Yesterday 8/9/14 was a big day! It was the day that we officially turned in our application. We still have a lot more paperwork that we will have to turn in, and things we will have to do with the house, but so far this is what we turned in:
1) The completed application (roughly 20 pages if I remember right)
2) History of ALL of the places we have lived for the last 10 years
3) Driver's licenses and social security cards for each of us
4) Health insurance information for each of us
5) Homeowner's insurance
6) Car insurance
7) Proof of income (W2s and pay stubs)
8) Marriage license
9) College diplomas for each of us
10) Student loan information
11) Shot records for the dogs
I think that covers all we turned in at this time. In the end it turned out to be a pretty sizable stack of papers, and this is just the beginning. Considering all the papers/documents we are going to have to turn in, Lindsay and I have decided to start doing what we calling "paper bumps". Since most people post belly pics throughout their pregnancy documenting how far along they are, and how big their belly/child is at that point, we figured we would do the same but have it be pictures of the stacks of documents we are having to turn in. So here we go. I call this the 1 week paper bump...
Training class
Not only did we turn in the application but we also had a day long training class (9:30-4:00). The first half of the morning was devoted to an overview of prenatal/neurological development. I feel that the teacher did an amazing job of presenting the information at a level that anyone could understand. The biggest thing I took from this section of the class was just how much malnutrition/abuse/neglect can affect a child on the neurological level. Obviously, throughout this section of the training, as well as throughout the entire day, the teacher shared several stories about kids that he has come in contact with and how their biological home life affected them. I really appreciate the manner in which he presented these stories and the information. I feel that he found a perfect balance between giving you the information you need to help prepare you for some of the possibly horrible things the children have gone through, but yet he presented it in a way that is did not seem to be a scare tactic. I have heard of other agencies going into gruesome detail and presenting the information in a manner in just that way, a scare tactic, to scare off the people that cannot handle it. This agency/teacher did it in a manner of "you might meet a child that had X occur or might do Y. You need to start thinking now about how you will deal with that so that you can help the child as much as possible."
Other topics addressed during the training session included:
1) Medication administration/storage/documentation
2) Shaken baby syndrome
3) Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)
4) Water safety
5) Trauma
6) Loss/grief
I want to say there was more but that is all I can think of at this time. If you would like to know my/our thoughts on any of the other topics, please comment and we will try and do another post addressing it.
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