This baby has many who love her and want to take care of her. There is an aunt and uncle who want to adopt her and there is also her brothers ( the boys we adopted) who also want her. Of course we want her too.

DCFS social workers a few weeks before this court case made us change the visitation schedule we had with the aunt and uncle. We have custody of the baby and were going bi-weekly visits to the aunt and uncle. As you see in the other post it was about Christmas time and things were busy so every other week was not possible. The aunt and uncle seemed to understand the situation and tollerated schedule conflicts. Since Dec 5th we had 5 visits with them up to Feb 23rd. On Feb 23rd the baby’s social worker came by to talk about visitation because the aunt and uncle complained they only get an hour per visit and have to drive all the way up to us. The drive part was true as we had vehicle trouble but the visits were 2 hours minimum.

On Tuesday she calls us and tells us that we will hand over the baby for an overnigtht visit at 10am Saturday. As you could imagine this is not what we want as adoptive parents.

In court the judge blasted the DCFS attorney with words to the effect of “why are my orders not being followed?”.

End result is the Judge telling the aunt and uncle that the court does not see it would be in the best interest of the baby to be placed with them and that it would be on her best interest to be place her with the siblings which are the boys we adopted. She also clarified that she wants only once a month day visits.

Seeing the Judges wishes in this case gives us hope that we will be able to keep her. Please keep us in your prayers as this is long from over but for now we will just love and care for this little one.

Until the next time,

Thirteen

These are very good questions and I will try to answer them the best I can with out making this a long drawn out post.

Ok the last Post was http://www.thirteensworld.com/2008/12/06/look-what-the-stork-dropped-in-our-bassinet/ and as you can see by the date that was December 6th! So what has happened since then?

Well for one, getting a baby changes everything in your life. I mean everything. And problems don’t go away just because you started a blog. The cars died, the job had recently changed, school was still in session (new semester still is) and on and on it goes.

We had to get rid of a car, buy a new car (new to us) get that new car repaired, drive all over daily for work, fit in school, and now get this adoption thing going. It has been say the least quite busy. And I would get home and all I would want to do is veg out on-line. Now if you follow my twitter you would have seen some updates. http://twitter.com/mrthirteen

I have 3 drafts started that need to be proofed and posted. One is the story on how I became to be Thirteen and what does that number actually mean to me. That one is taking some time because I want to make sure I have all the stories and the players in the game correct to the best of my ability, and since I only want to right it once… I am taking my time on it.

Also WordPress has released a few updates. I have to update the blog and other things as well so as you can see. Busy Busy is Thirteen.

Note you can visit my friends site that I help setup: http://www.thenationalreport.com/ He has some very spot on stories on politics and religion that some of you may agree with and some may not. He invites healthy debate on his site so why don’t you give Jeff a visit. You can also follow him on twitter http://twitter.com/jdisario

Well that about sums it up. I want to veg a bit with my wife in front of the TV so I am going to sign off.

Until the next time,

Thirteen

This has been a very interesting week. I must go back and explore a few things to explain why. Back in September we were notified by DCFS (Department of Children and Family Services) that the biological mother of our two adopted boys had a baby girl. This baby for whatever reason was taken in to the custody of the Court. The DCFS is mandated to first place with relatives, if none available or found, then they try to keep sibling sets together. We were the only family they could get a hold of that had siblings. They told us they were going to need permanent placement for this little girl and wanted to know if we wanted to adopt her. (See it’s a girl and home assessment completed and we passed for more info)

So we get ready to receive this little girl, but by early October we are informed that the Judge had ordered placement or suggested placement with the Uncle and Aunt who expressed interest in adopting her.

A few months go by, and we start grieving the loss of not having this baby placed with us. We start getting rid of the baby stuff, like bassinet, car seat, etc. The very day (Monday) we give back the car seat we get a random obscure phone call from DCFS placement division. I return the call and leave a message to let them know our cell numbers and wonder what is going on. Tuesday the tell us that this little girls file has been through many social workers hands and to make a long story short, the judge ordered the child be placed with us. The problem with that order for the newest social worker was “the family” was only listed as a “family with siblings.” So the social workers needed to go through the mountain of paperwork to find out who this family was.

The social worker finally stumbled across our names and gave us a call to see if we were interested. They had no idea that we had already been through this process two months prior and had given up on getting her. The social worker stated that we will have to do this, that, and the other thing (stuff needed for placement, I will not bore you with all the tedious details.) before we can have her placed with us. We explained that we had already done all those steps (which the social worker was unaware of.) We gave them the names of all the contacts we had with DCFS and all the steps we had taken with each. The social worker took the information and was going to contact and help the social worker currently assigned to the baby.

Wednesday the social worker for the baby called us and said she would be placing the baby with us on Friday! We were excited but still skeptical as we waited for the precious blessing to be delivered. There were and are still some problems in the “records” as we found out on Friday. The social worker was running in to all these “technical” problems with our home, or file whatever. She pulled every string she could and almost was not able to deliver as promised. But as you can see by the topic at 6:15 p.m. the stork dropped off a precious baby girl.

The Thirteen family could not be happier. There are some roadblocks and hurtles to get by in the coming months but the way this whole story played out, I doubt we will have any major issues.

Until the next time,

Thirteen

Update: Added Picture.

This event is one of the biggest fund raisers for the SCV Pregnancy center that supports women in crisis with unplanned pregnancy’s.  Visit thier website for more information (www.scvpc.org Make sure it’s dot org otherwise you’ll get a computer repair company.)

The National Anthem and worship song to start off the even were performed by members of the worship band at Frontline Community Church Then they did a balloon release which if memory serves me correctly is something that signifies releasing the unborn lives that are lost to abortion into God’s hands. (I hope to get clarification on this from the SCVPC and I’ll update this post when I do.) Then it was on to the ribbon cutting and the walk.

Walkers walked from behind the church to Bouquet Canyon Rd and then East up to Centurion Way, crossed the street and came back West on Bouquet until they reached Seco Canyon Rd. At that point they crossed again and returned down Bouquet back to the front of the church where they were greated by supporters with Water, and mostly healthy snacks. (I say mostly because there were chocolate chip cookies there. Yumo!)
After the event I got to pack everything up and put it away until next year. (or the next outside event)

Since we have a small apartment the home study, as it’s called, took about 10 minutes. The social worker stayed and chatted with my spouse for almost 3 hours. He told my spouse that he believes the child will have a wonderful home to be in.

So now the next step is to send the report back to another social worker who will review it and then place the child with us. We are not sure how long it will take for this process but we are hoping it is quick. This child is already 5 weeks old and the longer it takes the harder it will be for the current foster family to let go.

So keep us in your thoughts and/or prayers.

Until the next time,

Thirteen

I have been wanting a little girl for about 2 years now. We already have 2 boys and they are great, but I won’t be giving away my son’s in a wedding. Plus I am sure Mrs. Thirteen secretly wanted a girl as well even though when asked she was “not ready yet” but when the phone call came for this girl, she was ready.

Due to the nature of foster and adoptive placements I can not go into details about this little girl at this time, but as soon as I am able I will make a post about her.

Until the next time,

Thirteen