance of getting several people interested. The only thing that she mentioned was our budget was a little low..but not too bad. She said any match that comes in between 1,000-5,000 over our budget will still be brought to our attention, so that we can make the decision if we can do it or not. But we are not required to do so. She told us a little what to expect in regard to the birth mother. She went over that the birth mothers only have our profile as far as information about us. When a birth mother selects us, and her social worker calls us to tell us, that we will receive everything the agency has on the birth mother, medical records, questionaires, financial records, ect. We have 48 hours from then to decide if we want to be matched with her. The birth mother's social worker has access to our APQ and is the one who will determine if it will be a good match before she calls us. We only have wiggle room if something is outside of our APQ or if we are not strict about something on our APQ. the birth mother is asked to choose up to three selections of adoptive families in case an APQ of one of the families doesn't fit her situation.
Since Kelli worked with birth mothers for quite a few years, before starting to work with the adoptive families, she gave us some ideas and encouragement in regards to the birth mother letter and what most birth mothers were looking for. When we get matched with someone we will have her cell phone number and will be able to reach her 24 hours a day. When a birth mother selects us, we will be dealing mainly with the birth mother's social worker thru our same agency. But Kelli said she will be kept up to date on everything and if we ever need to talk or have a question that we can call her. She is just there to make sure that we have everything we need, counselling for what to expect next, keep our rights protected, ect. Lastly, she said she thought it was awesome that we seem to both be on the same page with the whole thing and that that isn't always the case.
All in all, we had a fantastic visit with Kelli and are really looking forward to working with her.

Kelli Cox

Well, it's official! We've been assigned an Adoption Specialist! Her name is Kelli Cox. This is what the American Adoptions website has on her:

Kelli Cox - Adoption Specialist, LBSW
Hi my name is Kelli Cox and I am an Adoption Specialist here at the agency. My primary role is to work with birth parents on developing their adoption plan. I have my degree in Social Work and have been in the field for about three and a half years. I truly enjoy being able to guide birth parents and adoptive families through their adoption and provide support and education to them. It is an amazing experience to see the wonderful families that are created through adoption!"

We are getting SO close we can almost taste it. The realization is coming. My boss came up to me the other day and said, "You're planning on working full time in August right, during rush?" I started to answer then realized that I might not be working here in August. I might be at home with my new baby....I had to let it set in a little. I will feel really bad to leave my co-workers at such a busy time in our Department, but on the other hand....14 years is a long time to wait on a dream! My priorities will shift. I will no longer be Roxanne the Admin Assistant; I'll be Roxanne the Mommy...Roxanne the Mommy...wow! that's good stuff!!!! Anyhoo, we got an email from Kelli and we are to supply her with a few different dates/times when we can do a conference call to talk over our APQ. We are anxious to get this done, because it's basically our guidelines for our adoption. It will be interesting to see how we fare in relation to others. Were we broad enough in our preferences? Are we too restrictive? It will be interesting to know. We read a little manual that they provided before we filled out the APQ. It talked a little about the myths of adoption and such. It was eye-opening. So putting all our preconceived ideas in check, we prayfully filled out the APQ....and now we will see where we stand!

I sat down to write some more on the profile essays. I'm just at a writers block right now. SO I declared this Saturday, March 27th, Profile Writing day in our house. John and I will sit down and hopefully knock it out!!!! We are really wanting to turn it in by Wednesday, March 31st. So, the Agency got the APQ, we've been assigned an Adoption Specialist, and we are going to knock out our Profile Essays this weekend. Pray for us. =)

APQ

The APQ is finished! John has read it, approved it, and signed it. I got a few pictures printed and paperclipped them onto the APQ...it's going out tomorrow. They usually get it the next day! We also put the rest of the activation fee in the savings account. Next paycheck we will have more than enough to go active! We are trying to finish up the Profile essays now and we have started a file on the desktop for the 50+ pictures we are supposed to enclose with the profile essays. We are on our way...I see the light at the end of the tunnel! =)

Financing is well on track

We got word on Friday that our home equity increase was going thru. They are going to contact us next week for the closing info. We will close in Lawrence at our bank. Yay! We also heard from Alli's supervisor and the homestudy is complete as well. We got our application in to AA and so we are officially signed up with them. We are furiously working on our APQ and our profile essay questions. We are hoping to have at least the APQ done by the end of next week. We'll see! The profile essays are taking some time. I think my writer friend, Kristi is going to help me with that some this week when I get off work. SO we are still making progress. I'm STILL thankful that I have something to do and that we're not in the waiting phase yet. I went thru a bunch of pictures last night and picked out some of the 50 some we have to come up with. We will get it done. I'd like to have the profile stuff to our Media Specialist no later than the end of this month. That would make us active in April. Keep praying for us. =)