News on Baby D

I got a call today from the social worker on Baby D's case. I wasn't surprised to see her name pop up as sometimes her parents will have a question for me while they are visiting. I had wrote a really long letter today for them because I had a lot of good things to report. She had her one year well visit, she had her first birthday, her first Halloween, she is cruising, and moving quickly with her crawling. I like to keep them updated with her status and they really appreciate it. I also sent (well, really the hubs sent) two sets of pictures, one for mom and one for dad. They last saw her on Halloween, the day before her first birthday.
What I was shocked to hear was that they wanted to talk visitation, they wanted to recall what exactly we had agreed to in mediation about visitation. It was 2-3 visits a year and quarterly update letters like what I do for visits now with pictures. They wanted to know this because today they decided to sign the conditional relinquishment. A conditional relinquishment in this case means, they only relinquish to us to adopt. If the adoption is not filed, then their rights are retained. I am still in shock, this means they have 7 days to change their mind. I am still very unsure on timelines and where things go from here, but my rough estimates are we are still several months away from the adoption decree. They have to staff the adoption in social services, we have to get finger printed again, we have to re-do our adoption home study, then we file and wait. The wait time right now is estimated at 3-6 months for decree from adoption filing. We got our decree for Miss M 8 weeks from filing, but that is really uncommon.
They set the final visit for November 28th which I realized I wondered why after we got off phone. It seems that visits could continue until the adoption is finalized, but maybe we will set our first open adoption visit around the holidays. In the coming days/weeks, we will figure it out. With Miss M, her termination was when she was around 8 1/2 months but her visitation continued until her first birthday. I guess it just means we need to work diligently on figuring out what this whole open adoption is about and make sure that we follow-through.
I still can't believe it.

Taggie Blanket - I made it!

When we first started fostering Miss D, a group that I volunteer with gave me a monogrammed coordinating taggie blanket and burp cloth. She has loved this tag blanket to death. But, also Miss M takes it from her all.the.time. I have been meaning to dust off the machine for a while since I haven’t really sewn for a long time. I brought it out last week to make tutus (I only had to sew the elastic together) so I figured I needed to make this taggie sooner rather than later for Miss M. Oh don’t worry I bought enough fabric to make six, who knows what I will do with six or when I will have the time to make another 5. I have a problem when I walk in Joann’s Fabric. I buy fabric for all these great projects that usually don’t come to fruition. I still have fabric for the reusable sandwich bags I keep meaning to make.

Well, the taggie ended up being a pretty good bargain if I make at least two. They sell for around $15 for a small ten by ten. Miss M’s is sixteen by eighteen (not including ribbon) and I included this really, really cool flower embellishment.* All for a measly $20.04, 2 hours time, and 562 pin sticks on my fingers. I really think she will love it though. I did luck out and had a cool button Christie gave me from our tutu making session and my friend Kathy left her paisley ribbon for me because she said it is so me, yes I am a 70’s child and I love paisley.

I followed this tutorial and I got sidetracked looking at all the ribbon on that site. Mine doesn’t coordinate as much as that one, I just bought the fabric that was cute and on sale and the fleece was 50% off so I lucked up and I really like the purple tie-dye. As usual, I think I will be a lot faster the second time. I think I might need to invest in some finger protectors though before I make another.

I had been eyeing the taggies for sale on Pearhug Studio, so if you want one and aren’t motivated to make one, hers are really cute.

For the flower embellishment. I cut the extra fleece in three squares each progressively smaller. Then I cut those into circles with a wavy border. I then cut one small piece to look like the center of the flower. I stacked these and added a large button. I sewed these directly onto the fabric for the tag blanket. I think the flower is a really cool touch and Miss M will love it and stop stealing the babies blanket.

The finished blanket:

The finished blanket with the purple fleece showing:

The flower embellishment:

*Miss M is past the choking stage I probably wouldn’t include it if you had a much younger child. I did reinforce it super duper well, though.

Been a while....

I am guessing that my thoughts of keeping the blog updated are really not working very well this year. Hopefully these posts about catching up will become something of the past, but looking at my track record, I rather doubt it.
Here are the latest updates:
We put the house on the market. It took a few months of procrastination on my part and packing on Hubby’s part, but we have it on the market. There have been quite a few showing so far, but no bites yet. We hope to move just one or two towns away, easing my commute a bit to/from work. It will also hopefully put us closer to C’s school. We have been busy trying to do some projects/painting the last two weeks it has been on the market and slowly looking at new houses.
We are ONE step away from being licensed to foster parent. We are pretty excited about this and wonder what this journey will bring us. We are hoping to eventually adopt a foster child and hope this will happen in the next year or two. I wonder if/when we will get a call. I joked today that we might get a call while hubby is home alone and C and I are out in California, I can totally see him playing Mr. Mom for the week.
Hubby got laid off and started a new job. It was very stressful and the layoff was a complete surprise. But, he/we were very lucky and he found a new position right away. He is now testing electronic data capture software for clinical trials. So we both work in clinical trials. He is lucky and gets to work from home, which I secretly (well, now not so secretly) am hating on him for. At least he does laundry while working ;-)
C is doing really well in school. He is starting to read a lot more. He wowed me last night by reading the word “together” without any prompting. His teacher works really hard with the kids on reading and I think our nightly readings help, too. He is counting past 100 now. Still skipping a number here and there sometimes, but doing well. He got his first report card and got all 3’s except in fine motor skills where he got a 2. I think that is very, very good. He has still kept his green streak for behavior. (They get a stamp report on how they are doing every day on their folder, green (good), yellow (a few warnings), red (disruptive behavior), and blue (principal office)). C has only ever gotten green.