Sunday, February 23, 2014

It's a (Death) Trap!

In preparations for last week's homestudy interviews, I realized one super important thing that we'd completely forgotten.  Despite filling out or gathering over 32 separate pieces of paperwork for our homestudy documents such as reference letters, autobiographies, contracts, background checks, FBI background checks, birth certificates, marriage license, driver's licenses, self-assessments, tax returns, etc. etc., I realized that one key piece of making sure that our homestudy interviews pass with flying colors was having everything prepared on the homestudy checklist.  (Yet another list!)

This homestudy checklist requires us to have a home evacuation plan posted.   It also has lots of things on it that make sense for Katie to check off.  Basic items that legally need to be confirmed before saying a home is acceptable for a child.  You know, like running water, heat, smoke alarms, and that the house isn't a giant haunted house death trap. 

Back to the evacuation plan, it makes more sense for adopting older children, but it's kind of laughable to have to do one for a newborn baby.  Oh well, we did one last time around in our old house and I threw yet another copy of one together for our new house too.  While I didn't do a fancy version drawn up in CAD software this time around, I still took a little time make some pretty pictures for it in PowerPoint!


The next time any of you are over to visit, this will be conveniently posted next to our patio door.  Be sure to spend 2 minutes getting to know this while our house burns down around you before you take 2 steps evacuate along the golden path to freedom.

Also, since this is being posted after our homestudy interviews, I should probably mention that we passed with flying colors.  Hooray!  We'll likely post more follow up items in the future, but this is just a quick update for now.

Sunday, February 2, 2014

Waiting Pool Stats - February

Last time around, we tracked some basic statistics about the waiting pool.  Since I'm a dork, I'm going to do it again for fun.  Mainly, I just find it interesting to see how Andy and I would fit in with the other families that are in the pool and to see how the waiting pool changes over time. 

One important thing to note is that we don't really see this as a competition with the other families.  In the end, we know that every family that gets picked will do an amazing job of parenting their little girl or little boy which is what matters.  This is really just a way to pass the time and come up with pretty data-based graphics to entertain us in the meantime!

Now on with the pretty graphics and bar charts!

First up, we have the statistics for the entire pool.  I tallied up the number of adoptive families in the waiting pool at the start of the year in January and just yesterday.  Over the month of January, there was very little change.

*One important note with these stats is that we use the current profiles displayed on the OA&FS website.  Sometimes the website does not show immediate updates, but this is what we will use to establish these stats.


One breakdown we did last time around was the number of adoptive couples in each orientation grouping.  Admittedly, we tended to compare ourselves the most with other gay adoptive families in the pool.  That doesn't mean we think we'll be picked by a birthfamily that is only looking at gay couples.  It's an easy metric for us to follow.  Also, with 90 families in the pool, it's a lot easier to skim through 21 profiles than all 90!

So, there we have it.  Our first Waiting Pool statistics post shows....almost nothing.  January was a slow month and the only change was adding one straight adoptive family to the pool.  Future posts will likely show more action, but this goes to show that the world of adoption can be incredibly unpredictable.  Some months there will be 5+ families going through adoptions.  Other months will be quiet ones like January.  With some luck, February will be a more active month as I know there are 90 wonderful entries in the waiting pool.

Now, given that today is February 2nd and Super Bowl Sunday, I need to end this post appropriately...



Go Hawks!