We Found Him

It’s finally official: Steve and I are adopting!

We will soon be the parents of a wonderful 9-year-old boy. He stayed with us a few times for respite care and during his visit on spring break, we realized we wanted him to join our family. He’s a great kid and fit in right away. He found a spot on the couch one night while we were watching a movie and it was like that had been his spot all along. (I’m not sure if I want to say his name online and we’re explicitly forbidden from posting photos.)

I didn’t want to say too much ahead of time since I didn’t want to jinx it. The Permanency Planning Committee approved us last week. We were at the airport waiting to board when we got the news. We had planned a vacation before he was on our radar, since we realized during this process that you can’t put the rest of life on hold while you’re waiting or you would go crazy. So Steve and I were getting all emotional when we were boarding the plane.

So he’s a great kid and we’re quite attached to him (obviously). He’s smart and pretty good athlete. He was a little quiet at first but opened up to us pretty fast. He’s pretty well-adjusted.

Right now, he’s been living with wonderful foster parents a short distance from us. Our caseworker and his caseworker met him after we got the approval to tell him the good news. We heard he was all happy and smiling.

He’ll be moving in with us officially in June, after the school year ends. Luckily, he can stay in the same school with the same friends, and can also stay in touch with his foster parents (the more family and support he has, the better). We’re grateful for that, since I imagine it’s tough to relocate foster kids. We’ll have a summer of pool time and bonding and getting him adjusted to the house. Then after about six months, a judge will officially approve us and we’ll legally be a family forever.

Steve and I couldn’t be happier. Our families are thrilled and we can’t wait for everyone to meet (I hear he’s excited that he’ll have a lot of cousins). It’s been a long road for us, over two years since we first started working with the adoption agency, and longer than that since we started discussing parenthood. It was hard at times, looking through endless profiles to find a kid we’d be a match for, putting up with delays and setbacks.

But we found him, this is happening, and Steve and I couldn’t be happier or more grateful.