Approaching the Homestudy Update

Life is moving along these days and it's already mid-April.  Since our last post, we've continued to accrue more adoption waiting pool "experience" on our way to the two year mark.  From our earlier post on our adoption experience to date (back in February), the big item on the horizon for us was our homestudy renewal.

Since December, we've been waiting to get a new counselor.  Since February, we've learned that our agency was having some challenges getting a new counselor on board.  Rather than having a new counselor work with us to do our homestudy renewal, we'll be working directly with a former counselor who is now the regional supervisor for the local office.  On one side, it will be nice to work with an experienced counselor.  On the other side, knowing that we'll likely have a minimum of 4 counselors over our wait does represent a level of inconsistency in our course through the process.

Now that we know who will be doing our homestudy, we do have a meeting setup with her to do all of our interviews in one go.  During that time, she'll get to see our house, conduct one-on-one interviews with Andy and I, and then collect any other info she needs to update our homestudy report.  For us, it'll be an opportunity to connect back in to our process and feel like we're doing something active during our wait.

Admittedly, the wait has been getting tougher over the past few weeks.  Just recently, there was another urgent screening email which needed a reply in under 90 minutes.  After an urgent call between us during a morning at work, we opted to say yes.  On my end, I then promptly lost most of my work focus during the day and had my fingers crossed.  It was still a long shot, but every little chance we have to be chosen just feels more magnified.  Of the 17 families that joined the waiting pool in the 3 months after we entered, only 4 remain.  There are still 19 families who have waited longer than we have.  Collectively, I know all 20 of us are likely very anxious and ready to be chosen.

When we began the process for our first adoption, one segment during our pre-adoption seminar was all about managing grief.  We touched on these in our summary posts, but from our perspective there was very little grief to manage.  As a gay couple, we never have had an opportunity to control our process to building a family.  That was a basic expectation.  We were just thrilled to be at that seminar and take the first step.  However, I think that topic is applicable to our status now.  Being unable to control our process, our role has been to wait while time ticks by.  As that time goes by, Dominic grows older, we grow older, and not much effectively changes for us with respect to an adoption.  Just the same as it was when we entered the pool, we could be chosen 5 minutes from now or 5 years from now despite having 22 and a half months go by.

In the meantime, we're focusing on keeping busy.  Just today, Dominic had a fun trip to the park to get out and enjoy the nice weather.  He's a happy little guy who has changed so much over the past few weeks and months.

His independent, smart, and adventurous spirit helps keep us active and on our toes.


Both Andy and I are training for a half-marathon in May.  We've each run races before, but never a half-marathon together.  With some luck, we'll both manage to drag each other across the finish line in decent time.  While we may have no control over the finish line in our second adoption, the finish line for our race is one we can cross under our own power...and hopefully in under 2 hours!