Happy Anniversary and keeping it real

So if you check out the timeline to the left of the blog you can see that today marks the one year anniversary of when we first saw S at the Junior League sponsored adoption match event. That was one fast year with LOTS of loooonnnngggg days. Most of those long days refer to the waiting periods between meeting him and the transition to him living with us and then the long road to finalization. But to be perfectly honest we are having a new kind of long days now. The kind of long days that point out the differences in the three children you have raised from birth and the one who joined your family 8 months ago at 11 years old. Differences like work ethic, truth telling and the desire to do your best. This is why the blog has been so quiet lately. My mom always encouraged the, "If you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all" rule. I honestly haven't felt like there is much nice to say lately. There have been some good times, it is just that they are overshadowed by the negative times. The times when he is giving us more drama than the three girls combined ever did. Just for comparison sake I'm talking about three girls ages 12, 17 and 18 - if that's not a recipe for drama I don't know what is. I feel like our new house motto is "man up!" The tears can start (and stop) at the drop of a hat. Generally hats aren't involved but math frequently is.

Okay so back to those good times let's have a few photos.

The end of January brought about a VERY thorough eye exam - WOW! What a difference between our eye Dr's first look at S and the medicaid approved provider we saw prior to adoption.

So here he is "reading" while his eyes are dilating. 

Here he is looking handsome in his new tortoise shell glasses.... the glasses that lasted 3 days before they met their fate with a basketball. Thankful for complimentary replacement and a couple pairs of cheapo spares purchased from Zenni. 

       

Happy Valentine's day with cheese and chocolate fondues and sparkling juice. I'm not sure how many of these we will be able to celebrate with all four of our kiddos as the girls are getting older and will likely have their own more romantic plans in the future.    

  

Also in February news - he's TWELVE!!! Of course he got to choose the birthday celebration restaurant location. We have trained him well in that regard - he chose "Olde Towne Pizzeria."

A day of baseball and tree/root climbing at Medard park.

 A day at buddy RD's lake house - what an awesome day!

Spring Training with the Tampa Bay Rays with dad. 

Spring break we took our first road trip as a family of six and it went REALLY well. We drove up to North Carolina and stopped at St Augustine, FL for a couple of hours en route.  

What's a road trip without a full picnic lunch at a pit stop along the way?

Then came the AWANA games. S enjoyed this tremendously - anything sports related and he's all in. This is how he came out of his room the morning after the games - not sure if he slept with the medal around his neck but he wore it every day all day until I told him he really needed to keep it safely in his room. 

So there I did have some nice things to say and this has been a fairly therapeutic blog post to write. 

I know I have many blog writing adoptive friends who do a better job of "keeping it real" in such a  public forum. I guess it's just not my personality to share the tough stuff so freely. It is the daily grind that is getting us down these days - hoping for better days ahead and it's going to take all six McIntoshes to make that happen. 

As an update to the last post ... how's the list coming along......

Upcoming events in 2013

- get that birth certificate  - No surprise here, first contact with the Puerto Rico lawyer was in January. Papers were filed with Puerto Rico courts on April 1st. Now we wait three months for that process. Then we need to apply for a new SSN for our son. Then we need to submit our taxes (filed for an extension) because we can't file without him having a social which we can't get without a birth certificate, which brings us to needing the birth certificate to update his passport. Phew!

- celebrate S's 12th birthday (in 3 weeks) - Yes he successfully turned 12 complete with cake, ice cream and presents. 

- plan for prom and graduation for our TWO graduating high school seniors - Completed prom dress & shoe shopping while in NC - hooray! Ordered and received Grad announcements. It's getting more real every day. They will be picking up their grad gowns in the next couple of weeks. 

- celebrate our baby girl becoming a teenager (yes that's 3 teenage girls) - 3 months to go on this one

Christmas - so I'm a little slow

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas! We certainly did. Of course we went home to New Brunswick so we could have a white Christmas and S could see snow for the first time. It was looking like a pretty green Christmas when we first arrived. This first picture shows S & R outside with the dogs on the first morning after we arrived. I realized how limited his knowledge of all things snow was when he stepped out of the door and said, "So what do you think Mom, should I do a face plant?" 

Onto that frozen bare ground? I think not. 

Fortunately there was enough snow at Aunt Janice's and Grammie Toshes to get a little sliding in. 

Christmas morning came quickly as we arrived on the evening of the 23rd. S did well and was not overwhelmed by the gifts. It certainly was a special Christmas, knowing that he will always have family Christmas celebrations going forward. 

Thankfully after Christmas we got more snow!!!

Off course there was also lots of quality dog time...

Tons of fun time with cousins...

and quick visits with friends we hadn't seen in years...

 

So now we are into 2013, the adoption is final and we only have one tiny little detail looming to wrap things up nicely. We need to get a Puerto Rico birth certificate with S's new name and our names as his parents. This is a rather complicated process but the lawyer in Puerto Rico says it should be wrapped up in 3 months or so. So my goal is by mother's day to have his amended birth certificate in hand. 

Upcoming events in 2013

- get that birth certificate

- celebrate S's 12th birthday (in 3 weeks)

- plan for prom and graduation for our TWO graduating high school seniors

- celebrate our baby girl becoming a teenager (yes that's 3 teenage girls)

So life has a different focus now. It's not all adoption all the time, but it will continue to be busy. I noticed I posted 52 blog posts in 2012 - averaging 1 per week. This year I'm obviously off that mark already and I don't expect to post terribly frequently. After all the intent of this blog was to follow the adoption process to keep family & friends up to date on the proceedings and provide a timeline and information for others out there who are considering foster care adoption. I will still post randomly as something worthy of a blog post happens, i.e. the aforementioned events of 2013. 

