Our First Placement -Getting Ready

As we were getting to the end of the licensing part of fostering, we began to prepare our home for kids.  As I mentioned in a previous post we had been married without children for almost 19 years.  We had a lot of prep to do!!  We live in a small 3 bedroom house, and so had 2 bedrooms to get ready.  Our original thought was to put both children in one room and have the other for a play room, so the toys wouldn't be all over the living room.  You can quit laughing now.  We were naive of course, toys end up in every room no matter what!   We were licensing for two girls aged 0-8yrs, and had to start from scratch with absolutely no idea what age or size we would be dealing with.  The big pieces were fairly easy, we got a bunk bed and a crib and changing table.  We left the crib in the box since we didn't want to put it together unless we were sure we needed it.  We then turned our attention to clothes and toys.  So....Over...Whelming!!!  There are so many different sizes between newborn and 8 years.  I finally decided that I would have one outfit, one nightgown/jammies, underwear,and one pair of shoes in every other size.  I figured that if we had something to get them through a day and a night, even if they were one size too big, we could get to the store the next day and get what they needed.  The toys again were mind boggling.  If we got more baby toys and ended up with a 7 and 8 year old, it wouldn't be good and vice versa.  We just went with our gut on this and got more toddler type toys and made sure we had art supplies and games for the older kids. 

We were ready.....you can quit laughing again....you are never really ready for your first venture into fostering.

We couldn't wait!