In honor of the beloved holiday, we decided to treat ourselves by completing our finally home study visit! We are officially done with things that we have to do for our home study. All we are doing now is waiting for our social worker to finish writing it, and then we are in the dossier and government clearance phase.
This visit was nice and simple, a whole lot less stressful than the last! Since our home inspection had been completed the visit before, this was just to talk and interview us, I was able to clean to house in my usually way. Stuff everything behind a closed door somewhere, and make sure the 10 square feet where we were actually sitting in looks spotless. We were first interviewed together, and then we each had individual interviews, and then we had another interview together. The entire visit took almost 4 hours, but everything went smoothly.
When I would read things about home study processes, everyone warned that you'd be putting everything on the table. They weren't kidding. Before this interview, I thought we had escaped talking about obscure and past stuff, but I was wrong. If you are related to us, have no fear, you are probably in our home study somewhere. We had to go through everything from mental health issues, to drug and alcohol consumption, to people we love that aren't related, and those who will be in contact with our child. All of these things had to be listed all the way back into our aunts, uncles and cousins. If you ever decide to do a home study, and you come from a big family like we do, start taking notes now! We also had to individually talk about our experiences growing up. How our parents disciplined us, celebrated us, and taught us. We had to go over how our views align differently from our parents, and what we want to do differently with our children. Nothing is harder than trying to explain to someone how you're going to raise and parent your children, when you feel like you know absolutely nothing about being a parent and have never done anything like it before. Though I'm sure all knew parents feel this way!
Believe it or not, one of the hardest questions we were asked was "What do you love about your partner." It should be simple questions, but we both just stumbled a little. Cory and I have been together over 8 years, and usually when asked I just say "everything" or if I'm feeling sassy "he pays my bills" but that wouldn't cut it in this case. We tell each other we love each other all the time, and I have no doubt in my mind that he loves me, but having to pick out individual things catches you off guard. Even harder was having to say these things directly to his face and in front of someone who is essentially a stranger. Once you're out of the wedding and honeymoon stage, life moves on. You still love each other, but gone are the days of writing vows and explaining to all your friends why your partner is the best person in the world. It was nice to have to take that time to stop and remember all the things we really do love about each other, for better or for worse. Above all, I love that I married my best friend. There are very few people I can be 100% myself with, and he accepts my weird off key singing, excessive number of high kicks, and love of puns. So I challenge all of you who are married, or in relationships new or old, to force you and your partner to tell each other how much you love them. Even if it means tying them to a chair until they talk. Not that it's what we had to do or anything.
We are in the finally few months of our adoption journey that require us to "do something." Once our home study is completed, we can submit for our I-800a which is "application for determined suitability to adopt a child from an international country" which can take a couple months for the government agency to complete. In the meantime we'll be working on our dossier. Our dossier includes everything about us. It's our home study, our reference letters, our income, everything. Once we have approval through our 1-800a our dossier gets sent to Hungary, translated, and approved. From there we just have to wait to be matched with our sweet child or children! It's a slow process, but getting closer and closer everyday. We can't wait.
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