Twice as nice

We have begun foster a little girl with the hopes of adopting her. Department of child services called us in October to see if we wanted to renew our foster parent license and then if we would be interested in a placement of a 2 1/2 year old girl with a plan of adoption. Keith and I discussed this and decided we would try once more to add to our family through adoption. We had to be selected from several families that were interested in her and waited for a decision. They choose us and we bagan having visits with her 11/2/13. We continued visits in November and December and she moved in Christmas day. We went to American Girl Place in Chicago on New Year's Day with friends and then Keith, Gwen, Samantha and Dancia went to Great Wolf Lodge in Cincinnatti for a vacation in early January. Samantha came from a home with parents that didn't stimulate her. So when she entered foster care at 18 months she was development testing at 6 months. She got great foster parents and they had her walking within a week and starting to talk. She was not feed regularing in her birth home and still has some food issues because of that. She is in first steps and has made huge steps toward catching up, but still needs therapy. A developmental and an occupational therapist come to our house weekly for therapy. She is being evaluated for head start this week - cross your fingers that she will qualify. We started in at Danica's Preschool/daycare part time and she loves it. Next steps... Termination of parental rights. This is a process their will be a pretrial conference on 2/6 and then their will be a trial. Once parential rights are terminated, we will need to start the paperwork for the adoption. Another homestudy, background checks etc. With luck termination of rights should be done by 4/1/14 with adoption sometime this summer. Because rights have not be terminated we cant' post anything on facebook until the adoption is final. But we can share through a private blog. I'll post some pictures of the girls.