Without a doubt if my son came with a soundtrack this would be it, funniest thing for the past few weeks I have this song swimming around in my head, I wanna be adored sums him up - enough said :)
Haven't been able to blog in a while, my computer is playing up for some reason doesnt like any google sites, except ones that come with a com.au not sure how it has developed these racist tendencies to only like things Australian bizarre bizarre, so blogger has been a no go, wierd tried everything to no avail. As my dearest husband has been away on and off for past couple of months this is first chance I have been able to use his computer to add a new post. Plus the fact he is out on the town tonight with an old friend who is visiting our city on business, means I dont have to disconnect him from whatever war type computer game (geek - said with a cough) he plays on this thing this evening.
We have been having a blast of a time lately, being very active, and the sun is shining every day with fury so we have been getting out to water parks, and pools as often as possibly, one of the failings of living in military housing we dont have our own pool, unlike many many of the houses in our city.
We have had 3 post placement visits so far, our social worker is very nice, and with every visit she has seen our house grow with an ever improving array of toys and games and toddler entertaining features, such fun having a two year old in the house. We have converted my old study into a play room of sorts, but I am sure like most houses with a toddler, every room without exception is a playroom as far as our son is concerned.
Sadly not all is peaceful in the land of the Kangaroo and lengthy adoption times, I was thrown into a bit of mental chaos the past few weeks. Our state dept has just realised that they have not been finalising their adoptions in the correct manner under the new legislation that came in in 2009, so therefore for us, and the other couples that are currently on a 12 month interim order our situation has been thrown into uncertainty, and in our case further complicated by the call of the Army as we must move again early next year, to another state, that has different adoption legislation and approvals (we already did a state move from one state to this current one during our waiting time, and that reapproval took 11 months to be completed so quite a significent length of time). Now normally this move wouldnt have made any impact, as we are meant to finalise our adoption within 12 months of coming home, but alas with these issues in our current state they put a big question mark over whether we would finalise within the 12 months, and that being said the suggestion was made that we would have to do the state move next year, get reassessed in that state to be suitable adoptive parents to our son, and then go through that states finalisation processes there. Heartattack or what. I think at first i wasnt really registering it, then i was flabbergasted, as really we have ticked many boxes, and proved ourselves time and time again to be sound, respectable, secure, good, honest, decent people, and to have to be reassessed time and time again due to bureaucratic failings is trully heartstopping, plus the prospect of leaving our son in a legal limbo in this Country not of his birth is just beyond anything we could allow, the mantra of the "best interests of the child" were missing in these early rationales.
So anyhow, way things used to work (up until a couple of weeks ago) one would have 4 postplacement visits, then at the end of 12 months of being home, you would be invited to court and the magistrate would finalise the adoption under Australian state law, a new birth cert would be issues, and australian citizenship granted. Then as a seperate matter one would wait for thailand to review the postplacement reports, then they send an invite to the families directly to attend the Thai embassy in Australia and the adoption is finalised at the Thai side. Now for other families this last step appears to have been occuring in varying time frames after the 12 months, some I hear it took a couple of years to be invited to the Embassy, but again was never great pressure to do this side in a set time frame, possibly due to the fact the adoption was already finalised on the Australian side.
So under the new way of doing it they are implementing (which I must note I agree wholeheartedly with it being done properly, as that is correct under our legislation but also more importantly under the Hague, just a shame for us few families in the interim which this last minute realisation they havent been doing it properly so is going to cause dramas for, but people after us should have things in place before even come home to make sure it is all done in a good time frame and hopefully the 12 months) the way it needs to work is, Thailand needs to recieve and review 3 of the 4 postplacement reports, the board then needs to sign off on approval of the adoption, we then would be invited the the Embassy, we then need to return to our dept office with some paperwork, the Embassy will return other docs back to Thailand, then Thailand needs to fill out an article 23 (part of Hague requirements) this gets sent back to our dept, who then can at that point arrange for us to go to court to face a magistrate and finalsie under our australian state law. So thats a lot of tooing and frooing between departments, and we are running out of time to get this done before our 12 months are far behind us.
So for the past couple of weeks I have been communicating with our dept to see how they are going to facilitate this, improve communication with thailand, explaining our personal situation re move, and basically get things moving on this complicated paper trail, once I got my head around it the most important thing to get into the discussion was no way is it in the best interests of our son to remain in legal limbo and do this state move without his adoption being finalised, and drag things out for indefinite amount of time, and also stressed that I am sure after our time in thailand that our social worker over there once armed with this information and the changes occuring in our state will be of great assistance. After chatting to one of my wise thai adoption mummy friends, and also reading the dsdw website, we saw a little ray of sunshine that we can actively assist to fix this mess we find ourselves in. We have learnt that one can actually do the Thai finalisation side of things, back over in Thailand, this would cut out a lot of document tooing and frooing, hopefully allowing us to get that side of things squared up in our rapidly shrinking time frame. Currently our Australian dept worker is away for a couple of weeks, but thankfully the last call I had with her was definitly more positive than the previous discussions, and we are now just hoping that upon her return she will be able to work out a date with Thailand when we may fly back over and get things sorted out.
So keeping fingers crossed at the moment and just waiting patiently. One could laugh really at the irony of it all, as only a couple of weeks before this all came out I was discussing with our social worker on our postplacement visit how the biggest challenge to me is that he isnt legally our son yet, as everything in my heart and soul and everything he is my son, yet legally he isnt, its strange trying to get ones head around it, and just be much more content once done but of course I give myself reassurances it wont be long, as did my social worker, just a normal part of our bonding process, and then bam this chaoas happens.
Anyhow in the meantime of this legal headache, we continue to adore our amaazing son, enjoy every moment, and wow cant imagine life without him, or indeed how I filled my days before him, he is my heart, and oh so much fun.
We had a wonderful first aussie fathers day celebration, we went to a fancy seafood place for lunch then took a long drive up the coast to Australia zoo (famous for the late Steve Irwin) and had a blast, our sons first up close with native animals.
