Getting Fit

So we'd decided to become parents through the IAC. Next they had to determine if we would make fit parents. 

The Spousal Unit and myself are both male and human (in case you were confused by our picture). In other words; gay. We couldn't help but wonder if there was some sort of gay parent closet we should have been looking to hide in. As it turns out, the people whose opinions really matter anyway, feel exactly as we'd hoped they would; that we're as nutty as we ever were and will make the best parents ever!

Although the world has mostly moved on from the formative days of school-aged ostracism and bricks being thrown at one's head by cowboy kids more concerned with fashion than your average drag-queen, some folks still seem to take issue with "the gays". Some of the adoption agencies we researched weren't even open to the idea of same-sex parents. Never mind what the American Psychological Association says, or the  American Academy of Pediatrics says, or the American Medical Association says or the Child Welfare League of America says. 

IAC seemed to have their poop in a group, so we gave them our trust and enough money for a new car. During the two-day workshop we were given a three-ring binder. In the old days, before google, we had these giant books called encyclopedias. The IAC client binder is the adoptionprocessopedia.

I did a lengthy paper in grad-school half-grounded in neuroscience and half in business and the differences between the management brain and the leadership brain. While you needn't be bored to death by my nerdom, it will be helpful to understand that I have more of the leadership brain, while the Spousal Unit has more of the management brain. So as usual, he went about setting the appointments, pulling the pertinent information and keeping things on schedule, while I worked on communications, research, strategy and design.

Three essentials had to happen before we'd be in circulation where birth-parents could find us:

1. Home Study

2. Make a "Dear Birth Mother" letter.

3. Create an online profile at iheartadoption.org

Simple enough, right? HA!

To prepare for the homestudy we'd need DPS clearance. I suppose they want to be sure we don't have Snoop-dog hydraulics on the car which have been proven to cause brain damage. We had to be finger printed for an FBI database. This must've been to confirm that we are not aliens in skin suits. 

We both had to get letters from our employers to verify that we aren't broke. Duh! Weren't they paying attention when we wrote the check? We had to present health history forms and get complete physical examination by our doctor including vaccines, blood-tests, TB tests, and statements that our child will not grow up to be a frothing wild man/woman after being raised by wolves in the north wild because we suddenly keeled over while on a camping trip shortly after adopting. 

Then we had to fill out paperwork on who we expect our kid to be and how we will raise them, discipline them and so on. We had to recall everything from our childhood and how twisted or not-twisted our parents were raising us. I kept waiting for some intriguing, repressed false memory to surface but, less interestingly, I really did have great parents.

Even though Texas doesn't recognize our marriage, we had to write the courthouse in Cali to secure certified copies which were over-nighted to the agency and then lost by someone in the office, later to be found again (I understand this because I frequently do it with my head). Proof of insurance, tax returns, our child-rearing proforma budgets, drivers license, auto insurance, birth-certificates, pet records, photos of the house and on and on. It may not seem like much in a few paragraphs, but everything has to be current up-to-date and so on which sometimes turns what should've been one appointment into three.

We started the adoptionprocessopedia on March 1st. 2013.  This past Tuesday, the 25th of June, we finally got to the actual home study part. Lisa, a social worker from CPS came to the house for a lengthy interview. We didn't know whether to expect a nazi-nun with laser eyes of questioning and pointing stick or a hemp-wearing earth-hippy reeking of essential oils and wearing dirty velcro sandals. 

As it happens, Lisa was neither of those. She made us feel totally comfortable and fit right into the warm and comedic aura of our home. The home visit was basically a recap of all the paperwork, making sure that we had two fire extinguishers, all plutonium out of reach of children, and no sweat-shop of umpa lumpas in the attic.

We haven't heard back from her findings yet, so it could be that she left the house with a fake smile and drove screaming in horror all the way home, but she did say that she thought we were going to make wonderful parents. Although it was a pleasant experience I was relieved when she'd gone, but that is only because we'd had spaghetti squash the night before, which makes any situation during which it is inappropriate to pass gas slightly uncomfortable.

