When Social Workers Come Calling.

This week has been stressful and irritating, but filled with a huge milestone in our adoption journey!  This week we had our home inspection visit as part of a home study.  A big part of the home inspection is baby proofing your house for a baby that probably wont be there in a year and will probably come as a 4 year old. Here is a list of some typical things we were told would be checked in a home inspection:

• Working smoke detectors on every floor and near child's room
• Covered kitchen trash.
• Evacuation floor plan and emergency contacts visible. 
• Covered outlets
• Medications and vitamins in locked cabinets.
• All cleaning products in locked cabinets, or placed at least 5 feet up
• All soaps, lotions, and shampoos over 5 ounces must be locked up, or placed at least 5 feet up. 
• First aid kit and fire extinguisher easily available
• House clean and free of mold or harmful bacteria. 
• All blind cords and cables wrapped and hanging no more than one foot. 

This is just a small sampling.  It's pretty safe to say that I've been a nervous wreck since the date was set.  We know it was coming, but it didn't get real until we had the date on the calendar.  Lucky for us we live in a newer one story home and don't have a pool. That took out a lot of the others things we would have had to stress about.  I have to give a huge thank you to my mom and sister.  Not only did they help me obsessively decorate (yeah, probably not the best time to do that.) They spent so much of their own time cleaning and making sure my house was safe. I couldn't have done it without them.  

The only other time our home has been this clean, is when we first moved in and it had no furniture in it. 

The day finally came for her to come.  I was still walking around finding things to clean.  I Vacuumed the floors 3 times and started picking up individual cat hairs off of things. I was ready. The visit went really smoothly.  Our cats were even well behaved enough she thought we only had one.  You should have seen her face when we told here there were actually three running around here! It was mostly interviews and a little home tour.  The entire visit took about 2 hours, and we passed. Here are a few tips to help you if you every decide you want to be insane and complete a home study too. 

1. Know where your family lives, where they work, and what their job title is.
• We didn't expect this one.  It sounds simple, but we truely didn't know the job titles or actually locations for work of some of our siblings.  Facebook to the rescue! 
2. Have a snack prepared.
• Our social worker didn't have any of my purchased with love cookies (even gluten free ones!) but Cory and I did.  We had been such obsessive wrecks, we had essentailly starved ourselves. It was nice to have a little something to fill our nervous stomachs
3. Use quirky decor. 



Who wouldn't obsess over these? They're adorable. 

• Maybe this isn't a real tip, but one of the first things she said when she walked in was "Wow, you guys really like Disney." Followed by a "Me too!!"  She then spent a good 10 minutes obsessing over these Disney are postcards my sister helped me put onto canvases. She was even trying to convince us we should sell them for a fundraiser.  Sure, it's not essential to the process, but it was a fun distraction.
4. Don't obsess over showing them all the work you've put in.  
• Our home tour and walk through took literally 5 minutes of the entire visit.  She walked into each room, asked what we used it for, and moved on to the next.  As much as I wanted to follow behind shouting "shake that bookcase, feel how stable!" and "Just try and find the chemicals in the room!" I didn't do it.  Did i feel a little cheated for all the hard work we did, of course.  In the end was it a relief because we were actually short one blind cord wind and I just hoped she wouldn't notice? Of course it was!
5. Relax
• They want to help put children in good homes. They aren't there to stop you, but to help you.  I was so worried about failing our first one, and in reality we just needed to have a few things around the house done. Most of the meeting was just getting to know us more.  So remember to stay calm, and remember, your social worker is on your team!

Now that it's all over, i'm thinking "this isn't too bad." though I definitely wouldn't want to do this again in the near future! We have one more visit scheduled for next week, and we'll be done with our home study.   Despite all of the stress, our social worker left us with great news.  Our home inspection has passed, and we have been approved to bring 1-2 children, between the ages of 0-7 into our home! Just to know that we have taken another huge step in the process makes all the work worth it.  We're hoping for a child that's more toddler age, but now we've been approved to accept a sibling group.  Some days I can barely imagine bringing one child into our home, but the thought of possibly two has me all kinds of excited.  To get to start our own family, while still keeping another together seems like such a beautiful prospect.  In the end, whomever and however many children we get, I know they will be the ones that are perfect for our family!