To Do List, Age Preference, and Legos

To Do List

Here's an update of what I was able to do in the last several days:

•Mount fire extinguisher upstairs and downstairs (required for foster parents)

•Install carbon monoxide detectors upstairs and downstairs (required)

•Install child-safe cabinet locks for chemical cabinets

•Install plug protectors (more for my future nephew than for a future foster placement)

•Mount mirror above the kid's dresser

•Mount book/picture shelves in the kid's room

•Remove martial arts and music stuff from the kid's closet

•Placed children's chapter books (like all of my old Hardy Boys books, etc.) in the kid's closet

•Mow the lawn for exterior house pictures (for our foster application)

•Almost finish our foster application!

What's left?

The only things we have left before we can turn in our 50+ page fostering applications are: find Julie's college degree to make a copy of (hmmm not sure where that is...we should probably find it), draw a floor plan with fire escape routes, and make a copy of Lucy's vaccination records. After turning in the application, we have a medication documentation course (which sounds riveting) and an adult/infant CPR & first aid class. We are getting close! The last steps will be having the county fire inspector come give a safety inspectionm, then have a 4-8 hour home study visit from the agency. This is when the agency dredges through our past, vets us as being great potential foster parents, and makes sure we are wanting to foster for the right reason. Then, they take a few weeks to type up a massive report that CPS will have access to for a placement. At that point, we receive our license and are "open for business". Although we will probably officially be licensed by the end of the month, we are electing to not take a placement until December or the beginning of January due the arrival of my bro's son around Thanksgiving. 

Age Preference

I don't think Julie mentioned it on our blog yet, so I wanted to announce our decision from a couple weeks ago that we know for sure we will request an age group preference of 4-9 years old (either gender, any race). You may have noticed from the bedroom pictures that we won't be taking infants or toddlers, and part of narrowing the age range is due to the large amount of stuff you need to have for infants. To name a few, this would include a crib, stroller, high chair, bouncing chair thing, changing table, etc. Purchasing these items wouldn't be a problem, but it does become a storage issue if you go from an infant foster placement, to a second grader, and then back to an infant again. We simply don't have the attic or closet space to store multiple sizes of mattresses, bed frames, toys, and various infant gear for months or years at a time. 

So, we realized we would need to decide between babies/toddlers or 4-9 year-olds (9 was our upper limit). We love the idea of being able to really help a kid that is old enough to have an idea of what's going on but young enough to still be very malleable. Most importantly, it's the age group that Julie and I have the most experience with. I feel pretty comfortable that, even if we are placed with a child that seriously struggles with behavioral and emotional challenges, we know how to coordinate the academic and emotional support provided by the school system as well as implement positive behavior management techniques to help the child work through the challenges in their life. 

Toys!

I know we can't really start buying lots of toys until we know the age/gender of our first placement, but I figured that you can't go wrong in 'merica with good, old-fashioned Legos. I might have bought them because I had an obsession with Legos as a kid (and I secretly/blatantly hope that our future "visitors" will be obsessed with them as well). And of course, I just had to test them out to make sure they worked straight out of the box. (Right?) I quickly realized that a 500-piece tub of Legos simply will not cut it. We will need to buy more, so keep an eye out for Lego sales for us! I am antsy to buy lots of toys, but I know we really need to hold off until we can find out what our future child is interested in. Besides Legos, of course.