We Are 20 Times More Prepared Than Most Adoptive Parents...

...according to our social worker. I guess we impressed her.

It didn't hurt that seconds after she walked into our house, her eyes caught a glimpse of the stack of adoption books on our bookshelf - many of them books that she had intended to recommend to us. They weren't placed there on purpose either, I might add. Brent and I have some serious reading to do once we get through the home study and all the paperwork. It also didn't hurt that Brent and I have truly been thinking about this for a long time and did not rush into the decision to adopt.

Our social worker was particularly impressed with the amount of thinking we had done from our future children's perspective. She made the comment that because many parents enter into adoption due to issues with infertility they are very focussed on getting a child, but often forget to take the perspective of what it might be like for the adopted child to enter into their family and their culture. These are things that Brent and I have been thinking about for quite some time. In fact, until we had thought through some of them quite thoroughly, we didn't even feel comfortable beginning the adoption process.

I guess our house was fine too. She literally looked around for 45 seconds and asked us the square footage and the lot size. She liked that there were lots of flowers everywhere and was also excited about our garden, even though she wouldn't go outside and look at it. (She seemed to be afraid of the dogs, so we sent them outside. However, her fear in no way seemed like it would affect our home study because she didn't ask one question about them).

Oh, and in case you were wondering...the dogs were their typical selves. Buster wiggled his butt profusely and pranced around her, while Lola did her typical jump up where she lifts her two front feet off the ground 10-18 inches, but doesn't actually touch the person. LOLA!!!

Next step? On Friday (day after tomorrow) Brent and I each have hour long individual phone interviews with our social worker. Fun! Then we are done with our interrogation and just have to pester the remaining few people that have yet to turn in their reference letters for us so the home study report can be completed. After that, we will apply to the Federal government to bring an orphan to the country and try to wrap up our dossier as quickly as possible. Then the waiting begins (and the reading).