Homestudy Pt. 1

I want to do a little series as we move along the process; hopefully it will be helpful to those who might be looking for more information or who are overwhelmed with the amount of work involved in adoption.

So what is a homestudy? Basically it's the process through which adoptive parents go to be approved by the US government to adopt. An agency studies your home environment to make sure it's (and you're) suitable for raising children.

Step one is to find an adoption agency. If you've chosen international adoption, your agency may very well not be located in your state. Ours isn't. But your homestudy and post-placement visits must be carried out by an agency within your state. [this may get confusing, the whole two agencies thing. I will try to use "adoption agency" and "homestudy agency" for clarification.]

Keep in mind that your adoption agency may have extra requirements. There's this thing called the Hague Convention. A country is either part of it or not. This sounds like no bigs, but it is bigs. It's very bigs. Anyway, agencies have to undergo a process to become Hague accredited. And if your adoption agency is accredited, then your homestudy must be completed by an agency that is also Hague accredited, even if your country is not party to the Hague convention.

That was our deal: Nightlight (now A Helping Hand Adoption Agency: a Nightlight Affiliate) is Hague accredited, so we needed an homestudy agency who is also. The good news is that most adoption agencies will send you a list of homestudy agencies they know they can work with when they send you your big, wlecome-to-the-agency packet.

Unfortunately for us, it wasn't updated. So I did a bit of snooping and checked to see if we could do our homestudy through Generations Adoptions in Waco.

We were going to go with Lutheran Social Services of the South, but a couple of things changed our minds (which are only personal preferences). LSSS has its own training, which they do in one all-day seminar in either Houston, Austin, or Dallas. This would be difficult for us because Ezra's never been away from me that long, and we are still nursing. Generations has online training, which isn't covered in their homestudy fees, but we can complete it in a few sittings rather than one very full day.

Another thing was that LSSS charged an application fee and Generations didn't. Their fee for the actual homestudy is also slightly less. I know it's not necessarily good to go with the cheapest everything all the time, but let's face it: we already can't actually afford to adopt. The less we have to raise through fundraisers and grants, the easier on everyone.

I'm really happy with our decision. Everyone I've spoken with at Generations has been very helpful, prompt, and warm. And honestly, I'm not a businessperson; if everyone I talk to throughout my day speaks to me like we're going to be friends, I'm on cloud 9. Especially in unknown and overwhelming territory.

I'll do part 2 of this series after we have our home visit, March 27th!

Machine Gun Laugh

I don't know if this is a normal baby thing, but Ezra has a great laugh for when he's excited. See below.

Also note the sucking on his washrag. Again, I don't know if that's a normal baby thing, but I think it's really weird.

Ezra Is a Toddler!

I mean, I think he is... He's actually been toddling about for some time.

Ezra found Dad and wanted to play, too.

 I love this pic of him sleeping. You mamas know - whenever your little one's been a fusspot, just a peek at them sleeping makes you remember how wonderful they really are.

Sweeeeet!

 Okay, to the task at hand. Ezra's bday was actually the day of our garage sale. I tried to find another day that fit the criteria we were looking for: we had to be available, it should be around the beginning of the month, and we needed the stuff out of our house in good time before the home visit of our homestudy. This was the day.

The only pic of Ezra on his birthday: 7 am makes for a sleepy boy.

That evening the Mnchs held a family birthday extravaganza because there were (no joke) 5 birthdays between the end of February and mid-March (tomorrow, actually). It worked out pretty well because my parents were able to get a good bit of time with E while they were helping during the garage sale. We would not have been able to do that sale without their help.

So, with his actual birthday not available for a lil party, we decided to have it the next Saturday. Since it was the first Saturday of Spring Break, we thought, "hey, let's invite more people than just family, since a lot of people will be out of town." [Keep in mind that almost all of our friends are in college ministry, so we all pretty much live by the university schedule.]

So we invited our immediate families, our homegroup, and our coworkers.

I think it needs more balloons.

 Turns out, we had 31 people come! I love hosting, so it was kind of a dream for me. We certainly won't be able to do that every year or anything, but I think there's something about firsts. And celebrations. And cooking for people.

Unfortunately, the roaster didn't think 6 hours was long enough to cook all the chicken I had put in it. A couple of wonderful friends/coworkers stepped right up to help slice and pan-cook the chicken so people could, you know, eat.

The theme was Elmo basically because I got the plates, napkins, and tablecloths at like 80% off (possible 90%, but I've forgotten) when our local Albertsons was closing. Turns out, Ezra loves Elmo. Stephen has put it on for him when I've been gone and he decides no one will do but Mom. I'm not a fan of plunking a kid down in front of the TV, but I'd rather my husband not hate me.

Anyway, soon it was time for cake.

Apparently, cake is gross.

 Everyone sang happy birthday to him, and he promptly cried. He was too tired, and thirty people singing was too loud. Luckily the dog started barking, which always cheers him up.

Friends!

I had a good time, and it seemed like everyone else did as well. I'm gonna try to convince Stephen to have maybe a "happy 1st Gotcha Day" or something like that for Baby A, since s/he may already be 1 by the time we get home, or s/he may not have settled in comfortably by the time one year comes around. But I digress. Here's to the next year with my Tookie!

Whoops!

Sorry for the *ahem* long hiatus. We've been busy around here. Let's get you caught up on the last 6 weeks in the Mnch household (yes, that's how I write our name in my head).

It took us a while to get underway with our homestudy. We were going to go with an agency based out of Austin, but they required us to pay for all of our post-placement visits at the time we paid for our homestudy, and that was going to be hard on us. [I totally totally understand why they do that. Of course people are more likely to actually complete those visits if they've already paid for them. It's really important that families complete their post-placement visits in order to keep the adoption process open between countries. Uganda doesn't want kids coming to the States and never being heard of again, obvs.] They also required an application fee, which I can also understand, because processing documents takes time, but gosh, the money really adds up!

So we checked with another agency and just got such great vibes from them. We were considering using Generations Adoptions as our agency for the whole sha-bang, but we fell in love with Nightlight's Baby's Home. In my interactions with Generations so far, they're a pretty great organization. So we completed their application (with no application fee, yay!) and started gathering the mountain of documents we needed for our homestudy packet.

In the meanwhile, we had our first real fundraiser: a bake sale. Our church graciously let us serve sweets during our biennial Dating and All That Stuff event. For such a small group, we still took home $237 in donations! Crazy, right?!? I was definitely not expecting that much, but so many college students gave generously to us. And the presence of cake balls didn't hurt either. ;)

As soon as that was over, it was time to really get down to business on a big fundraiser: our garage sale. So many of our friends donated (seriously, there was so much stuff). After a couple of locations fell through, the owners of the office building our church rents allowed us to use the parking lot. After 5 days of non-stop work (and an amazing amount of help), we brought in over $1,000! Seriously, one thousand dollars! And I got some Christmas lights to put on our tree. Oddly enough (to me, at least), no one was feeling the Christmas love. I think things like that a great to buy cheaply in the off-season if you have a place to store it. The lights were still in the boxes and LED and cute. Totally a score.

I should've taken pictures of the mayhem in our house, but I don't think Stephen would have allowed them to be seen by others. Our front bedroom was completely full, our couches were covered, and our dining room had a little walkway to the trash can. There were even things I left on the porch because I couldn't find a place to put them. It was nuts.

Oh, did I mention? The garage sale was on Ezra's first birthday. More to come on that tomorrow!

Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate Chips

Dark chocolate chips LEAVE ME ALONE!

That is all for today.