Baring our souls to a stranger!

Our family/home study (I'm not sure what they are called anymore - the name is changed as often as the state's department overseeing children's welfare name is changed!) is almost complete! For the last 2 Fridays Martin and I have spent the afternoon with a retired social worker who now spends time in his retirement doing these family studies for our adoption agency. He used to work with juvenile delinquents, so he says he really enjoys meeting potential adoptive families.

Besides checking out our home (cringe at having to show him the bathroom renovation that demanded our attention days before he came and assure him it is JUST mildew, not mold; cringe at Shasta barking at him incessantly while we reassure him she is good with kids; cringe as he almost steps in dog poo while he walks around the yard...); he spent hours asking us about our childhoods and families of origin, how we met, and what our relationship is like. This stranger probably knows more about us than some of our closest friends...we even learned a lot about each other in the process ("really? I never knew that about you? You did what when you were a kid?"). Sometimes it was quite uncomfortable to be talking about our parents, siblings, our school and employment history (Martin and I both took awhile to figure out what we wanted to be when we grew up).

The next immediate step is that he begins to pull together the information he gathered for the report he delivers to the agency. We get to see the report first, and sign off that we agree with the contents. Then he is done with us! From there, we work with the agency to begin the match process. I'm predicting a series of hurry up and waits!

We hear stories now all the time of people who have adopted, and usually these are great stories. I'm astonished at how many people do international adoptions. We also looked into this option, but the biggest adoption secret there is seems to be the number of AMERICAN children who desperately need forever families. We have even heard of Canadian parents adopting American children. The social worker confirmed this is true.

In case you were wondering about something I said above - we discovered a small slow leak into our toilet, and because our tile is old and the grout was wearing out and our floors slant some of that water got under our tile and began to mildew. As we began to investigate the problem, like all house projects the issue got bigger and bigger. First Martin discovered the wood in our vanity was mildewing so he had to take that out. That left a big mess on the walls, so that led to taking out the hideous wallpaper (hidden blessings!). That led to realizing we needed to take out the paneling because it was partially covered in wall paper and was a mess when we took it off. This led to the discovery of more mildew on the bottom of the paneling and on that wall behind our bathroom heater (no wonder the smell had not left). We've spent some time in the bathroom/plumbing aisles at the big box hardware stores trying to figure out what type/size of vanity cabinet is going to fit in our little square bathroom, and still be able to open the door! And pick out paint color, figure out the flooring, figure out accessories, try to decide if we want a new toilet, etc. etc. etc. ! Martin has been amazing to the project. I get sick from the smell and claustrophobic working in that room so I've tried to contribute with cooking, cleaning, and laundry.

So hopefully we wrap this up soon (most of the vanity cabinets we are considering are in stock), and continue on with other projects like our shower stall, taking out more wallpaper in other rooms, and so on and so on; while we wait (im)patiently for our family to expand!