Home Study Meeting #2

Today, the very lovely social worker from AWAA came to do visit #2 of our home study. This included a tour of our home, including a check for child safety. We were also interviewed extensively about our marriage, parenting style, family life, and reasons for adopting among other things.  It was actually pretty low-key, as we live a pretty drama-free, stress-free life :)

Well, ok...we might have had some drama and tried to create a little bit of stress.  About a half hour before lunch and before the social worker was to simultaneously arrive, Jon decided he had to run the dishwasher, even though I asked him several times to leave it so that we could put the lunch dishes in when we finished.  I wanted to wait to run it after the lunch dishes were loaded in order to eliminate dirty dishes all over the counter and eliminate the noise of the dishwasher during our conversation.  Jon didn't agree, we had a very important argument about it.  He still didn't agree...and the dishwasher was run with a promise that Jon would wash the dishes by hand when we were finished with lunch.  We never wash dishes by hand.  Never.  Five minutes AFTER our social worker came, Jon was making good on his promise to hand wash the dishes from lunch and broke a plate and glass.  Do I say it now, since I didn't say it then??  I WAS RIGHT!

Evan also chose this time to let us know that Sarah successfully climbed out of her crib for the first time the other day.  That was an interesting addition to the conversation.  Also, the kids decided not to answer the social worker at all about how they felt about the adoption, why they thought we were adopting, etc.  Of course, we made a deliberate choice not to coach them in any way for the home study, so that was to be expected, but made for some awkward silence.

Overall, we are grateful that our social worker is quite experienced and wise in the understanding of families and children.  We have another meeting with her on Friday evening to finish our individual interviews (just Jon and I).  She plans to write up the home study next week and then meet with us one final time for our review of the study.  After that, we'll be finished with our home study and on to the dossier!!