Parker Adoption Story Update

Welcome! If you’re here for the first time and need the backstory about how we got into a surprise adoption situation, please check out Our Parker Story post in this new tab.

We are still stuck in waiting mode. We’ve largely had no news, so that’s great news to us and to the case. We have a weekly call with the agency and they are usually only 2-5 minutes because there really isn’t anything to say, but we usually have some questions. During our last call with the agency, they recommended we begin our fundraising for this phase. I loaded up this update with photos, so prepare yourself for cute.

Parker update

We’ll start with the most exciting part first. Parker is growing and we are noticing ability and personality things every day now!

He’s only/already 4 1/2 months old but we can hardly remember life before him. When school started, we were planning Boy’s birthday party, then we started preparing to go to Texas for the family wedding, and then we picked him up the day after our 9th anniversary, just a week after we returned. His arrival has completely upended any pre-conceived plans we had for the next year and we really couldn’t care less about that derailing.

Parker was less than 6lbs at birth and was just two handfuls to hold. Now he’s almost 13lbs and while he sits on our waist just fine and dandy, he’s sprawling when in his swaddle wrap for naps and bedtime. He just got his 4mo shots and it was incredible how much we missed his happy self for the following 24 hours.

Some of the neat things we’ve noticed about his personality:

• he watches everything with his eyebrows raised, taking everything in
• in the morning, he wakes up smiling and giggling and eagerly greets each person as they come downstairs
• if you smile and give him too much attention at once, he gets bashful and hides his face with a huge smile
• he’s the first baby we’ve had who is happy and patient with diaper changes, almost grateful when you’re done
• he’s camera shy – the sight of the phone between him and us throws him off

We’ve noticed a half-dozen new abilities or milestones and they keep piling up:

• we practiced rolling over last week & he finally did it by himself – he now refuses to stay on his tummy for tummy time
• he’s holding his pacifier now and more or less in control of it
• after dinner, he is deliberately grabbing things on the table and dropping them on the floor
• he can change the sounds he makes now, where he wasn’t even always able to make a sound when he tried a month ago
• his first bottom tooth has broken through!
• he was sleeping 7-8 hours per night – in the past few days he has decided he no longer needs any sleep – hello sleep regression time
• the phase of being partial to Mom first and Dad second and being wary of others is beginning
• he makes a happy noise and tries to jump every time we ask him if he wants to stay here forever

The pediatrician said he’s perfectly healthy and has no concern for any future developmental issues based on what we know of his pre-natal care and birth with what she sees now. For that, we are very thankful!

Placement update

As many of you know who know people who have adopted, we had a lot of paperwork to turn in, get fingerprinted (for about the 9th time), pull our non-criminal records from the sheriff’s office, and have the case worker come to our house for our home study.

Thankfully, since we are already foster parents for both this agency and the county we had a home study when we began and didn’t need to do everything from scratch. The home study social worker came out to visit Parker at our home as said we’re approved! I think she was pretty smitten by Parker, too. It’s simply not possible to be indifferent towards him.

Case update

We’re going to be a careful and a bit guarded with what we say here. After all, Google is pretty epic. We are more than willing to share more details in a private setting if you are interested.

We really don’t want a trial, and so far, things are looking really good. We’ve received additional, pretty concrete, assurances of the lawyer’s confidence. Some motions have been filed that put time limits on the next series of things, so we are coming closer to a decision on the case with near certainty that we will be moving forward. We could possibly be looking at a court date in the next few weeks, so the agency encouraged us to be working on our fundraising. As the potential adoptive parents now, the invoices have started rolling in for agency expenses, too, so that’s a different feel for someone who is used to sending out invoices.

Opening up Phase 2

Trusting that everything will go according to how the agency (and we) expect, we need to have the entire amount of fees paid before we are allowed to finalize the adoption. We are now being billed monthly as agency expenses are incurred. We’ve received a $1600 invoice for this month for agency expenses in addition to what we paid for all of the home study proceedings. It’s going to keep adding up and get more wild as we get closer to the big ticket day of finalization.

We’re going to push as hard as we can to pull in extra income but we also realize $22,500 is a huge amount!! We are working on a few personal fundraising ideas and have adoption grant applications in progress. We would be forever grateful for any help in meeting this financial goal.

Would you please consider joining with us and our friends and family who saw our first hurdle through to become his adoptive parents and give our sweet abandoned boy a forever family? His only family.