Home Study Interviews

Saturday afternoon our social worker came to the house and conducted our home study interviews. She interviewed the two of us together and then both of us separately. The whole process took about 2 hours. She also did a quick walk-through of the house and took note of our smoke-detectors. Someone else will come out and conduct the actual fire safety inspection in the next couple of weeks. She asked about strengths and weaknesses in our marriage, our style of parenting and disciplining, our weekly routines. Individually she wanted to know about our relationships with our parents and siblings. When I told her that I do use spankings as one form of discipline she said that during the adoption process (which I took to mean the 6 months that we will be under the agency's supervision once we bring new baby home) we would probably need to refrain from any physical punishment for even our biological kids. That is not a problem for me. We rarely spank Josh anymore and Lillie responds just as well to time outs and losing privileges.

I asked her what were some of the due dates of the birth moms who are pursuing adoption right now. She said that they confirmed this past week that they are working with 11 birth moms who have chosen adoption. She said that some are early on in their pregnancies, but that she didn't have specifics. I told her it would be an ideal scenario in my mind if we could get matched with someone earlier on in their pregnancy and get to be a part of pre-natal appointments. I think we are still a few weeks out from fulfilling all fo the requirements. I still need to get some bloodwork done, we still have a few paperwork items to submit- floor plan, copy of our marriage license, etc. And it seems like it would be wise to go ahead and start working on our profile- which is more or less a scrapbook of pictures and journal entries introducing ourselves to the birth parents. I'm very excited to submit that profile and get matched!!