Month: March 2014

Foster Update

As I posted last week, I will be going in for heart surgery soon. I am hoping that it will be in April so I can recover before it’s pool time! In Pennsylvania the pools don’t open until June so I will have time to heal. I love to swim and so does Little One, so I expect to be living at the pool this summer! Keep your fingers crossed for me!

I spent this weekend replying to emails I had written with other agencies in our area, so we can meet with them and see how we fit. Then, while I’m recovering from my surgery, we can use the time to get licensed! One of the program supervisors even told me she is “super excited” to meet us!

We have one meeting scheduled with her for next week, and I am waiting to hear back from two other agencies. Depending on how those meetings go, we might visit the initial agency again to meet with their permanency specialist. I didn’t want to waste her time if we were questioning how good of a fit that agency is. We are looking forward to finding an agency and getting started!

 

New Laptop!

After ordering straight from the Toshiba website using my husband’s corporate discount, their initial ship date was 3/12. After that day came and went, I checked in with them to find out that they pushed back the ship date to 3/27. Ummm… not ok. And no one contacted me to let me know! Since I work from home, having a laptop is so important. There are just some things I can’t do on an old iPad! So I canceled my order and went to Best Buy today, which had the model I wanted in stock anyways, and close to the discount price (especially since I didn’t have to pay for shipping). So I am back! Expect your reader feeds to get filled up with all my thoughts from when I was gone. Like this wonderful sentiment about teachers and how powerful they are in our children’s lives.

 

http://www.parents.com/blogs/parents-perspective/2014/03/12/education/share-this-with-all-the-schools-please-glennon-melton/

 

Heart Surgery

Well, everything is on hold now. After waiting 5 weeks to be scheduled with the cardiologist at Geisinger, and after calling every week trying to schedule an appointment, the doctor himself called me tonight. I guess it hit home with the ladies in cardiology scheduling that I am 32 and I have a hole in my heart… what am I going to keep my l life on hold while I wait to hear from them?? So the cardiologist was super nice and apologized for the scheduling problems. He called as soon as he heard about my situation. At 7:30 tonight! Crazy. I almost fell out of my chair. He said that he performs PFO closures on three merits: the age of the patient, the size of the PFO, and the patient’s personal beliefs on  having it closed. Right off the bat I hit two of those three. So my husband and I will go in for a consult in the next week or so, and then I will probably have the surgery performed. This definitely puts a hold on all of our foster/adoption plans. I am sure that I will not be cleared by my doctors for probably 6 months after the surgery.

Forget About It

Today is a day I would like to forget. Horrible night up last night with Little One, who was hopped up on cold medicine and the time change, up way past her bedtime then most of the night in some fever-induced hyper/hallucinogenic state. I remembered why I keep telling hubby that we can’t handle a newborn–I am so terrible on little sleep. I get angry and lose my patience, plus I cry at the drop of a hat. So I fought with hubby this morning when he told me that I can’t schedule any more doctor appointments on Wednesdays, like I am clairvoyant and know when my daughter will get sick and miss school all on the same day that he has morning meetings and I have a super important doctor’s appointment. I called our sitter but she had appointments of her own so I called my grandparents and they came down to sit with Little One while I had my big appointment. While they were on their way down from their house, my husband’s meeting got cancelled. I tried catching them before they drove the 45 minutes but they had already left their home. Then, as I pulled into the parking lot for my doctor’s appointment, the office called to say the doctor was on call and was pulled into surgery, so they had to cancel my appointment. So instead of staying in bed with my sick Little One, my entire morning was in upheaval for meetings and appointments that got cancelled! So so frustrating.

Old Agency

I had to just let you know that the agency we applied with last summer for a sibling group, and were basically turned away because they said they would not have a placement for us, just put up a staus on Facebook that they are actively recruiting parents in the Raleigh area that can take sibling groups. Argh! We were there, ready to help, and they basically showed us the door and told us not to let it hit us on our way out! Must be something in the air this week at foster agencies:

Check out fosterhood.tumblr.com and fosterwee.wordpress.com

 

Still No Computer

Sorry I dropped off the face of the planet… Or so it seems. My new laptop has yet to ship so I am lost, both professionally and personally. I don’t even want to get into all that was saved, moving and otherwise, on that computer. I do back up my files regularly, but because of the move it has been a while. And a lot has happened! 

A few updates, for those of you still with me!

The director of the foster agency that we met with has invited us to start training this Friday. We are not ready to commit to his agency until we meet with his permanency specialist and at least one other agency. There are 3 total that I have been in contact with since the move and we are not ready to commit until we have exhausted our possibilities. We also need to see the cardiologist and make sure that I don’t need surgery before we make a commitment. While that was supposed to happen within a month of my hospital discharge, and despite my frequent phone calls, I do not even have an appointment scheduled. This guy is harder to see than the President!

Tomorrow I have my first of two different ob/gyn or Maternal Fetal Medicine appointments to find out if I can have any more children in the future (not that we are necassarily going that route) and to find out my options for birth control. I am weirdly nervous for my consultation. I have read a bit online about pregnancies with PFO and they seem to be either totally normal or they go horribly wrong! And while my husband and I have been unable to conceive a second time and agreed to pursue fostering/adoption first, when someone tells you that you should’t have more children there’s some innate reaction that makes you feel like it’s a personal challenge. Like, oh I can’t have kids/shouldn’t get pregnant? Now that’s my entire life goal to prove you wrong!

 

My Laptop Died

Last time I got a new computer was right in the middle of wedding planning in 2010. My laptop died on me and I went the same day to pick out a new one at Best Buy. With this new laptop, I’ve backed up my information monthly so that my laptop didn’t die and so that I didn’t lose all my work and personal information. Unfortunately, my backup drive was packed and I haven’t backed up my computer since we moved in January. I hope I’m not missing too much! I know I have all my work things and all of my pictures have been backed up. It’s just a pain and an added expense since moving and having medical bills!