Adoption process

I know I have been severely lacking in my blogging lately, I just haven't been able to find the time or inclination to keep up with it, but I feel like I really need to get my thoughts down now before I forget.

For the past several months Shawn has been working really hard doing all of the paperwork and background checks to adopt Roxy and Tyler. We have been talking about doing this for a few years but I didn't want to push Shawn into it, I really wanted it to be his idea and boy has he been a man on a mission to get this done this year! :) It takes awhile to get all of the background checks out of the way so that's kind of the frustrating part of it all- hoping everything will come back in time because you are only given 90 days from the time you get them back to the time they have to be filed etc. Well, Friday we finally got the last check back- WHOOHOO! We were all very excited about it! Monday Shawn and I drove up to Greeley where the county courthouse is to file the papers (we decided to do them ourselves since it was uncontested). Now it is just a waiting game until we get a date for a hearing...

This whole thing has been an interesting process. We talked to the kids about it first to see if they even wanted Shawn to adopt them. Of course they did- he's their dad; he loves them, takes care of them, provides for them in every way. They did have a few concerns about their "Andy dad" though. We were able to calm their fears by letting them know that nothing was going to change there. We will not cut them off from having contact with him. If they choose for him to not be a part of their lives it will be up to them- not us. Although he hasn't seen them in over a year, they do still talk to him often and love him in spite of himself. Once they decided this was what they wanted then I talked to Andy. He was very open to it knowing that we were not going to cut him out of their lives. A little know fact is that is also has another daughter- Aisha, who is now 16 that he let be adopted by her step-dad when she was little. He has not seen or heard from her in many years and I know that makes him sad. He really does love his kids in a weird "i don't want to be responsible for them" kind of way. A little side note here: the kids and I found Aisha on FB a few months ago and have had a good time getting to know her again. She was thrilled to have us part of her life again but has no desire to have anything to do with Andy. What can you expect when he didn't really try to keep her in his life, didn't pay child support and then her mother tells her all kinds of horror stories about him??

Anyway, it was kind of funny because the day Andy signed the papers giving up his parental rights he called to tell me he had signed them and sent them back to us- he also told me that the following day he would be going to court to get full custody of his 2 boys with his last girlfriend. Apparently she had become addicted to prescription drugs and was neglecting and abusing the boys so Child Protective Services took them away from her and awarded them to Andy. He said he felt like it was karma coming back to bite him in the butt for not taking care of his other kids. Maybe so... I just hope he has learned something from all of this and will take this chance to be a good father to those 2 little boys!

Hopefully by Christmas we will all officially be Wycoff's! :)