Notarized - Copied - Presented

Though all's been quiet on the adoption front it doesn't mean we haven't been busy. We've been scurrying about getting physicals, clearances, inspections, driving records and references. With only the child abuse and neglect clearances absent, we decided we should get our papers into our attorney so the process could get moving. We took our stack of papers up to the bank yesterday morning right when they opened. Thankfully J was his normal toddler self, climbing the chairs and attempting to run off with their keypad. This saved us from trying to be sold any new products or moved into "better" accounts. We got a stamp and a signature and took off.

I made copies of everything - all 30 or 40 pages of application and clearances. I didn't want any of that getting lost somehow. Then I hand delivered it to our attorney just before they closed. Today doesn't feel any different. I wonder if they filed it or if it's sitting in their own "to copy" pile or outbox. There was only one person in the waiting area when I was there - a young woman. Of course I wondered if she was a birth mother. I went so far as to think perhaps I should get a photo into our life book in which I'm wearing the exact same outfit she saw me in yesterday for that split second. Lots of assumptions there, I know, but I'm going to just believe that's normal.

The two big things on the horizon are the life book and the homestudy. The latter is nerve-wracking. The social worker will spend a couple hours in our home with us and J. He or she will look over the whole place and ask us a ton of questions. Now we'll be glad we've been through Pre-Cana! We've got a few things still unpacked and the new baby's room is a catch-all. So we've got our work cut out for us. I'm thinking of this as the same housework blitz we did to stage our house last spring at this time. We realized we were listing in 3 weeks and had a page-long to do list. D's going to have to tap back into that momentum again. On the bright side, our house sold in 30 days, in what was still a slow market. I think we'll have the same luck (not sure that's the right term - guess it depends on your belief system) with adoption.

The life book is in some ways easier but in many ways more difficult than the homestudy. This will be what each birth mother sees. This has to be a representation of ourselves and our life on paper and in photos. That's not that easy. Answering the tough questions isn't that easy either. You can't write what you think someone wants to hear; that's bad on multiple levels. You have to get in-touch with an honesty that may not be comfortable. And in all fairness to human nature, you want to put that honesty in the best light possible. Our attorney gave us some examples, good and bad to help guide us. We've chosen the method where we'll both answer the questions and then somehow weave them together. First we have to answer the questions though - all of them. We've both started and we've both quit with many of the same blanks.

We'll keep you updated. We'll also be looking for some eager readers to help us out. Poor AJ can't do it all.