We have made a decision on how to approach our home study.
We will be ourselves through and through. For better or worse.
This means:
- We will not be cleaning our house beyond what we normally do. We will probably make an effort to make our bed that day, but that’s about it. I have no intention of cleaning our storage room or our garage. I will not be re-folding clothing in our closet. I will not be cleaning the inside of our cupboards. And, I can guarantee that Mr. MPB will not be cleaning either.
- We will not do anything different with our dog then we would if we were having friends over for dinner. No Benadryl (although I thought it was a great ide) and no crate. She is a well behaved dog, so we are going to let he be herself. If she acts up we will put her in the other room, just like we would if we had friends or family over.
- We will be honest about anything she asks – no lying from us, which is probably best because neither of us are good liars and the social worker would probably see straight through us. We will talk openly about my mom and sister, our recurrent pregnancy loss, our decision to adopt, why we have virtually no children things in our house and the social worker can hear all about our sex lives if they decide to ask. Yes, some things might be awkward (i.e. discussing our sex lives with a perfect stranger), and some things may be hard and emotional (i.e. our baby losses). But I also suspect some things will be fun to discuss, like why we love each other and why we’ve chose to spend our lives together. We will be honest and open.
Ultimately we believe that they will like us. But either way, we will not try to influence the outcome any more then we can by just being ourselves. And therefore, they will either approve us or they will not and we will live with the outcome.
We’ve made the decision that we’d prefer to be approved for who we are, rather than for who we think they want us to be.
So, we will be ourselves and see where the cards land.
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A few months ago I shared my initial thoughts on how we are tackling the adoption process. I shared the process in text and graphic format:
Today, I realized that while my original chart is useful from a overall perspective, it really doesn’t show the details and little nuances of the adoption process. And of course because we never take the easy route, things are even more complicated as we have chosen to adopt internationally so we are juggling two processes at once and desperately hoping we do not accidentally step on the wrong side of the law in either countries.
I find that when I’m facing a complex process, laying it out visually really helps me to understand the process, step-by-step. So, today, I thought I’d share a revised international adoption process chart that shows the details of how we are actively managing our efforts to get through the adoption approval process.
Note that the following:
- $ indicate where I anticipate we will be shelling out ungodly sums of money to pay for social workers and lawyers to push paperwork around.
- Red circles indicate significant milestones
- The USA side of things has more flexibility right now, but this is the timeline we are striving to achieve, in part because it will help us feel like we are doing something while we are waiting on Canadian approvals.
- I have not investigated the details of how the actual placement occurs yet because we are focusing on getting through the approval stages. I’m sure one day, I will make another one of these charts showing the details of that process.
- I have not added continual frustration into this representation because right now, I’m starting to figure out that it occurs throughout the process and likely at the most inopportune and unpredictable times.
- One day I will update with our actual timelines to get through each step.
- Click on the graphic to see a zoomed in version.
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My Perfect Breakdown 