Home Study is Done!!!!

When we had first talked with Danielle, our social worker from the agency, she said Pam would meet with us three times and then it would take about 3 weeks to get the report written. We would also need to have so many fire extinguishers and smoke detectors and a plan for child proofing the house. When Pam got there last night she asked to see the house, so I took her on a quick tour, she didn't even look in closets and then we sat down and talked. She was there for almost 2 hours last night and we think things went really well. She said we had done such a good job answering our initial questions that she really didn't have much to ask. I do remember her specifically asking us why we chose our agency, what finally made us decide on adoption, and how much C knew about adoption. She also talked to us about our level of openness for a legal risk placement. When we first sent in our paperwork we were not at all interested in that, but once we went to the training last month we had changed our views so we made those changes last night. The rest of the evening was more or less just talking. She had also experienced infertility and is now on the "other side" where you can see how much it made you grow. She said last night that while she was walking the infertility path she would have traded it in a second, but now she wouldn't. That's a good way of putting it. If we had a baby when we first wanted one there are a lot of things we would've missed out on that we've experienced the last two years - good and bad.

C handled himself pretty well last night, until the end of the evening. He wanted Pam to see his Gator so we walked out through our garage and then stood outside and talked for a few minutes. For some reason C picked up a T-Ball bat and hit our truck with it. He's never done anything like that before, it was quite a surprise. J took the bat from him and Pam laughed and so did we, but what came over him? I'm sure we'll be laughing about this for years to come - Hey C remember the time a SW came to make sure we were fit parents and you hit the truck with a bat?

When she left last night she said she'd have the report to the agency in 5 days and she'd call us if she had any questions while she was writing the report. I guess we are done. I thought I'd have most of September to get our profiles done so I'm going to be a little behind on that. I'm hoping by the first part of October we will officially be waiting.

Since the house was all clean I decided to take the pictures for our family profile. I don't know if I'll use the one of our bedroom, but I wanted to use one of C's. I don't know what our plans are for decorating a baby room, neither of us are in a big hurry, but I want the birth family to know that there will be a special room decorated for a special baby. Hopefully she'll look at C's and realize that her baby have a special place not only in our heart but our home as well. But since I was taking pictures anyway, I took some of all the rooms so I could share them here. I don't know who else actually reads this besides my family and Leslie, so Leslie these are for you!

Front of our house

Back of our House



The room that we now call the Green Room, but will someday be the Baby's Room



C's Room - if you ever need to make conversation with my dad ask him about the red paint in C's room. I think it was the hardest thing dad has ever painted. I don't think I'll get him to volunteer to help me when I decide to re-paint C's room.


Our Bedroom


Our Bathroom


Kitchen - Looking at this picture there is a lot of wood in the kitchen. It really looks a little cluttered, but it really isn't that bad in real life, I promise!

At this point I realized something was missing, I had forgotten to take pictures of the family room. Besides the baby's room the living room could be the next important room for the birth mom considering we spend most of our time there - and I forgot to take a picture. I'll post one once I get it taken.

Yesterday I posted that I felt like I was "fooling" the SW because of our house being so clean. I knew I shouldn't have worried, by the time she left C had taken care of the problem for me. This is how our living room floor typically looks, except this is even a little mild.


Have a good weekend!