Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Busy times at our house

We've not been very good at updating this blog lately because we are very busy - but busy in a great way.  We get our first visit from the home study social worker early this week.  In preparation of her visit we got another packet of information ("Phase 2" - they call it) about a week ago with another round of forms to complete and information to gather up.

Birth certificates, marriage license, insurance cards, verification of employment, vaccination records (for Albert of course), medical and drivers licenses are just some of the documents we had to copy.   Those are actually some of the easier ones to get together (with the help of our employers, our parents and and Dr. Little at Elm Point Animal Hospital.)  The birth certificates we actually never have had to have for anything, but thank goodness our parents both kept them for us.

We also have to get Physicians Reports from our doctors which is a bit of challenge for me since I haven't seen a physician (other than the eye doctor and dentist) in nearly 4 years.  And that doctor moved to New York, so one of my big priorities right now is to get a new doctor soon.  We also had to complete a financial statement and document all of our assets, expenses and income.  The bank I work for requires this type of info all the time for people who want to borrow money, maybe I should propose to the Board of Directors that we open an adoption arm of the bank :)

We also got a safety list of required items for the house to adequately support children.  Good stuff that we should have had already, but we had to make a trip to Sam's and Lowe's for a fire extinguisher, carbon monoxide detectors (for each floor), and a lock for a closet door to store things you don't want children to get into.

This picture was taken from U2's stage Sunday night. The cool part is when we saw it we had just gotten a text about one of those births on July 17. Our dear friends gave birth to a healthy baby boy named Max Joseph! Congrats Rachel and Jake Germann!
In the meantime, we are working through some of the materials for Phase 3 which includes very specific details including things like what type of medical conditions of the birth parents we would be comfortable with for the adopted child.  The birth parents complete similar questionnaires regarding the adoptive parents as well, and then the agency enters all our information into computer software that makes matches.  Kind of like online dating.   There is enough information about that for it's own blog entry so I'll leave it at that for now.  

We also are gathering pictures of us doing the things we do and the places we go.  This all will be included in our profile that will be shown to prospective birth parents to help decide if they will choose us or not.   So as we go on bike rides, go to games, cook-out, exercise, hang out with friends and family we have to get more pictures, because the agency requests a lot of pictures to choose from.  Then we have our individual hobbies that we have to cover too.  Fun stuff, just lots to do.

On top of that, Megan is still working feverishly on baby clothes for friends and family and I have taken on the chore of finishing the basement.  I'm submitting plans this week to the city to get the permit, so construction will start soon.   We always planned to start and finish the basement once Megan got pregnant, but now we could realistically have a baby as quickly as 1 month after the home study is approved and our information is gathered.  So I've got to get to work so we have room for our friends and family to stay with us when the baby arrives!!!

We continue to lean heavily on family and friends for support and help to get us through this process.  We appreciate it and we can't express our gratitude enough.


Thanks for reading, Brett
 

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