What's Next...

...the home study visit. We have that arranged for May 15 - so now we have to "baby proof" our home!

So far we have:

• moved the carbon monoxide detector upstairs, outside the bedrooms
• put plastic covers over the electrical plugs

We need to:

• install high door locks to prevent a child from going into our backyard, basement, garage, front yard...
• add cupboard locks in the bathrooms and kitchen
• secure cables

I'm not sure but I think our surround sound speakers might need different stands - they are kinda wobbly and may not be secure enough. I'm also wondering about my plants - I love houseplants - and have a beautiful Christmas cactus which was my husbands great grandmothers - and it is very large and hangs over a small table... not sure about that one.
If anyone has any more ideas we would love to have them!

Second Meeting...

On Thursday night we had our second homestudy meeting with our AP. We were there for over 2 hours, but it didn't seem that long that's for sure! We were asked questions about our responses from our homework. The questions were mainly about my endometrosis and the treatment I'm recieving. Also we discussed openness in adoption and what that entailed. While we want to ensure that our child knows as much as possible about their family and Korean culture, we were like most adoptive families - hesitant about "interference", or families coming back and wanting to have input on how the child is raised. Since we are adopting from Asia, the likelyhood of the birth parents being involved is rare and our AP was able to help us deal with those concerns.

We are officially on our way to adopting a child from South Korea! Here is a little bit on how it has all started. Due to my inability to get pregnant without in-vitro, we decided that the best thing for us was to adopt. We could have tried to get pregnant with medical assistance, but that is a lot of strain and stress that at this time we were not willing to take on. So just before Christmas I called Children's Bridge and was able to get us on the Call Back List for South Korea. The Call Back list is essentially the waiting list to be able to start your adoption process. South Korea is planning on ending their adoption program in 2014 and as a result they have limited the number of children available each year, and each year that number is being reduce. We were told that it would probably be 2010 when we would be able to get a referral. So we had a very happy Christmas, knowing that we will be having a family in just over a year. On April 4th however we received a phone call from our agency with some exciting news! There had been a number of families who had pulled out for one reason or another and we were now on the list for 2009 and that we could start our homestudy! What a rush of emotions. We were obviously extremely excited - but also overwhelmed. We had to find an adoption practitioner who could start right away. The person we had "booked" was not able to start until June 1st, and well.... we didn't want to wait! So luckily a lovely woman in our home town was able to get us in quickly and we met on April 9th. She gave us LOTS of homework - you should see the paperwork! Questions after questions, medicals, police checks, Interpol checks, Children's Services checks... but it will be well worth it!