On the Road to Fostering- Excited and Scared!

My husband and I have decided the time is right for us to pursue becoming foster parents with the intent to hopefully adopt. We are currently childless, but have always known we want to do this. We attended our agency’s info night and have passed the background checks. We are in the process of readying our home for the home inspection and hope to start the classes in January (it will be another 4-6 months before placement from the start of classes).I know that I am getting way ahead of myself, but as I go about my chores/getting the house ready, I keep thinking of all the things that we might need to do to help our kid(s) feel at home:-Let them choose their own bedroom paint/decorations. I am having to resist the urge to decorate the two spare bedrooms.-Have pictures taken so they can see themselves on the wall. Even better would be if we had access to photos of them when they were younger so that they could have pictures on the wall and feel like part of the family.-Let them pick out toys of their own (we agreed to ages 5-18, so we can’t get toys now because we have no idea what age we would end up with, and we don’t want to get stuff that’s too young for a teenager)-Make sure they have access to their favorite books/series-Make sure they have a bicycle that is just theirs-Open up an account to deposit savings bonds for a college/trade school of their choice like our parents did for usI read a story about a family that adopted an older girl and gave her luggage that matched the rest of the family’s for when they go on vacation. I would love to do something similar, but am concerned that they would misread it since foster kids tend to have multiple placements. I know we are getting way ahead of ourselves and some of this will be covered in our classes, but we are just so excited. We’ve both known since before we even met each other that we wanted to one day foster, and now it might actually be happening. We just want to make sure that we do the right thing for any kids in our care. Any good books/resources or stories to tide us over? via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/33yaYSc