Obviously, we weren't chosen for the baby I wrote about in the last entry. The woman chose the other family because that family was similar to her family and because they were childless. So once again we were bypassed because we have a child. I was pretty disturbed by it at first. I kept hoping that she picked the other family because they were similar to hers, not because she felt sorry for the couple not having any kids. I'm over it now, just sad that we are still waiting for a baby. It's been 15 months now. Twice as long as what we waited for our daughter.

About the time we heard we weren't chosen, a message was left for us on a Thursday that there was another woman looking at profiles the next Monday. Our social worker wanted to give us more info on it since she had questions about showing our profile. She said she would call us on Monday. She never called, but I wasn't too worried. I figured it was something that she was pretty sure we wouldn't agree to, or maybe we ended up not fitting the potential birthmother's requests for a family.

In December we finally completed all the necessary paperwork to update our foster license. Ours gets renewed in February, but after my mom died last February, I just wasn't motivated to get it done. Now that it's all done, February is just around the corner and we just got more paperwork in the mail to complete. Besides the normal paperwork, there is also a new law, as of January 1, that foster families have to get digitally fingerprinted. You have to go to an approved location to get this done. We aren't sure if we are going to get our foster license renewed because of this new fingerprinting thing. It's just another thing to do. The paperwork is really not that bad, but in addition to the paperwork you also need to schedule a home visit with a social worker who isn't our normal social worker. The new adoptive families in our agency haven't been getting foster care licenses the past year. A year or so ago the state began to require new training that is around 16 hours long and is not applicable to those doing an infant adoption placement. Instead, the agency is having the birthmothers place the babies directly to the adoptive parents rather than to the agency, who has the adoptive parents act as foster parents. It's kind of confusing to explain, and I don't understand all the technicalities of it, but that's my simple understanding of it.

After we got our packet of foster care license stuff to complete Friday, I decided it would be best to call our social worker and see what she thought about us the whole foster care license. She said that she had just gotten news about the fingerprinting and found out that new adoptive families also have to get fingerprinted. She didn't know if the current waiting families need to get fingerprinted. She was going to find out for me. She told me that in the last year there have only been a couple times when having the foster care license was an advantage for the adoptive parents. This was when they got a call from the hospital about a baby. I'm still undecided about the foster care license. I should make a decision by the end of the week.

One thing I haven't done yet is get a new adoption physical. My previous one became invalid in October, and I never scheduled a new doctor's visit. I scheduled one for February. I could have gotten one sooner, but they would charge me $40 extra for an "adoption physical." I decided to just do a regular physical so I could consider it an annual exam and have my insurance cover most of it. I've actually had "adoption physicals" in the past, but my doctor was kind enough to code it (consider it) as my annual one. As slow as our current adoption is taking I figured I would take the chance that we won't get a baby by Feburary 12, and not allow the possibility of the doctor's office charging me more money. If we do get a baby before then, I will just have to have an emergency adoption physical. How would I explain that to the doctor's office? "Help, I need to see the doctor ASAP! I can't bring my baby home from the hospital until he gives me a physical and fills out this little paper. My baby needs me!"

While chatting with our social worker on Monday she told me that they thought of calling us Friday to have our profile shown. They decided not to since we have rejected situations like that in the past. That was true, and I was fine that we weren't told. She told me that they are working with someone who will be looking at profiles in a couple weeks. She'll have more information on that later. I can't know now if we will actually be shown for that one.