It's happening, and it's real. We are officially in the Home Study phase!
We had our first meeting with our home study agency last Thursday. Though the meeting almost didn't happen. I always thought the concept of "If you're doing something right, it'll always be hard" was a joke. Why would something right be hard? Well, This must be the most right thing we've ever done! We had gotten over the problem of choosing domestic or international, and decided on a country through trial and error, and found a country that will let us adopt with depression, we thought it would be smooth sailing. It turns out my job had other ideas.
Now, you know we live in Phoenix, but what's fun is I actually work out of Salt Lake City. The airline I work for doesn't have a base in my state. Luckily this job does come with some great benefits and the ability to commute across the country if you need to. It's all done on our own time, and it's our responsibility to have a place to stay in the base, and get there on time. So next time you complain about your 40 mile commute, remember mine is 670 miles.
Of course our meeting was scheduled for the day after I got done working. Usually, no big deal. Oh no, this time it was different. My trip ended up changing, and I ended up getting done too late to catch a flight home. I was a complete mess. Thank goodness for an amazing crew who kept the trip fun, calm, and helped me see that it wasn't all hopeless. After a night in the airport, I luckily was able to catch a very early morning flight home on another airline. I landed just in time to drive the hour home and pick Cory up, then head right back to the adoption agency. Turns out the agency was right next to the airport!
Meeting with our social worker for the first time was great. She was calm, focused, and laid everything out for us. She went over the home study process, and made sure we knew all of our options. We once again discussed the prospects of switching to infant domestic adoption, and she was a great resource for finding out how it really works. We still feel very strongly about going internationally even though it costs us more, and means we will adopt a toddler instead of and infant. It felt good to talk it all out with someone that didn't know us, or what we've been over so far. Now we are getting down to business, and there is a lot of work ahead of us. The first step in all of this is a ridiculous amount of paperwork! I was expecting it, and I knew it was comings, so I had my binders and dividers ready to go!
I never thought i'd be so proud of a binder. I am not the most organized person, and this little book is my pride and joy! Now we are in the process of getting our fingerprint and FBI clearance, filling out monster amounts of paperwork, and getting our certifications of health. I was mentally prepared for all of the paperwork, but I was not prepared for what was actually required in the paperwork. In addition to the regular financial, work, and basic lifestyle questions, we have some other fun ones to answer. Here is a sample of some of the harder ones:
Meeting with our social worker for the first time was great. She was calm, focused, and laid everything out for us. She went over the home study process, and made sure we knew all of our options. We once again discussed the prospects of switching to infant domestic adoption, and she was a great resource for finding out how it really works. We still feel very strongly about going internationally even though it costs us more, and means we will adopt a toddler instead of and infant. It felt good to talk it all out with someone that didn't know us, or what we've been over so far. Now we are getting down to business, and there is a lot of work ahead of us. The first step in all of this is a ridiculous amount of paperwork! I was expecting it, and I knew it was comings, so I had my binders and dividers ready to go!
- What age of your childhood did you like most, and why?
- Growing up, how did members of your family show happiness/love/frustration/stress/etc.
- What was the main reason you married your partner?
- what would you most like to change about your partner? what would they most like to change about you?
- How important will grades and school performance be for the children in your home?
- How do you handle privacy and nudity in your home?
- How will you discipline you children?
- What do you think will be your least favorite part of parenting?
The questions just go on, and on, and on, from there. Some of the ones that are hardest to answer, are all about being a parent. It's hard to imagine how you'll parent when you've never been faced with it before! For now, we do a lot of googling, and a lot of asking our families what they would do in a situation.
Our current task is to get this all finished, and in about a week we will apply to our placement agency to start our dossier and USCIS approval! We're estimating about 3 months to finish our home study, and once that's done less than a year until we have a referral for a child! It's still a long ways away, but getting closer with ever piece of paper we fill out!
Wish us luck, and please send help if we drown under all this paperwork.
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