AT LONG LAST, WE MEET

Great news! We finally got to meet the 16-year-old that we’ve been learning about these past few weeks. Since things went so well and it looks like we’re all going to try to proceed with the placement, I think it’s ok for me to finally reveal that his name is Caesar.

DISCLOSURE
We started the disclosure process last week. This is where we met with Caesar’s social workers and a representative from the county to discuss his current situation, family and medical history, his strengths and any areas where he’s having challenges, etc. As it turns out, Caesar’s child welfare worker attended, but he is new to the agency and was recently assigned to him, so he didn’t realize that he was responsible for bringing all of Caesar’s past records and reports with him to the meeting. Also, since he had only met him once, he didn’t have much that he could add other than his initial impressions of Caesar. Fortunately, Caesar’s placement social worker, Tricia, has known him for years and she was able to tell us a lot about him. It was still frustrating though not to have all the documents available since we had been waiting for this appointment for a month. I could feel myself getting a little angry when the county worker suggested that we reschedule. I had had to bump a whole day’s worth of patients just to schedule this one meeting, and most of them had been waiting weeks or months to be seen, so I was not excited to have to do it again. Fortunately, we were able to complete the meeting over the phone in a conference call on Monday. We had all the documents faxed to us, and once Chris and I had a chance to review everything and get all of our questions answered, we decided we were ready to move forward.

MEETING CAESAR
At this point, no one had told Caesar yet that there was a couple interested in adopting him. They wanted to wait until we had all the documents and had “full disclosure” before they told him about us. How awful would that be to have to tell a kid, “You remember that couple that was interested in adopting you? Well, once they read your file and found out what you’re really like they changed their mind and don’t want to meet you after all.” Of course, that wasn’t the case, and once we decided to go ahead, Tricia was quick to let Caesar know. We set up our first meeting for last night (Thursday).

A day or two before, I did a Google search using the keywords “teen” “activities” “downtown” and “Walnut Creek”. I soon learned that there are absolutely NO teen activities in downtown Walnut Creek. Basically we have restaurants and stores. No bowling, no miniature golf, no arcades. Nothing. That’s ok though, we met Caesar and Tricia at California Pizza Kitchen for dinner and had time to talk and get to know each other. He was impressed at how pretty the downtown area is… most of the trees have strings of white lights on them at night all year round, not only at Christmastime. We had a great conversation that went from favorite foods (both favorite to eat and favorite to cook), to what we all did on Halloween, to our favorite rides at Great America Amusement Park, to our favorite scary movies. We were both expecting Caesar to be somewhat shy, and he was a little at first, but he loosened up really quickly and it wasn’t long before he was in the middle of the conversation sharing his opinions and laughing at our jokes and making some of his own.

After we ate we took a short walk around the Downtown Plaza, window shopping outside the Crate and Barrel and all the clothing stores. Caesar was free with his opinions on some of the fashions (“Oh my god, I LOVE those shoes!”) and having a parallel activity actually helped the conversation to flow even better. However, it was getting late and Tricia had to take Caesar home, so we took a few pictures (I’ll post them if/when the adoptive placement goes through) and made plans for our next visit. We all have the day off from work/school next Wednesday, which is Veterans’ Day, so we are going to plan some activity where we can spend a few hours together during the day. This visit will also be with both Caesar and Tricia, and if things go well, we may take Caesar out next Saturday by ourselves. We admitted as we were saying goodbye that Chris and I had both been nervous and excited to meet him but that we had a great time and liked him a lot, and we were looking forward to seeing him again. He agreed that he had been nervous too but that he also had a lot of fun.

About a half hour after we got home, we got a call from Tricia. She had just dropped Caesar off and wanted to call to let us know how excited he was on the car ride back. She told us that he’s really looking forward to next Wednesday, and we were glad because we are too!

More updates as they happen!