Until then have a very happy and healthy 2013.

It's a BOY!!!!

It is official - our son is OUR son. 

No more legal red tape and we have full responsibility for this eleven year old 

bouncing baby boy!

Here he is with his teddy bear outside the courthouse minutes after finalization. The bailiff gave each of our children a great big fluffy teddy bear to celebrate the adoption.

Commemorative photo with the judge after she declared him ours.

We've come a long way from October 2011. Check out the adoption time line to the left of this post.

We've also come a long way from our first meeting with S, even his name was different then. 

First meeting June 4, 2012

Today in court we celebrated with his Guardian ad Litem, our family adoption specialist and of course the judge and the attorney. We certainly missed having our families there. It's like having a baby and no one is there to acknowledge it. I know they shared our joy of a new grandson, nephew, cousin and great grandson from a distance but their absence was definitely felt. 

It is times like these when we feel the distance the most. We had to remind ourselves that this distance - our move from New Brunswick, Canada to Florida - is how we came to find our son. 

So if we weren't here to begin with we wouldn't be missing them while adopting him. 

Clear as mud?

We had initially hoped to host a big "Adoption Finalization" celebration to commemorate S's place in our family and invite all of our Florida "family" and friends. However, given that it is 4 days before Christmas we realize everyone's schedules are already overcommitted and it wouldn't be very thoughtful of us to request that they join us for yet another outing. So we opted to celebrate quietly with our own little dinner at Stonewood. Yes I made everyone stay dressed up for dinner - S may be the only one of our children who truly enjoys dressing up. 

Sisters - gotta love 'em

His first meal as a McIntosh. Bacon cheeseburger and fries and way too much pop.

Checking out his new Bible. His adoption gift from us.

S gave each of his sisters a pretty monogrammed bangle along with handmade cards.

So the day is done and we arrive home to find our fence trimmed out in pretty balloons - I snapped this photo as he just stood there and stared at all the balloons. 

Thanks Debbie & Tiffani - we love you and your family.

From our family to yours, 

"We Wish you a Very Merry Christmas"

Making a spectacle of ourselves

So the little guy got glasses. 

This happened about 3 weeks ago but I needed time to calm down before I took to the bloggisphere.

 Is that even a word? If so, did I spell it right? He required a current physical to be placed for adoption. So we went to see the pediatrican he had been seeing for the 18 months he was at his last foster home. Upon completing the general eye exam - reading a chart at a distance with one eye covered - the Dr and I both saw that an actual eye exam was necessary. I already had my suspicions and planned to take S to our eye Dr after finalization just for a once over to see if he needed glasses for reading.  Of course having this come to light prior to finalization we had to go to an eye Dr to get further evaluation of his eyes. 

The screening person at the eye Dr's office did her assessment prior to him being seen by the optomologist and she told us to pick out frames because he would definitely be needing glasses. His eyes were not good and he has an astigmatism. We looked at frames - being on Medicaid he had about ten pairs of glasses to choose from and Medicaid does not allow you to upgrade frames or lenses. So we picked out his frames. We then went in to see the optomologist. He was very kind, though extremely concerned about S's eyes - he could not believe that S had never worn glasses. He all but read me my rights regarding child neglect. So he should, I was the adult bringing this child in for a way past due evaluation. It was at this point that I was thankful for the darkness of eye exam offices. I explained I had only known S for four months and we came in as soon as we realized there was an issue with his vision. I had mommy guilt over not getting there sooner combined with extreme frustration of the years he spent "in the system" with no one checking his eyes despite his obvious difficulties in his school work. I sat there trying to console myself silently willing the tears in my eyes to dry before the lights came back on.

I then proceeded to think about all the boys and girls still in care without anyone taking them to check their eyes. Kids don't know there is something wrong with their eyes if they don't know any different. My heart breaks for the children in this system. It is a broken system. I know this term gets overused but it truly is broken. Children waiting to have child studies completed and presented to waiting families. There should be no waiting families and certainly no waiting children. So with this train of thought you can likely figure out - my eyes didn't dry very well.

I am thankful that our family has been able to adopt two children from the foster care system in two different countries. I just wish there were more waiting families and less waiting children. I wish every child could have proper medical coverage and a caring adult to make sure it gets used. Am I wrong to think ALL children need to have their eyes checked as they grow? Is it odd that our three girls regularly get eye exams? I'm glad I waited 3+ weeks to write this post because this is the cooled down version of all that I thought about the foster care system of over worked case workers, foster homes that aren't keeping up with medical needs, teachers who say a child does poorly in class but don't suggest eye exams, yadda yadda yadda.

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Okay venting session over. S is adjusting to wearing his glasses. He has had his share of tears too. After his initial "It's like a whole new world" reaction to how clear everything looked - he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. :-(  After Christmas we will be making a visit to our own optometrist for her to give him an exam on our coverage and get him a pair of sports glasses with polycarbonate lenses. He will have more choice of frames and hopefully a better fit will be more comfortable and make him happier with his glasses in 2013.

P.S. ADOPTION FINALIZATION COURT IS IN 3 DAYS!

Christmas

 Getting ready for Christmas...baking gingersnaps.

Getting his first ornament for the tree - a baseball to commemorate his first year playing baseball.

Time for hot cocoa, gingersnaps and tree trimming.