Well today we had our last official homestudy meeting! Our social worker, Deb, came over around 10:30 a.m. and took a look at our place, making sure we had adequate space for kids, smoke alarms, and carbon monoxide detectors. (We did. Phew!) We sat at the kitchen table and began discussing the process from here on. She estimated that we could potentially go on the waiting list starting around March. :) Fingers crossed!
It was actually quite idyllic. It started to snow shortly after she got here, and we all sat at the kitchen table, drinking strong coffee and watching the antics of the birds outside at the feeders in the snowfall while we talked. (The starlings made a couple of Westside-Story-Jets-appearances that stopped all conversation momentarily. It was like a scene out of The Birds.) She's already begun some of the preliminary work on our homestudy report, and will continue with that now that our final in-person interview is finished. (We have a quick phone interview at the end of the month to make sure all our ducks are in a row.)
One of the more serious things she mentioned were that the children in Ethiopia are very malnourished and can be severely underweight when they are adopted. While we knew this, it was still sobering to hear, and made me a little sick to think of my future children possibly starving as we speak. We also learned that adopting 2 siblings, which we plan to do, means that the older one can be up to 4 years old (thus my comment about our oldest child being alive already), assuming that we don't get twins. She stressed that we should talk to other families that have adopted more than one child at a time and make sure this is the right decision for us, given the extra challenges. While we will definitely follow her advice, we know we want two and thus still feel good about our decision. We've already communicated a few other families who said adopting siblings was one of the best choices they made.
All in all, it went very well, and we felt great after she left, knowing that our two-year gestation period may begin relatively soon ... We now have four online courses to take, one day-long course on Jan 23, and our 1-600 form to send in, and then we'll have done everything for our homestudy and can start the dossier.
Onward and upward! Wishing you all a peaceful and fun-filled New Year!
Love,
Katrina
2 comments:
Congratulations on completing your final homestudy appointment! A monumental one indeed. The all day class, if it is with the same woman we had, was wonderful. You will meet lots of families in the same position you are in. And about siblings, you are making the right choice. We spoke to several families who wouldn't have done it any other way. With my husband being the stay at home dad and me working (sometimes overnight), I had to respect that he thought he could only handle one at first. If you can do it, GO FOR IT :)))
Congrats on making progress! May all your dossier ducks line themselves up quickly and easily!
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