Uncategorized – Frankie & Jenn's Adoption Adventure

Several Updates! (It’s a long one!)

Jenn Munoz — Fri, 20 Oct 2023 21:23:56 +0000

10/20/2023

Well… It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted an update!

As you can probably imagine, we are busy!
Over the last few months, a lot has happened, so I will try to remember it all and provide updates where I can.

I was able to take 3 months of leave from work when the kids came into our home, and we worked on getting into a routine. My dad came to visit to help us get established. We wanted the transition of when I would go back to work as seamless as possible. Therefore, we started the kids with daycare, and tried to anticipate what the usual drop off and pick up times would be once I would go back to work so that we could implement them right away.

The kids had a ton of appointments. We wanted to get them situated with a new doctor, and see what therapy services they might need. There were about 6 weeks or so where we had at least one appointment a day. I suppose that happens with 3 little kids.
In addition, I was clothes shopping, food shopping, cooking, and trying to keep up with the heaps of laundry. I am so grateful my dad was able to stay with us and help!

The daycare situation was hard to implement. But by God’s grace and ultimate plan, it worked out better than I could have imagined. I first had them enrolled at a new daycare in town because there were no other openings. I had their names on several wait lists hoping something else would open up. Since this daycare was so new, they didn’t have therapy services set up. I would have had to take a lot of time off of work to get the kids to and from their sessions – not to mention it was a bit of a further drive. I was desperately calling around and took a chance at touring a daycare that didn’t have any openings. The director was so nice and listened to all of my concerns as well as offered recommendations to set us in the right direction and set us up for success. She took time to review the daycare’s availability, and sure enough, she actually had 2 temporary openings and offered to have our 2 older kiddos there for 2 weeks. She was unable to offer an infant opening, but I took advantage of the bonding time with baby.
She also reached out to other directors (now knowing the full situation), and a few days later, I received a call from one of those daycares. They had 2 openings and would conveniently be able to take our 2 older kiddos right after their 2 weeks ended with the other daycare. This was amazing news! This daycare would be able to provide therapy services at the daycare, so there would not be any transportation needed to get them to and from those appointments. So, I immediately set up an appointment to tour the facility, which was scheduled for a week later. At my visit, they informed me that they just had an infant spot open up that day and the start date would be the same as the 2 other kiddos. God clearly had His hand in this!

As we progressed through the months, the kids became more comfortable with us and our routine. They started eating more food that they weren’t used to eating, their skills were advancing, and they started trusting us more. As expected with any new daycare and cold season, our immune systems were challenged. On top of that, baby seemed to be sick once a month and she was very uncomfortable. As we started approaching September, I was planning our first birthday party together and I was planning for the upcoming transition of me going back to work. At this point, I realized that not only was I going back to work at the busiest time of the year, but Frankie was going to be in his last term of school, and we still needed to figure out how to make time for cooking meals and taking care of the kids through it all.
We were exhausted and stressed. I knew we were going to need help.

My mom and Godmother were already planning on visiting us mid-Sept. To make this even better, my mom was able to extend her stay with us, and she has been a huge help as we worked through the tight deadlines. Thank you both for visiting and helping!

Frankie is doing well in school and is anticipating the completion of his master’s degree by the end of this weekend!

There are several legal processes that happened over the course of the summer. For the sake of all involved, I am unable to discuss these matters. However, I am pleased and so incredibly excited to share that we have officially been identified as the adoptive parents of all three kiddos! We are working on completing a 3rd home study due to all agencies and processes being separate and are anticipating adoption within the first few months of the new year!!

Several Updates

Jenn Munoz — Wed, 10 May 2023 01:12:24 +0000

5/09/2023

Goodness! Where do I start?!

So much has happened in the last month. It has been a whirlwind.

Last I wrote, we had officially been identified as the adoptive home of one of the three children. All three of the children are at different points in their paperwork and this can often take quite some time. In order to officially adopt, the children need to be in our home for at least 6 months. Our goal is to keep the siblings together while their paperwork continues, so we are required to go through foster care licensing. Then as the paperwork for the others advance, the time they will have spent with us through that point will count towards the 6 months. Most recently, we received our background checks (yes, new ones) back and are ready to start the home study (yes, another one).

In addition, we are required to do several training courses for foster care licensing. Some of these include but are not limited to fire safety, furnace inspection, unity training, and training to understand children with trauma.

