And the waiting begins

Okay, so I know I've shared with friends and family on Facebook that we were working on updating our foster care license after our adoption of Ethan. So this week we got our final paperwork in for the kids' physical paperwork and were waiting for the email from our licensing worker that we were in the system and were open to accept foster children.

She told us that because we aren't too picky, that we should be prepared for a phone call right away. This week we got the extra bed put together in Ethan's bedroom, bought some bins that a child placed with us could use to store food, bought some night lights and a pack 'n play. You might wonder why we'd need bins/storage containers for a child to keep food in...maybe? After many trainings and talking to other foster parents, the one common thing they all talk about is how some children have been neglected and will horde food because of it. The idea around letting them pick some snack items that won't go bad and keep it in their very own bin is they know the food is their's and if they need it is there.

We are licensed for infants and then children ages 4-11. We agreed to take medically fragile children and any child really for that matter. We have some concerns about taking children with certain behaviors like cruelty to animals, fire starters or abusive towards other children but we are open minded. We know if the placement is coming from another foster home, those are questions we can ask because they will have that information most likely but if we are the first placement, the social worker will most likely not know that information.

The girls are really excited and we've talked all week about what it means to welcome a child into our home. We've discussed how we are their temporary home while their parent's get better and they can go home. We've discussed that while they are very excited, any child that walks through our doors is going to be in shock and be scared.

I thought for sure it would take awhile to get our first call. This afternoon, Ethan had therapy and when we got home, we had a voicemail. I had missed a call for our first possible placement of two little ones. I am so bummed but I have a feeling we may not have to way long for our next phone call considering when we received our first call, we'd only been in the system for a matter of a few hours.

Anyway, I appreciate all of the support and words of encouragement that has been shared with me. Let the journey begin!