Despite the home study being a pain in the ass, I have to believe it is worth it. Although I'll never know what it is like to be pregnant, I'm sure it comes with its own set of pains. It is worth it because it seems like it would provide birth moms with a measure of comfort knowing that her adoptive family of choice is well-vetted, and she deserves that sense of security.

Guess we're certifiably fit to be parents, and that's pretty cool.

     

Firsts

Tahdah! A blog is born.

Firsts are strange things. They can be horrendously traumatic to the point of reducing grown men to quivering piles of terrified goo like those left behind in the dark forest by the Cowardly Lion. Firsts can be sensible, like a single helping of pie and foregone seconds to avoid feeling like you should be whipped for your carte blanche pastry depravity. They can be wonderful too, like the first time Luca, our Labrador daughter figured out that her farts come from her and was no longer startled by them. We were so proud.

Hopefully, this makes a great first post in a blog about the road to becoming a first time parent and adopting our first human child. 

Maybe this is a blog just for me and the Spousal Unit (Jonathan). Maybe it's for another adoptive parent or perhaps a birth-mom. While I have no idea whether or not anyone will ever read the incoherent ramblings of a daddy-wannabe, I figure, much like the average Facebook user, that everyone wants to know my business. 

After all, I can't be any less important than that YouTube kid who got a gig as a correspondent because he was so torn-up about Brittany Spears. Why not, I say?! Surely the journey to being a dad is more important the ever-prevalent duck-lipped self-pics taken by folks in front of bathroom mirrors that seem so popular these days.

In any case, the story is worthy of being recorded. If nothing else, it will have merit as a memory-aid when I'm a 100-year-old great-granddad sitting in my chair with my pants up to my chest making strange sucking noises as I try to clear my lunch from my dentures. Well, up under my chest, since by that age even men have to move their breasts aside to clean their navels. 

Like so many other ideas I have in life, this blog was a bit late to come to fruition. I tend to have a million ideas a minute, only half of which make it out of my skull. Of that half, a small fraction end up on paper while the rest end up lost on folks who have difficulty navigating the muddy landscape of my thought process, much less the complex, but delicate social architecture that is conversation. I digress.

SO, time to catch you up. This whole journey started in a long time ago when the Spousal Unit and myself started talking about his inability to carry a child as a solution to our desire to bequeath the first future Intergalactic Supreme Overlord to the world. Despite his uterine ineptitude, we were both determined.

At first we considered renting a womb. Since the dude at Enterprise seemed convinced that they only rent vehicles, we looked into surrogacy. Too scary. Too expensive. Plus, we imagined, there were bound to be surplus numbers just sitting on the shelf, maybe even tenderly used.

That's when we began researching adoption. Whoa! The amount of information and misinformation swirling around the almighty google  was staggering. We did our research and decided on open adoption. Then on an agency. First we had to travel to Dallas for the initial informational session. As it turns out this was a fruitless step for me because when sitting before a speaker I seem incapable of hearing anything but the teacher from Charlie Brown. I have the auditory attention span of a hyperactive squirrel marinated in Red Bull.

We came home, did some chatting, read up a bit more and scheduled the second trip; this time to Houston for: AN INTENSIVE 2-DAY WORKSHOP!!! I put that all in caps because anytime the word "intensive" is used to advertise I imagine the announcer at a monster truck rally shouting over the loudspeaker. Incidentally, there was some shouting, but it was a dramatic reenactment of the starvation scene from "Gone With The Wind". When we arrived at the hotel, one of us was hungry and the other wanted to skip dinner and go to bed. As God as my witness, exhaustion-induced theatrics ensued!

The next morning we made it through the Houston traffic (a level of traffic that made me wish I was driving a tractor through Beijing instead). Filled with anticipation over what kind of crystal-grippin, hippy weirdos would be joining us for the TWO DAY INTENSIVE, we were surprised to learn that the folks there were just as pleasantly domesticated as we are. In addition, there were FOUR gay couples and only ONE opposite-sexed couple. It was a royal flush.

Yeah, really! In Texas, the shame state; and I always thought Brokeback Mountain was sci-fi.

We learned a lot, signed our contracts, paid a lot of money, and made our first parenting decision - open adoption.