Very Favorable!

4/11/2015

Yesterday was our final home study visit. Liz, our social worker, told us to expect a "very favorable" review when she finishes our home study report in a couple weeks!

In this final meeting, Liz asked us about our finances and our thoughts about adopting a child of another race, and then she toured our house to make sure it is a safe home for a child. We loved showing her around. We just love our little house by the lake. We were especially excited to show her the bedroom we've been using as an office, which is starting to be slowly transformed into a nursery.

Once the home study report is completed, we'll be fully eligible to finalize an adoption. If you're out there, birth mother, now is a great time to find us!

Second Home Study Visit

3/27/2015

Our second home study meeting was delayed because Liz, our social worker, got sick. It finally happened today. This visit was focused mostly on our childhoods, our relationships with our families, and our relationship with each other.

Our childhoods and relationships with our families

We both feel that we had wonderful childhoods, and would raise our children much like our parents raised us. Laura grew up in a large farm family that valued hard work and responsibility. Amanda grew up in a small suburban family that valued community and service. Both of us have tremendous love and support from our families. They support us as individuals, they supported us when we each came out years ago, and they support our adoption plan.

In fact, adoption is very accepted and celebrated in our families. We have cousins who are adopted and a nephew who is adopted. Everyone's excited to welcome a new baby into the family!

Our relationship with each other

One word that describes our relationship best is supportive. When we got married, we each wrote our own vows, and we didn't share them with each other. But there we were, standing in front of all our friends and family, reading nearly identical vows about how we plan to support each other's hopes and dreams.

We also both vowed to support each other through the tough times, too. Long before our wedding, Amanda said, "I can't promise it's always going to be easy, but I can promise to keep showing up every day." That's how we face challenges: we face them, and we face them together.

We look forward to supporting a child's hopes and dreams, and supporting a child through the tough times, too. This family will always be a team!

Lone Star Baby

3/25/2015

I saw this star light in Michael's recently, and just had to buy it. I knew Amanda was going to LOVE the idea of a star-shaped nightlight in the baby's room. She is a child of the Lone Star State, through and through! 

We visit Amanda's family in Texas several times a year. A couple of years ago, when we were there for a visit, Amanda bought a University of Texas Longhorns baby onesie. She knew one day it would come in handy!

First Home Study Visit

3/6/2015

We had our first Home Study visit today. There will be three visits, two at the social worker's office and one at our home. At this first meeting, we covered a lot of ground:

• Our educational backgrounds and our career paths
• Our health histories
• Our health habits (Amanda plays sports to stay active, Laura likes leisurely activity like walking and bike riding)
• Our strengths and weaknesses
• Our personal support systems
• Our crisis chain-of-command ("Laura, who would help you if Amanda were in the hospital?")
• Our plans for guardianship if we both were to die (You mean we have to know this before we even have a baby? We still have some work to do on this one!)
• Our coping strategies

Our social worker, Liz, has adopted children of her own and was adopted herself. Plus she has worked in the adoption field in Minnesota for decades. She is a wonderful resource! We're looking forward to the second meeting next week.

You know you're ready to be a parent when...

3/1/2015

Yesterday we went to our niece Shae's 6th birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese's. Wow, is that place crazy! Shae's parents joked that they know we're ready to be moms because after spending a Saturday afternoon at a six-year-old's birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese's, we still want to be moms!

We had a great time! Can't wait to do all kinds of fun birthday parties with our little one!

Fingerprints

1/4/2015

Today we went down to the County Sheriff's office to get fingerprints made. Our home study agency will use these fingerprints to do a background check to make sure we're not criminals. It's just one part of the home study process. All adoptive parents are required to have a home study before an adoption can be completed.

The home study process can take several weeks. While the title, "home study" might make you think the purpose is to check out our home and make sure it's safe for a baby, there's a lot more to it. The home study also evaluates how prepared we are to be parents. They review our financial situation to make sure we can support a child. They review our personal backgrounds and emotional readiness. They look at our social relationships, our education and employment, the characteristics of our neighborhood, and more.