We are experiencing a rather short matching process.  All of the families that we have met that were in situations like ours waited about 4 months between the time that their homestudy was finished until they received kids in their home.  Some people wait over a year for infants and the average matching time is […]

I have seen this movie twice. I first found out about it because it was directed Jonathan Karsh, who I share many friend with from Carmichael, CA.  I went to a reunion and people were talking about his upcoming film premier. I didn’t see it at the time, but when I began to get interested […]

This is a tribute to Hugo the dog that I worked on with Kangs, Hugo’s partner.  J- and I used to regularly care for Hugo until his walking got a bit hard on our steps.  He is a good old doggy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moOhXhA26f4

It is still in progress, but due to the quality of my camera that took […]

One of the hardest things about the matching process has been seeing all of the kids that we can’t take.  When we first sat down to look at “the books”, we started at the beginning and looked at every single one. Well, the book was alphabetical, and we live in Alameda County, so it made […]

The picnic that we attended was a very well structured event with a lot of people. There were about 50 kids, 75 parents and over 100 social workers.  There were activities set up by adoption agencies (like tattoos, volleyball, bubbles and beads) and parents took charge of the tables in 15 minute time slots.   Over 2 hours, each had […]

Now that I am in matching and able to look at the profiles of kids that are available for adoption (which has been limited to sibling sets by our choice), I am very surprised at how minor the kids “issues” seem to me.  At some point, we had to, almost blindly decide a “level” of […]

Because J- is recovering from a vasectomy, our decision is at the forefront of our minds.  Here are more reflections on a topic already discussed here.
J- and I were discussing a friend and her decision about how she will become a parent. We reflected on our own back and forth about whether we wanted to […]

Matchmaker, Matchmaker,
Make me a match,
Find me a find,
catch me a catch
Matchmaker, Matchmaker
Look through your book,
And make me a perfect match
We have been in the “matching” process for a few weeks now.  This means that we are actually looking for kids, rather than waiting to look for kids.  There are limitations as to when we can […]

A few months ago, we had our respite parents, R- and N- over for dinner.  We had just come back from our first parenting class with the agency and were talking about all of the possible family combinations that may work for us.  Then R-, who is black, dropped the bomb. “Have you thought about […]

I wonder if people in other states ask people where they are from all the time.  If you live in Illinois or Alabama, is it just assumed that you are from there?  Of course, here in California, most people are NOT from here, so that is a common conversation topic to get to know a […]