This evening we had our first adoption home study visit by our social worker. This is the first of three visits she'll make to our house before she writes her report. We were instantly put at ease when we met her as she turned out to be the most friendly and kind person. We had imagined some big rough and tough woman that was gonna tell us we were doing everything wrong. We got exactly the opposite!! She went out of her way to make us feel at ease. We'd spent days and days cleaning like mad so we'd be prepared for her to look in every nook and cranny of our house. She just did a walk through and thankfully didn't need to look through our drawers and cabinets. We were prepared just in case though.
The animals acted up a little bit as usual. I guess it's good practice for dealing with misbehaving kids, right? Midnight, our dear sweet Midnight, was his usual annoying self and jumped on the table and strolled right across the papers we were reviewing with the social worker. Ugghh! That was when we found out the social worker is allergic to cats...[sigh]!! We locked Midnight away upstairs for some much needed quiet time so we could continue with our discussion. Next, there was Winston, our black lab puppy, who barked and whined for attention every few minutes which was mildy distracting while it lasted. Then there was Mickey, our drama king, who appeared a couple of times to let out a bloodcurdling death howl which is his way of communicating that he's starving to death. Don't feel sorry for him though...he always thinks he's dying from starvation even though he has an endless supply of food. I guess our most well behaved feline "child" was Maverick who didn't make a sound. That's only because he's scared to death of anything and everything and was probably hiding under Grandmother's bed.
We introduced the social worker to Grandmother who immediately began telling her "cat suit" story before introducing the poor woman to her talking prayer doll, the Precious Moments angel doll that says a prayer when you press her belly. It's actually a sweet doll but the sweetness wears off when you hear it TWENTY GAZILLION times a day!! Whenever Grandmother gets out the doll to pray with people, Rob and I affectionately refer to it as getting "prayer dolled." Rob and I have been prayer dolled many, many times...so much that we now disappear faster than David Copperfield whenever anyone even goes near that doll or the two other prayer dolls she has. Yes folks, she has an entire prayer doll family!!! We are all for the idea of praying, but can't we just do it without all the dolls? Dolls and clowns have always kind of creeped me out anyway. LOL! Grandmother chatted and chatted with the social worker and fell in love with her...that's a good thing except now she thinks the social worker is a new friend who's gonna start coming over all the time to visit with her. What do I know? Maybe she will.
Tonight's meeting was basically an orientation to go over the documents we've already submitted and to discuss the additional documents we'll need to provide. Basically, so far we've had to provide copies of our birth certificates, marriage certificate, medical reports, various releases for background checks and a down payment of $600 (1/2 of the home study fee). Among the items we still need to gather are reference letters from our family members, pet vaccination records, employment verification letters, financial forms, etc. We'll also need to take an online adoption preparation course which shouldn't be too bad.
It's just such a relief to know that the home study is nothing to worry about now. Many times the pictures we create in our minds turn out to be ten times worse than the actual experience. Luckily, that appears to be the case with the home study. Our next meeting is in a couple of weeks so we'll keep you posted.
Another bit of good news is that I got my time off from work approved and I didn't even have to resort to crying. :-) Thankfully, my managers were extremely accommodating. I'll be taking about 15 days off during the hosting and will work 1-2 days per week depending on the week. Rob will be able to be with the kids on the days I have to work and then a couple of the other host families have volunteered to act as backups if we get in a bind. It's a good feeling to have that covered now too.
It's so exciting that everything is actually coming together. We expect there to be glitches along the way as we move towards the adoption phase of this, but so far things are moving so smoothly that it's a little scary. No, I take that back, it's not scary. More like divine intervention at work behind the scenes.
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