Paper Pregnant- Homestudy #3

All adoptions start with a Home Study. Home Studies in Ohio are good for 2 years and can be renewed for minimal money and work. Of course, we let our first home study expire because we just KNEW we were done adding to our family. Then along came Maggie.  Then we let her home study expire, because once again we KNEW we were done. Haha. So here we go on our 3rd Home Study.  Home Studies take around 3 months, give or take. They are a TON of work, but thankfully this feels like old hat by now. It's just so tedious and tests my patience time and again.  Here is what is required for our home study:

• detailed application
• 3-4 visits with a social worker during which we tell her our entire lives, personally, emotionally, medically, financially, etc. You name it, it's discussed. She even talks to the kids, what they like and what they think about the adoption.
• child abuse registry results (this takes 2-3 months to come back right now in Ohio and often holds up the completion of the home study
• medical checkups for Jeremy & I, bloodwork, health history, etc. and comments of support from doc
• medical forms for all the kiddos with pediatrician's comments of support
• vaccination and license records for the dogs and cats (I'm not kidding)
• BCII and FBI Fingerprints- they do not save them and they do not carry over. I cannot tell you how many times we have been fingerprinted
• employer reference
• friend references-3
• culture training-3 hours online. Thank GOODNESS our 10 hours of Hague training that we completed last time transferred!!
• data sheets with personal info
• financial statement-detailed info about our income, monthly expenditures and expenses. This is a doozy and takes forever!
• copies of utiltty bills
• IRS 1040
• fire Inspection by local fire company
• safety inspection by social worker
• marriage certificate, birth certificates
• copies of driver's licenses
• family picture
• copy of auto and home insurance
• millions of papers to sign
• guardian info
• and because we'll have 5 kids once he comes home, we also have to complete a Large Family Assessement which is a little extra paperwork and of course extra money

We started this Home Study beginning of December, so we're about 6 weeks into it. We are done with everything we can control- we put our heads down and busted out all those appointments and requirements quickly.  Now we're at the part I'm TERRIBLE at- waiting. Waiting for the child abuse registry results to come back and waiting for it all to be written up into a long, boring document that sums up who we are.  Once it's completed, it'll go through a review process with our home study agency and our placement agency before it's finally completed. 

Whew. It's the first of many steps in the process of bringing Joey home. We consider it all to be hoops to jump through. A pain, yes. Expensive, yes.  But we're happy to do it because it starts the ball rolling for him to join our family.

So we're paper pregnant- I'm nesting and dreaming of this child to come!  Please join us in praying us through the wait and for God to move along these "hoops" as quickly as possible!