One year

One year 

Today officially marks one year since we started our journey of adoption. This year was all paperwork and waiting lists. We go in to year two with such high hopes that someone will fall in love with us. The reality is--we are already in love with a child that may or may not exist yet. Our year journey recap --in one post.

November 19th - handed in registration form. The waiting list was expected to be about 4-6 months. We had to wait 4-6 months to find out if we would be approved to even hand in an application. (We started at #31 on the list)

February 24th– Our first blog post- announcing that we were going to (if accepted) grow our family through adoption.

April 1st –We were accepted to apply for the Domestic Infant Adoption program!

April 12th- Attended the two day required education courses

May 5th- Handed in our application

June 3rd – First part of our home study

June 13th- Home Visit- Second part of the home study- completed

June 18th- Officially approved to welcome a child into our home!!

June 18th- We were officially put on the waiting list for the “waiting family book” (We started at #11) They estimated about a 4 month waiting list. They informed us we wouldn't be notified again until we were number 5 on the waiting list. We expected to not hear anything until October.

August 14th- We got notification we were number 5 on the waiting list! Wowza –less than a month and we dropped to number 5.. That is a good sign. Time to get our profile ready!! They were now going to notify us every time we dropped on the list. We were waiting to hear that we were number 4.

September 8th- we received the written home study in the mail. (It takes them a while to write it)

September 12th- #2! We were number two on the waiting list!? What happened to 4th or 3rd? Not complaining

September 26th – Notification we were number 1! We were next to be put in the book.

September 26th –We were live on Parentprofiles.com (Completely separate from the waiting family book)

October 10th- We were invited into the family profile book aka- waiting family book!

November 9th- Our profile was completed and in the mail

November 12th- Our agency received our profile in the mail

November 17th 2013-Our profile was officially placed in the waiting family book.

Don't forget---It is adoption awareness month! <3

AT LAST--OUR ADOPTION PROFILE IS FINISHED!!

Our Adoption Profile is finished at last!! 

After WEEKS of hard work and stress trying to get everything to be EXACTLY how we wanted it- it is finally here:) 

We would like to thank everyone that helped us by proof reading, giving us insight, and different perspectives!!! Here are some (not all) of the people that helped: Pam Spar, Greg Spar, Jessica Kamps, Katie Meltzer, Jennifer Grotte, and our adoption counselor Dianne Delaney.

To those of you that follow our blog and not our facebook page (facebook.com/jordanandkaylahadopt) I forgot to mention that a couple weeks ago we did officially get our invitation into the family profile book. :) 

I am printing and mailing our six copies tomorrow and we officially get to start waiting ...very patiently for someone spectacular to find us. 

Hopeful future parents ----Jordan and Kaylah

Adoption Scams/failed matches

Adoption Scams / Failed (?) matches

A lot of you have noticed that we haven't updated our blog for a while. Aside from life getting busy it has been mainly because of some things/people we have encountered. 

In the last update we informed everyone that we were live on parentprofiles.com - and boy did that expose us as an adoptive couple. It's great, don't get me wrong. Being on here and going through what we are going through is normal when adopting, so don't think it is parentprofiles fault. It is really just the journey of adoption. 

Within our first week of being on the site (this is the site we pay for separate and has nothing to do with our agency) we were contacted by one scammer [[which was caught right away]], two real potential expecting parents, and another scammer [[caught after a long conversation]]. I am not afraid of privacy issues for scammers- so here is the first contact email:

Red flags:

1. The phrase "put to birth."
2. We got an email with the same name 2 hours later saying "..since I and David had decided..." (it was Neville originally)
3. Typos like "willin!g." There was a weird exclamation point in the middle of the second email's sentences , too.
4. Parent Profiles allows adoptive couples to communicate and give "scam alerts"--we looked up Whitney's       name and there were about 10 scam alerts on her.

I know a lot of people want to know about the real potential expecting parents that we were in contact with - but for their privacy I really feel we shouldn't give out much information--we can however tell you how we were feeling.

When we were contacted by "R" we got really excited. We were thinking, "Could this be real already?" Is this the start to our story?" Every email or text message we got was so exciting. We were very careful from the beginning not wanting to make "R" feel stressed or pressured in anyway. "R" is due in a couple months and is having a baby boy. Eventually our conversation died off - we are unsure of what she has chosen- and we pray that whatever decision she has or will make is the best one for her and her little one. After the conversation died off -our hearts were broken. It is our fault really- for letting ourselves get too excited too fast.

We were contacted by "S" shortly after conversations died off with "R". We guarded our heart more on this one. We were still completely open, but just held back our excitement. "S" was pretty open with us in telling us that she was on edge on whether she was going to chose adoption. Ultimately after a couple weeks of talking we are unsure of her decision. She knows we are here if she needs us- to talk or meet. We are giving her -her space -and we have a small feeling she has not chosen adoption. This is completely okay with us! We ultimately want the person or family that chooses us to know they are making the right decision for themselves and their little one. It will make our relationship stronger:)

We really know that when the time comes and it happens that it was truly meant to be. We know we are on this journey for a reason. There is a little one that we are meant to be with and an expecting parent that we are meant to meet. Until that day we will wait as patiently as we can!

All this has had us procrastinating on our adoption profile for our agency's family profile book. We have the first three pages just how we want them --but for some reason that last page we were having trouble with. Our adoption counselor had some minor changes on our rough draft, and once we went through it another time we made some major changes ourselves!

We did finish the second rough draft today and are about to send it in for a second review!

Our deadline to have it completed and sent in is Nov 21st! We are hoping to have it in by the end of next week! We will see about that though:)

Thank you friends/family/strangers for all your support!

Until next time,
Jordan and Kaylah------patiently waiting family