First homestudy visit done for round two

Today, Halloween day, our social worker came to our house to update the first part of our homestudy (home study) so that we can adopt a little brother or sister for Julia. (btw, Daddio asked Julia if she wanted a little brother or sister and she said brother!, but we will leave that in the hands of the match to decide for us).

I am so excited to get this process on the road again. She did ask if we were going to sign with an agency at this time and we said we would stay at an independent status for now and let her know in a few months when we are tired of waiting on our own and trying to do our own advertising to find a birth situation, we will be calling the agency we adopted through for Julia's situation to sign with them. I can't imagine we will be willing to wait more than 5 or 6 months.

Meantime, I am going to work on getting some business cards printed stating we are looking to adopt a newborn or infant through domestic adoption. We will hand those out to as many as we can and then I will work on a web site to help us spread that word too. I know, not all birthfamily/mother situations have access to a computer, but maybe someone they know will and can pass our information to them and then we can mail them a hard copy of our profile.

Happy Halloween to you all. I'll post more in the next few days. I'll post the link to the new 2009 Christopher Radko adoption ornament too!

prepping for our homestudy

As we move forward with wishing to add to our family, we have set a date with the social worker (our first social worker in town we used back in 2006). This Saturday will be our next homestudy visit. First in the steps to adopt again. Since we successfully adopted in September 2007, we let our homestudy expire so we have to go through the process of starting a new homestudy now instead of renewing like many do. We have many reasons as to why we let it expire like knowing we didn't have the money to adopt again anytime soon through an agency, nor did we expect to want to adopt again with a two year old in our lives. I do have that itch for a baby again.... OK, I admit, I HAVE BABY LUST really bad. REALLY REALLY BAD. I want Julia to have a brother or sister, I want another child, We want to be a family of at least four! No better reason than that, except that we are not getting any younger.

Cleaning house. What else can I say besides I want a maid. LOL I admit I have been neglectful in dusting and keeping a straight house so I am paying for it now by cleaning and cleaning roof to basement. Nobody's fault but my own.

I am excited to get the process started with the homestudy, but we are still holding off on signing with an agency just yet. We don't have the ready funds and can't borrow so we are hoping an independent (private) situation comes our way in the next few months by help of spreading our wish to adopt again by word-of-mouth! I am going to work on getting some business cards printed, but I am not sure what to put on them. Any suggestions? Sure, I'll be glad to hand one out to strangers. I have told our lawyer that we intend to adopt again and are doing our homestudy so I will give his information for our contact #.

Ok, off to clean.

What is going on in your world?

home study update .. progress made

Hubby rocks! He got our birth certificates, marriage license certified copies. Thanks!

Things on our list completed and to do.......
-Finger prints done and turned in to the state trooper office with our payment for processing.
- Both of our physicals are done. TB tests are negative and cleared by the doc.
- 2 of the 5 letters we need are done. Two more asked to write letters, need to find a 5th person to write one.
-Work verifications are done
- Need to get Julia's info filled in from her physical in March (yes, we can use the info from then)
-Need to turn in the packet to the social worker with our first part of the home study fee!

We have already updated our picture profile and the social worker has a few copies. We have decided to not sign with an agency at this time due to money constraints. Hubby is still a contract worker and we need to have some extra funds in the bank if his contract is not renewed. Hopefully in the next few weeks we will know more on that. Meantime, we are telling all that we know that we are almost home study ready. You never know if anyone you know might know of a potential situation of a potential birthmother and baby. Heck, that is how we found out about Julia's birthmother's situation, but we had just signed with an agency so her birthmother did go through the agency upon our request. I am very thankful for the agency's help too because we were so blind to the process of adoption having not been through it before that.

I'll be honest and say we are hoping to adopt another newborn. I just have that baby lust again and it is strong. I think we could accept if the baby is a few weeks old, but if I were to be asked, I think a baby more than 3 months old would be out of the range of age I am wanting to be comfortable with for bonding. I know, some (even Hubby) might not feel that way, but that is my motherly instinct and internal want I feel.

I have had several people ask me if we want to adopt a boy or girl. I don't have a specific desire. I did with our first. I so wanted a girl and we were so blessed to have that dream come true, but now, I am not picking sides of gender because I feel what will happen in that way of gender will happen. We will be blessed with either gender. I wonder how you all felt with that upon starting the process for adopting # 2. I think hubby might have a different feeling on this (hint, blue). LOL

surrogacy and jumping into a new homestudy

Yes, surrogacy is heavy on my mind tonight. We have one frozen ebryo left in the cryolab at MoBap with Dr. Wilbois. He is one of maybe two doctors in town that will consider doing surrogacy cycles as long as you have the embies and you have a surrogate and you have the legalities all tied up. See, I don't have a uterus any longer (after 9 babies in heaven) so I can't carry one. I can produce eggs for embies, but that is another story. So the one lone embie is waiting, frozen, for us to come put it back into a warm receptive uterus, just not mine. Do you know of anyone that has had a friend or family become their surrogate? I don't (well, most are 40 and above and not sure they would want to or be able to help us in that way.

Next step while waiting to figure out the surrogacy link....


I called the local social worker today to send me a packet for an independent home study process. See, we let our last home study we used with adopting Julia expire. So we have to start from scratch. Finger prints, physicals, lots of paper work and a new profile of us as a family of 3.