Home Visit Complete

Another milestone on the exciting road to adopting our bambina in Georgia... We put the home visit behind us! Yahoo!

We have a new social worker, because our old social worker has retired. Although this is merely a home study update (not a brand-new home study), a home visit must still take place. (Thankfully, the multiple office visits and education are not required anew, so this is all much-simplified this time.)

The visit by Lynn, our social worker, took place on Monday, and also served as our first time meeting her. Needless to say, having a stranger come into one's home and ask personal questions about the children and parenting styles is not the most relaxing of visits. However, Lynn was friendly and kind and made the visit relatively comfortable—as comfortable as such stressful visits can be with six children.

For the first couple hours, the kids were on their best behavior. They chatted, they showed Lynn their rooms, they even showed off a little. And, they had a total field day, eating pumpkin bread with Lynn [gasp!] in the family room—something that's usually verbotten in our household. However, by Hour Three of the visit, things got a bit crazy. On the tour of the basement, I thought Lynn was going to have her toes run over by the whipping scooters. And on one additional trip upstairs, kids started jumping off their bunk beds! Crash, bang, DANGER! No, the kids aren't supposed to jump off their bunk beds, but how was Lynn to know? Talk about stressing me out! However, Lynn was extremely family-friendly and didn't seem daunted by the chaos that defines our household. Even so, by the time all was said and done, I was very happy to have the home study behind us.

Lynn closed her visit by stating that we clearly have "enough love and enough energy" to take on another baby.

Love, yes!
Energy...some days more so than others.

Nice to know we made a decent impression—despite the kids-hanging-on-chandeliers behavior by the end of the visit. (We don't actually have chandeliers, but you know what I mean.)

With the home visit behind us, we need only wait now for Lynn's written home study update. All our paperwork is complete, including fingerprints and references. So it's all in the hands of our capable social worker to complete the paperwork and send it off to An Open Door in Georgia. Once An Open Door has that paperwork in their hands, hopefully within the next week, we will be in a position to cruise down to Georgia and pick up Bambina at a moment's notice.

Last we heard, May 17th is the due date, and T and baby are both doing well. Nothing has changed on the Georgia front. If T desires that we do so, we will try to be present at roughly the time of birth or shortly thereafter. That will depend, of course, on how much notice we receive. But if an induction is scheduled, as was the case last time, an early arrival is very possible. With T's blessing, we do hope to be there within at least two days of the birth, so that the baby does not have to spend time in a foster home. All of that remains to be determined though as we wait for word from Georgia.

We are now the proud owners of a new van to replace the totaled Red Behemoth.  The new van could aptly be named the Black Behemouth in the fine tradition of its predecessor, but we prefer to call it The Secret Service Van. The SS Van will carry us in fine style to Georgia and back. If you spy a sleek black van, loaded with kids and far too much luggage, headed down the interstate between Wisconsin and Georgia in May, give us a wave.

It's hard to believe this due date is only three weeks away... Considering how long it takes me to pack for a week+ vacation for this family of eight/nine, I'd better get crackin'...