Pages

Friday, May 20, 2011

A son and Iron Man jammies, best day of my life!

I haven't been keeping up with my blog. I'm like that though, I lose interest or get distracted, or lazy, whatever. But here I am. A lot has happened since I last wrote. A LOT!

Biggest news, I became a PARENT. Yup, that's right, a parent. And I have to say, it's been exactly 2 weeks since we brought our boyo home and I love him with every fiber of my being. I look at him and I marvel at how perfect he is. When he smiles I get the proudest feeling. Because he didn't used to do that. Smile.

I can't get into particulars, we are bound by confidentiality laws until our adoption goes through, but I can say, he wasn't very happy where he was. And now, he's a normal, though sensitive, 12 year old. He plays video games as often as he can get away with, and with me as a parent he gets away with it a lot, because I dig video games too. So I'm either playing with him or watching him and offering suggestions to help him. I read the screen while he slaughters zombies. He's too busy blasting away to read.

It's amazing how it happened, we got a phone call from our social worker asking us if we were willing to take a 12 year old boy as an emergency foster removal and keep him for about a week until they could find a foster home to put him in. We aren't foster parents. We are adoptive parents who are part of the fost/adopt program, which means we are adopting a child from the California foster care system. But in an emergency situation we can take in a child from another family that uses our adoption agency under respite. Respite would typically be used in situations where the adoptive family had to leave suddenly, say for a funeral, and couldn't take the child. Then you would take that kid for a few days or up to a week, until they came back. This situation was different, but we were still willing to help out. So we went to pick up this 12 year old and we were both nervous, we didn't know anything about being temporary parents and we didn't know anything about 12 year olds. Most of the kids in our lives are under 8.

So we go get him, long story short, he's awesome! Two days later we contacted our social worker and asked what we had to do to keep him. She had to contact his two social workers from the county and his lawyer, give them our homestudy and wait for them to approve us as adoptive parents. We held our breath, we prayed, we hoped and we got accepted! One week ago we signed permanent placement papers! It was the single best day of my entire life. I got a son and Iron Man jammies all in the same day. Score!

So now we wait the mandatory 6 months, then we can petition the court for adoption. We can't wait. We are so excited. We love getting to know this boy. This amazing, sweet, sensitive, funny, kind boy with the most amazing smile and the cutest dimples. We love hanging out with him. We have serious talks about what it all means, what it means to be a part of our family, what it means to have two moms, what it means that family is forever and we will be here for him, and for his children. I talk about when he's 16 and what kind of car we are going to get him, I talk to him about what he's gonna do when he grows up and how he's gonna come home from college every holiday, I tease him that he's going to live in my basement until he's 40 because I don't ever want him to leave. He reminded me we don't have a basement. I told him I would start digging. I want him to understand that this is his permanent home now and that we are all a family.

I think he gets it, but just in case he starts to doubt it, I will keep reminding him. Last night as I hugged him goodnight and told him I love him, he replied back, "I love you too". Second best day of my entire life. Gosh I dig this kid. And I just can't wait to see where we all end up. I'm sure that the teenage years are gonna be fun, hard, crazy, frustrating and all that. I know it's not always so easy, he's a human being with feelings that will come out in all kinds of ways, some of which may not be pleasant. It's OK. Bring it on. I'm a parent now. I can handle it. Well, with a lot of help from my amazing wife, I'm pretty sure I can handle it. Cuz we've got this parenting thing down.

No comments:

Post a Comment