The third and final class that we took in preparation to becoming foster parents was a class on state home certification.  The state of California has certain requirements for the home that the kids will be living in, most of which have to do with preventing accidents or injury in relation to water bodies, medications and chemicals and falls.

The inspection doesn’t actually happen until the household is matched with kids.  Different ages may have different requirements.  The height of the kids may affect what is out of reach for them. The gender and age of kids may affect whether they can share a room or whether they can have bunk beds.  The class is there to give you a general idea of the things that will need to get done and some of the things may happen last minute.  A few people have recommended that the child’s bedding is bought together, as a family during one of the visits with them, for another example.

By the time that expecting parents make it to this class, they are all the way through the agency’s process or very near the end.  Everyone was really excited and eager.  We had jumped through the hoops and earned our place in that room.  All of us had a nervous anticipation.  Those of us that were still working through the process had typically spent between 6 months and a year getting to that place, patiently waiting for each step.  In this boat, we all felt like giving our social workers a nudge to finish that home study already!

Those that were done with the process knew that kids were so close, they could almost taste it (so to speak).  A woman in this situation summed it up well by saying that she was constantly putting up shelves, it was her way of dealing with her nervous energy.  She couldn’t believe how many places that there were to put up shelves!  Closets, hallways, near other shelves…

For the last few weeks, I have been obsessing about painting. It started gradually, by just thinking about it.  We gave our tenant notice for July 1st. It was J-’s birthday right after and I was working a lot. He spent most of a week, using his elbow grease to get the place clean. We hosted the party and collapsed in a exhaustion for a little while.  Once we got our energy back, my work slowed down.  I started finishing painting projects in my massage studio that weren’t quite done. I started going to paint stores and looking at pictures online of kids rooms.  I became fixated on creating a giant chalkboard for teh kids to write on.  Actually, I wanted 2 walls.  After a few days, I started waking up from painting dreams and not being able to sleep.  At this point, I realized that painting was my version of putting up shelves, it was where I was storing my nervous energy.  It was my way of nesting and incorporating our new space into our home.

Finally, I had collected enough pictures that I showed them to J- and we were able to narrow it down.  We had chosen our colors, and I started mulling over where they would be applied.  J- dropped me of at the eco paint store and I spent about 20 minutes looking through their colors until I had made my choices. With one small adjustment from J-, we made the purchase.  That night, I did have a dream that I had made one wrong choice, but in the end, I am perfectly happy.

There were a few things that I didn’t realize until after we had started the painting and gotten several of the colors up.  The colors that we had chosen happened to be very similar to the colors in the rest of the house, just brighter, more playful versions of them…appropriately so, since it is giant kid romper room that we are painting.  Secondly, the colors match (not exactly, but well enough) the kids furniture that I grew up with that we now have.

Ultimately, putting up shelves, painting…are all just ways for us to have tangible milestones that our lives are changing.  To bring the reality of children in our home one step closer.