The Wallace-Hayes Family Profile
Hello, we would love to welcome a child into our family who is under 8 years old. We would particularly like to adopt a baby or toddler to leave an age gap between our daughter who is 9 and a second child. A child of any gender, identity, or expression will be welcomed, supported and loved. We will consider adopting a child/youth of any racial or ethnic background and will work with our community and broader resources to best care for them and support development of a strong, healthy identity and sense of cultural belonging. We celebrate Christian religious holidays as well as Chanukah, Passover and other Jewish holidays with close members of our extended community. We will happily embrace the cultural heritage of our child.
We feel we can best accommodate one child but are open to hearing about a sibling group of two.
We are open to children with mild to moderate special needs and mild to moderate medical needs. We have a lot of experience working with children who have medical, emotional and behavioral needs and we would love to embrace and support our child as they grow in these areas.
Introduction
Our names are Candor and Oliver and our daughter is Destiny.
Candor is 32 years old and was born in Blackfoot Idaho.
Oliver is 31 years old and was born in Chicago Illinois.
Destiny is 9 and half years old and we adopted her 2 years ago. We have a wonderful, loving 8 year old golden retriever named Hayzel. She occasionally works as a therapy dog and adores children of all shapes and sizes! Our second dog friend is a 6 year old chihuahua mix named Barklee. He is very funny, playful, cuddly and mischievous. He is also extremely patient and really loves kids! When children become rambunctious both dogs will likely join in on the fun.
Candor works full-time for Portland Public Schools as a Special Education Para Educator and has a flexible work schedule with summers off!
Oliver works full-time for Oregon Health Sciences University as a Emergency Department Nurse and has a flexible work schedule although he does work nights. We have maintained this schedule for over 3 years and we have maximized the benefit of night shift to allow even more time as a family than most nursing schedules do.
At home we usually hang out in the large living room of our house. It has a cozy fireplace and comfy couches that the dogs snuggle on with us! We keep lots of books, magazines, games and art supplies near by Destiny always knows that she has several engaging options to choose to do with us as well as taking time to herself to read or play.
We enjoy lots of outside time at the dog park, nearby hikes, trips to the beach, the mountain and gardening. Destiny is very in tune with nature and loves to be in the woods. She has learned to identify a dozen native plants and many species of birds and mushrooms. She also attends a once a week, entirely outdoors educational program during the school week that our second child would also have the opportunity to benefit from. We value our environment and the world around us and consider time in nature to be a crucial part of helping children grow and heal.
In the summer and fall we make frequent trips to Sauvie Island for berry picking and harvest activities. We visit the Vaux Swifts at Chapman School every September, we even had our wedding there, and never miss the Apple Fest in October!
Day to day we keep a consistent schedule with frequent visits with family and friends. The extended Hayes family lives in Portland and gathers once or twice per month for a meal. We frequently host friends for a meal or board games. As more of our friends are parents now our activities include birthday parties, trips to OMSI and picnics in the park. |
Home and Community
Our home is a three bedroom home with a finished attic and basement. The attic is currently used for storage but we are working to find creative strategies to use it as family space, possibly a game room or library in the near future. We are relaxed about our space, dogs are welcome on the couch and we focus on comfort over style! We ask our daughter to walk in the house for safety but otherwise she is welcome to use the space to move about, stretch, and play to her heart's content. We live in a very walkable neighborhood with several parks, kid friendly restaurants and safe sidewalks. We are near a year round indoor pool at Dishman and an outdoor pool at Peninsula park. There's even a cupcake shop a few blocks away for the occasional splurge!
Our neighborhood school is King, a K-8 school, but we found a nearby charter school to be a better current fit for our daughter. There are many options depending on what our children need and we are very familiar with these.
Portland is a great city for kids! Oliver grew up in Portland and loves to share some of the experiences from his childhood like OMSI trips and the Halloween corn maze. We strive to promote a good balance of structured and unstructured time depending on the child's unique needs. We're blessed to live in a city with a huge variety of classes, activities and experiences for kids of all ages and interests. Parenting Experience
Our daughter moved in with us almost 2 yeras ago. We really had to hit the ground running! Shes rambunctious, smart, playful and really works hard. We participated in attachment counseling as a family and we all benefited so much! We intend to follow a similar process with our second child. Destiny teaches us so much through experience every day and when we feel we need help or more info we look to books or more experienced families that we know.
Candor works full time with children with special needs and has extensive experience as a nanny to children of various ages. Oliver has experience in childcare including working with medically fragile children and children with special needs when he was a nursing student. As part of a large and tight knit family, Oliver has spent many hours babysitting and playing with younger cousins. We both completed the Foundations course and spent many hours discussing the content and going over the provided materials.
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Support
We have a strong support network of friends and family that have been very supportive of our parenting journey. Our closest friends and family and so many community members have reached out and bonded with Destiny. They have all expressed a commitment to do so with any other children that we adopt. We feel confident in our ability to reach out for support and love for us and our children and we have received unconditional support from a large group in our loving community.
We realized that any child from the foster system might have significant needs for medical and mental health services and plan to put the child on both of our health insurance plans if needed in order to maximize access to resources.
Candor is very familiar with the Portland Public School system and acts as an educational advocate for Destiny and will for our future child. Oliver is a nurse and feels prepared to research and coordinate medical and mental health services as needed. We work well as a team and feel prepared to continue support each other, reach out to our loved ones and find the services we need to provide an excellent home to a kiddo with unique gifts and challenges. Motivation to Adopt
Both of us have had a life long desire to parent and for many years we have known we would eventually adopt together. When Destiny came to live with us we felt so lucky. We adore her and we know we all have room for one more! We would happily welcome a child with trouble attaching or issues around trust. Helping our child attach, and our family bond together will definitely be our first and biggest goal with the child that we adopt. We feel that it is crucial to look at the bigger picture with any child. We would work to explore the underlying causes of any maladaptive behaviors and understand them as coping mechanisms, trouble adapting, signs of stress, or any other very understandable possible explanations.
Some strategies we might use include future planning, goal setting, reward systems for positive behaviors and personal growth, revocation of some privileges when necessary and a wrap around approach to support services including family and individual counseling with an attachment focus.
We are ready for our little family to grow and welcome the ups and downs of parenting as part of a life long commitment to each other and to our future children. |
