Homestudy Interview #1

After a great weekend in Providence, RI with Josh, Elise, and Cora, we came back to Seattle for our first homestudy interview with our counselor, Katie, on Monday morning.  Given that we wanted to put on a good show, Andy and I did a fair amount of cleaning before we left town for the weekend, after getting home close to midnight on Sunday, and then some last minute work before our 9:30am meeting.

So, how did it go?  Our home has been stamped with approval and is safe for children!  (For those of you that have asked already, you already know this as I've been enjoying passing on the fact that our house is surprisingly not a death trap.  Go us!)  Amusingly, Katie was at our condo for about 2 hours and we spent the majority of the time in our living room just talking through some of the basic interview questions that she had.  One of the primary purposes of the homestudy meetings is to learn more about us.  Katie will write a 10+ page homestudy report that will tell potential birthfamilies all about who we are and what our home is like.

Katie led us through some basic 'get-to-know-you' questions to help get that ball rolling.  We talked about each of our typical days at work, what we do during the evenings, our weekend hobbies, and how some of those things may change after we have a baby.  For example, I know my 3x a week gym schedule will be converted from running and weight lifting to bouncing a baby and lifting loaded diapers!

After our extended chat, we led Katie on a tour of our house which turned out to be really laid back and easy.  She was rather impressed with our awesome evacuation plan (yeah!) and it didn't take long for her to fire through her checklist and give us a stamp of approval.

Even though this was just the first of four interviews, it felt great to get all of that completed and out of the way.  I know I had been carrying some stress about this meeting even though I was 99% sure we'd pass through with flying colors.  With this one done, here's a check-in on our process:

• Application & Intake Interview
• Homestudy Interview #1 - April 9th
• Homestudy Interview #2 - April 11th  April 25th  (Just rescheduled today)
• Homestudy Interview #3 - April 23rd 
• Homestudy Interview #4 - April 25th

As mentioned in previous posts, two of the interviews will take place at our condo and involve both Andy and myself.  The other two will be individual interviews with Katie.  Interviews #1 and #3 are the joint interviews at our condo.  Interviews #2 and #4 are individual one-on-one meetings at Katie's office - one for me and one for Andy.  These will both be on the 25th so that means "Interview #3" at our condo is up next on the 23rd.  Until then, we'll have some fun posts to entertain you before a flurry of updates during the week of the 23rd.  Stay tuned!