because I know you're dying to know...
Jul 12 2007 09:59 PM filed in: bringing home
baby
how things
went yesterday, I guess I should probably post about
it.
But first I should post about the first meeting - the individual ones - because I haven't gotten around to that yet.
They went well, I think. Much more relaxed than I was expecting - probably because we've both met Sue before, so it wasn't like we were baring our lives to a complete stranger. We talked about the sort of things we wrote in our autobiographies - our upbringing, our relationships with our parents & siblings, our education & work lives, our marriage, our parenting philosophies, our attitudes toward adoption & birth parents.
Naturally, I met with Sue for about an hour & probably could have gone on & on for much longer but I tried really hard to let her direct the discussion - not my strong suit - so that we could cover everything she needed to. G was in with her for about a half hour - which also shouldn't surprise anyone who knows him.
Timing the home visit for right after I returned from vacation was an unintended stroke of brilliance, because I didn't have enough time to get worked up about the condition of my house. So I put away some of the clutter, swept the floor, mopped the kitchen, and that was pretty much it. My friend Suz said that she couldn't imagine the number of immaculate homes social workers must see, and that made me laugh, because I was actually worried about cleaning too much - they must know that no one really lives in a spotlessly clean house, and I didn't want to pretend our house was a magazine showpiece. So despite G's objections, my bag stayed where it lives (on the chair in the front hall) and the magazines stayed on the coffee table.
Sue said our house was beautiful. That made me laugh, because a grand total of four rooms in our house are what I would characterize as "beautiful"; one is on its way to becoming beautiful, and the rest look...well, like no one has done anything with them since before I was born. (This is because no one has, in fact, done anything with them since before I was born.)
She loved Sydney & Nietzsche. She asked us about our religious beliefs/philosophies, and a few other things that are escaping me right now because at the time she was asking them I was thinking, "Oh my god, when she sees the half-done upstairs she's going to laugh & tell us we're crazy for thinking a baby could ever live in a house like this."
So...that's done. She didn't express any concerns with anything about the house, and I'm fairly certain the 406 million smoke detectors the Buffalo city electrical inspector made us put in every single room in the house when we re-did the kitchen were duly noted. She said it will take her a few weeks to write the homestudy, and that she'll call if she has any more questions as she's writing it.
Quick and painless. Now I have to stop thinking about doing our profile and start actually doing it.
But first I should post about the first meeting - the individual ones - because I haven't gotten around to that yet.
They went well, I think. Much more relaxed than I was expecting - probably because we've both met Sue before, so it wasn't like we were baring our lives to a complete stranger. We talked about the sort of things we wrote in our autobiographies - our upbringing, our relationships with our parents & siblings, our education & work lives, our marriage, our parenting philosophies, our attitudes toward adoption & birth parents.
Naturally, I met with Sue for about an hour & probably could have gone on & on for much longer but I tried really hard to let her direct the discussion - not my strong suit - so that we could cover everything she needed to. G was in with her for about a half hour - which also shouldn't surprise anyone who knows him.
Timing the home visit for right after I returned from vacation was an unintended stroke of brilliance, because I didn't have enough time to get worked up about the condition of my house. So I put away some of the clutter, swept the floor, mopped the kitchen, and that was pretty much it. My friend Suz said that she couldn't imagine the number of immaculate homes social workers must see, and that made me laugh, because I was actually worried about cleaning too much - they must know that no one really lives in a spotlessly clean house, and I didn't want to pretend our house was a magazine showpiece. So despite G's objections, my bag stayed where it lives (on the chair in the front hall) and the magazines stayed on the coffee table.
Sue said our house was beautiful. That made me laugh, because a grand total of four rooms in our house are what I would characterize as "beautiful"; one is on its way to becoming beautiful, and the rest look...well, like no one has done anything with them since before I was born. (This is because no one has, in fact, done anything with them since before I was born.)
She loved Sydney & Nietzsche. She asked us about our religious beliefs/philosophies, and a few other things that are escaping me right now because at the time she was asking them I was thinking, "Oh my god, when she sees the half-done upstairs she's going to laugh & tell us we're crazy for thinking a baby could ever live in a house like this."
So...that's done. She didn't express any concerns with anything about the house, and I'm fairly certain the 406 million smoke detectors the Buffalo city electrical inspector made us put in every single room in the house when we re-did the kitchen were duly noted. She said it will take her a few weeks to write the homestudy, and that she'll call if she has any more questions as she's writing it.
Quick and painless. Now I have to stop thinking about doing our profile and start actually doing it.
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