While all of this is going on, I am looking at what daycare we would be able to have them in and where they would receive their services. Please pray that we get at least 2 daycare openings by the time they come into our home.

I was planning on going on bonding leave, but now I am receiving conflicting information, so I am not sure if this will be possible right away, or if I would need to wait until the adoption is finalized to take my leave. If I am unable to take leave when they are placed with us, this will make things more difficult as daycare is still hard to find and I would still need to work.

Frank and I are still working full time, and he is still in school. He is working on his Masters and is planning to be finished this December.

We were able to start visits with the children, and last weekend, we had them for our first overnight! They had a little bit of a hard time getting to sleep, but I can’t blame them. New home, new beds, new people… It will all take some getting used to. With all that being said, they were all asleep by 9p and aside from one baby feeding, slept until 7a. Going forward, we will have them on the weekends, so we will need to coordinate between work and picking them up on Fridays as well as dropping them off on Sunday.

Now, you might think, how will they get 3 car seats in their Equinox? The answer is… we can’t. So, car shopping we went. With the help of our cousin, we were able to purchase a Traverse! It is in need of a few repairs, so for the time being we have a lifted Yukon XL (basically a bus) for a rental.

If we have been on the quiet end and aren’t in contact as much as we usually are, please know that it is nothing personal. Honestly, this is all overwhelming. It is a transition for all of us, and we are trying to make everything work well and get everything we need in a small timeframe. God bless!

Puzzle Update #6

Jenn Munoz — Thu, 09 Mar 2023 16:00:26 +0000

3/9/2023

We are three quarters of the way to our goal!

We continue to be blessed with an immense amount of support from our family and friends. Each one of your blessings touch our hearts! All of your prayers are greatly appreciated, and please know that we are praying for all of you!

This next month will be a month of waiting. We know God’s timing is perfect, but we also sometimes struggle with letting Him be in control. This time of waiting has been perfectly placed within the season of Lent. Lent is a time of waiting, fasting, praying, and drawing ourselves closer to God. Through this, we have the opportunity to prepare our hearts and our home for these children. We can see all of the good works that God is revealing in our lives, and we are overjoyed for what He has in store for our future.

Please pray for us as we prepare and please let us know how we can pray for you!

Request for our family and friends

Jenn Munoz — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 22:03:39 +0000

1/31/2023

Family and Friends, We hope you know how dear to our hearts we hold you all. You have been praying for us and have been giving us great words of advice and encouragement. You have bene in our prayers, too!

A favor to ask of you…. As we are building our profile book, we would like to add a page on how our family and friends would describe us. Isn’t that more fun than having us describe ourselves??

Please leave a comment, email, or text with a few words on how you would describe Frankie and a few words on how you would describe Jenn.

Love you!

Home Study – Final Interview and Puzzle Update

Jenn Munoz — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 17:23:19 +0000

11/28/2022

I apologize for not updating for a while. I feel that the days just fly by with the holiday season now being in full swing. Our final home study interview was on 10/20. This was probably the shortest of all the home study interviews. This one mainly covered finances and any additional clarifying questions that the case worker needed to finalize our home study. I thought this would be the one that would take the longest, especially since finances seem to change often. But we were able to give just a few updates and have everything good to go.

What are the next steps for us? The case worker will go through all of their notes and will get everything typed and organized. Once that is complete, we all just need to sign off on everything showing that it is complete and correct. Once that is done, we will be officially active adoptive parents! We are in the process of creating our profile book. Within this book, we will have pictures and stories covering what we like to do in our free time, what life would look like in our family, and key values that are important to us. In fact, since family is one of our key values, we had asked our cousin Sarah to help us with some design elements within our profile book, and my dad will be helping us to create a website to go along with our book. Once our profile book is complete, the agency will pre-match us (and others looking to adopt) with expecting parents and the expecting parents will be given 3-5 profile books from which to choose the adoptive parents of their child. We fully expect that this process might happen multiple times but are trusting in God and His timing that we will be perfectly matched.

Puzzle Update! We are about half-way to our goal! <3 You all mean the world to us and this whole process feels a bit surreal. We have been thinking and praying about adopting for quite some time. We truly thank you from the bottom of our hearts in helping this to become a reality for us!

We cannot express enough how much all of your support means to us! This journey is definitely not easy, but having you all by our side, praying for us, and keeping us grounded means the world to us!

We would love to hear from you! Please send us your prayer requests and we will offer them up in daily prayer.