Mid Home Study Update

I thought I'd take a moment to update ya'll on how things are looking on the adoption front. We're about half way through our home study process. Our agency had said that the home study process would take a good three months to complete. Not sure why we thought we would excel through the process and complete it faster and without wrinkles. And although things have gone pretty smoothly and quickly, it can't go fast enough for me :) I'm just really excited to see what God has in store for us.

We have completed two out of the three home study visits. We met with our social worker once at her office, she came once to our home (more on that later) and we're awaiting to schedule our third meeting with her but Thanksgiving is sort of getting in the way of that. But trust me, we will NOT go without recognizing our blessings THIS Thanksgiving. The process of adoption has been one blessing after another.

Our first meeting with our social worker was pretty nerve wracking but I think that's just sort of the way it goes for all couples. We were almost late (!) due to my husband losing his wallet the day prior and him being at the bank to straighten things out with that. No worries, all money and hopefully identity is secure now :) But to almost be late to our first visit with the social worker?!?!? Ahh! I think I have like 5 more grey hairs now. Nice. But we weren't late just maybe a little frazzled in the beginning of our meeting. The meeting with our social worker was actually pretty awesome. Instead of her "checking us out" to see if we'd be fit parents, it's more like pre parenting counseling. We talk about our relationship as a married couple and how that will change as we become parents. She even gave us a very important  homework assignment when we left...to figure out how we are still going to have date nights. I just thought that was so cool. For the past twelve years, date nights have been very important to us in our relationship. So many times, I think, couples lose sight of who they are or who they were as a madly in love unit. And that honestly hurts no one more than the child. In our world today, children need to see parents in love. Our social worker encouraged us to not become a child centered family. That advice sort of through me off guard at first but I have come to really understand that statement as I've reflected on it over the last few weeks. First and foremost, we'll be Christ-centered. I fully intend to love God, love my husband, love my child, in that order period.

Our second visit was our home visit where our social worker (who is awesome by the way, really great Christian lady) came to our home. She gave us a checklist ahead of time that showed all that she was needing to see in our home. Things like a fire extinguisher , which we always have thanks to our dear, awesome practical brother Ben who gives them to all of us at Christmas every three years or so when they expire. Thanks, Ben! I think we passed because of you ;) Other things included having your cleaning chemicals locked and away and things like that. Our social worker arrive ten minutes early. We think that is their plan...to catch us off guard :) We had individual interviews with her in our home. She asked us questions like how do we describe our spouse, what kinds of things do we argue about and how do we resolve them. Then finally we come together to talk about the training we have been doing on our own. We have ten plus hours of training along with quizzes that we are doing on our own through this process. And that was it. Waaaay more internal stress than needed. But that's just me...a mess. I do think, however, that I had one too many smells going on for the home visit. I had this pretty strong Yankee candle that had been burning for half the day, I brewed some coffee and baked some hot gooey cookies for the visit. She didn't eat anything and by the time she left..I wanted to open the windows. Ha! Hope she didn't think I was trying to mask a bad smell with all those scents I had going on. Oh well....I'm sure she gets things like that all the time.

Through all this, we've been so blessed. The process has gone really smoothly despite my overly anxious tendencies in life. I'm SO blessed with a calm, cool and collected husband. We're growing a lot and God is really shaping us through this process to lean on Him and each other through everything which is absolutely what we will need when our little one gets here.