home study

The Philadelphia adoption agency we've been working with finalized our home study. It was strange to read a summary of our lives and an assessment of ourselves from the perspective of a social worker who met with us for a total of four hours.

David and Karen are kind-hearted, sincere people who have infinite love to give to children. 

"Infinite love?" Yeesh. That just sounded like a such a tall order. We asked her to tame it down a bit, and the second draft read "immense love." Thankfully, she is a sweetheart and didn't call us names. 

When David and Karen do come across a conflict, they are able to discuss the issue at hand and come to a mutual agreement, keeping their emotions out of the conversation and focusing on the logistics. 

Wow. Yes. That's us. Stoic. Unemotional. Calm and rational at all times. We contemplated pointing out that we probably don't quite always just "focus on the logistics" when discussing conflict and that it's possible that some miniscule amount of emotion might creep in to our discussions from time to time. But we resisted the urge.

I was not, however, able to resist pointing out a few misspellings, misplaced apostrophes and other typos. Poor her. When she asked us to review the first draft of the home study, she probably didn't have in mind a spelling & grammar check.

All things considered, we were relieved to see the statement, David and Karen Martin are emotionally, physically and mentally stable, appear in the final draft.

So now for the next phase of the adoption, we'll be working with a Birmingham-based agency called Villa Hope. They have been working in Peru since 1988, and they'll be the ones to facilitate our adoption from Peru. They're hesitant to give time frames since there are so many variables, but it's reasonable to expect our kids to be here WITHIN A YEAR. Holy shhhh-nikies!