Just when you thought things were going good....

THEY GET EVEN BETTER! 

Thursday night our family adoption specialist came for our first home study visit.  That was quick and easy.  After taking a brief tour of the house, she talked to each of our girls asking them if they wanted to adopt, what age, what interests they'd like the child to have, boy or girl and so forth.  R is still hopeful for a little boy, I am still hopeful for as close to her 11 years as we can get.  But honestly, the best match of personalities within the 6-10 years old age range, would make us all happy.  The worker then asked me a few questions about my childhood, about Michael and our relationship.  She had said it would take about 2 1/2 hours - we wrapped up in about 1 hour and 15 minutes.  That's not even the "better" part.  Initially she scheduled our second home study meeting for this coming Thursday...but it is now Monday! Two more sleeps until our final home study interview. Yes that is better than Thursday, but guess what? It gets even MORE better! My timeline all along  has been that hopefully we would have our home study meetings complete by the end of April, but that is now April 2nd.  My timeline has been that our home study would be complete and therefor we could begin the matching process by the end of May... Her goal is to have the FINAL copy of our home study complete by MID APRIL!!! That's a full 6 weeks earlier than I expected.  That is six more weeks for our son to find us.

So since I'm putting my timeline out there ideally it would be great if we could be matched over summer (preferably early summer) so we have time to do things together and get to know each other before throwing school routine into the mix.  There are 10 weeks until school is out.  Is it possible to get a match in 8 weeks?  Again referring back to the vague 9-12 months for placement following initial contact with the agency... October 2011 was first contact - 9 - 12 months would be July 2012 - October 2012.  So according to that we are still at least 4 months from matching, which would still be pretty good, putting us in the middle of summer vacation.

Half way there....sort of

We completed our fifth MAPP class last night. :-) Five down five to go. Things picked up in excitement last night.  We got the info we need to go get our fingerprinting appointments scheduled.  Michael is calling today to set those up. In addition to our usual weekly homework, we also got a good sized stack of profile paper work to complete before the end of the ten classes.  General Family Profile, Individualized Family Profile, Michael and I each have to complete an Adult Personal Profile, then we have to complete a Child's Personal Profile for each of our girls.  Each of the girls also has paperwork they need to complete on themselves and on what their expectations are of a new sibling. R wanted to do hers before school this morning. I told her it would take a little more time than she had but I'm glad she is so anxious to do it.  So, lots to do in the next few weeks but we are very excited to be taking productive steps toward our adoptive home study.  

Based on the information we have received in class this far the fingerprinting should be complete and returned to the agency by the end of March when we finish our MAPP classes.  Our weekly homework and completed profiles are also due by then.  At that point the home studies will formally begin with interviews in our home. I'm hopeful that our home study will be complete by the end of May 2012.  I'm hesitant to put a date out there like that but I am hopeful that if we do what we are asked in a timely manner that our Family Adoption Specialist will also be proactive in getting through the process. Once our home study is complete we can begin the "formal" waiting stage to be matched with our son.