Shaking it up

My husband and I have decided to give foster care a twirl. We've been playing with the ideas adoption now, well, since before attempting to adopt Flint. We discussed the pros and cons and talked to friends and we decided to give this a shot. My husband said this would let us see if we really wanted to adopt. After caring for small children we would know if we really want to do this, again. We start classes in January 2014. We know we will take babies and under 4 but we haven't discussed if we will take special needs or sibling groups. I'm open to some special needs but not all. Special needs covers so much from being deaf but mentally aware to learning disabilities that are not severe to extremely severe. Someone I knows a 4 year old that looks all of two, maybe younger, he is mentally very slow and both legally blind and deaf. I am not about to take that on. Even though he is sweet, I am not capable dealing with a kid I can't communicate with.

 Our 10 week classes will help us determine what type of child(ren) we will want. Meaning ages, how many, etc... Today I was in the phone with people and discussing all this and discovered that potentially we have room for 4 kids besides my own. Not that I want to take that on but we have that potential. The social worker said we should qualify for more but not less children because we can always say no to them but we can't change after all the paperwork goes through without it being a big deal. I'm leaning towards being ok with a sibling group but my husband says we should start with one. The social worker told me that 90% of the time these kids are not alone. 

My family doesn't know, yet. No one reads my blog from the family so I feel pretty safe with keeping secret from them. I know I would hear all kinds of negative bullshit I don't want to hear. I would hear how I shouldn't get involved with other peoples problems, or how I was ruining my life by taking care of kids, how in never going to be able to find myself if I'm always taking care if kids, etc... 

As I see it, the people that say those things also age much faster Than the ones staying lively with kids. My grandparents raised my cousin. They stayed very active. My grandfather still goes to my cousin son's ball games. Meanwhile, my other grandparents molded away to nothing. I'm not a bar hoping person. I'm a Disney World, kids art, fun science experiments, and water park type person. I love kids and kid activities. I'm not ready to grow up and be boring.   

To be honest this scares the crap out of me and excites me at the same time. Here we go again.....