Thank you for all of the wonderful well-wishes regarding our adoption. The home study notebook is nearly complete and our goal is to have it in by this Friday. We also take our in-person class that night too.

As we’re getting ready for the home visit we’ve been doing little projects around the house. Last Saturday afternoon, while we were trying to figure out what to do with our endless piles of library books (an ongoing issue with two librarians in the house) we decided to rearrange our family room. There are windows on two sides of the room. With a long table behind the couch and that table next to the back door, it just invited clutter. We’d clean it off and within a half a day it would be cluttered again. It was impossible to keep clean and the coffee table was our library book storage space. Bryan suggested the rearrangement and we love our new room. It feels so much larger to have the couch against the wall instead of along the walkway from the backdoor. I took a rough panoramic photo here.

And what happened to the long table behind the couch? We didn’t have the space for it and we’re selling it. It was a table that my aunt had behind the couch so that she could watch TV, work on bills and eat her meals when it was difficult for her to get around. But we eat at the dining room table and it was just a place for us to put all of our stuff. Right now it’s sitting in our front living room waiting for someone to fall in love with it enough to buy it. We’re looking at consignment shops. Bianca has loved having a table in the middle of the living room. We’re not so fond of it and would like our living room back.

Our solution for the library books was to switch out an end table from the living room. It has three shelves which is perfect for storing our books. It may be only a temporary solution depending on when we have a little tyke crawling around.  So far it’s worked perfectly and we now hang our bags on hooks in the laundry closet. A new room that we love that only cost us about $15 (the cost of the over-the-door hooks). It’s so inviting that I just want to read in my two new favorite chairs when I’m at home. Now we feel like we have a sunroom and over the course of the last 10 days the room has stayed clutter free!

We’re now in the middle of the adoption process. A few weeks after I posted about our adoption plans here our application for service was accepted by our agency. Step one was complete. Step two is the home study. Over the last four weeks, we’ve been fingerprinted, had a child abuse and neglect background check done, taken online classes about adoption, plunged neck-deep into our net worth and written extensive autobiographies about ourselves on topics, such as how we were raised, our medical history, how decisions are handled in our household, our plans for after the baby comes, our feelings toward adoption and the birthfamily, how we plan to discipline and what goals do we have for our child. It was an exhausting questionnaire and my answers take up about 12 pages.

In about a week, we’ll take our only in-person class and turn in our home study notebook. We will still have some required reading to do before the home visit, which is scheduled not long after we turn in our notebook. We’ll have a home visit by the agency and then it’s waiting for the home study paperwork to be typed and completed. I really hope that the home study will be ready for our review by the end of October. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Then we’ll put together our family profile book and if possible our website. I’ve already started on putting together photos of us, our house, and our families. It’s going to be difficult to decide which cute kitty picture to use since Bianca has been our “baby” for the last three years. August 18 is her adoption date for us and we know she’s “excited” about a new addition to the family.

Every day it seems that someone asks how the process is going and it’s really hard to say, “Well, we’re in the middle of getting all of our paperwork together.” Everyone has been really supportive since we’ve told them that we’re adopting I just wish I had more news sometimes. As I’ve read adoption blogs, I’ve noticed one theme about prospective adoptive parents – you can’t give a due date to people, you don’t have a lot of things to show through the adoption process as you do when you’re pregnant. I just have to say I’ve been so blessed with wonderful friends who are interested and excited for us. We may be having a baby in a somewhat unconventional way but it’s no less special for us.

I hope to have more news in the weeks to come. Otherwise, you’ll just get photos of some of the cute things I’ve been sewing, at least the projects I can share. And I really wish I could tell you our garden has been doing fabulously through the heat wave of 2011 but sadly we’ve only had two half-decent tomatoes. The newscaster last night who is like the local tomato whiz said not to fret with the cooler (60-70 degrees F) temperatures that we’re having now we should get some tomatoes soon. We know our crop this year won’t compare to years past because the heat has taken its toll on our entire garden. I hope to get some chard planted this weekend to make up for some of what we’ve lost this year.