Our lives are open books - really, really thick ones

Our first visit with "our social worker" (that is still such a strange phrase for me to write!) went wonderfully today. She's not affiliated with our adoption agency but is licensed to perform the home studies required for international adoption (she works at an agency that does lots of domestic adoptions). Brian and I sat and talked with her in her office for about an hour and went over all of the forms/paperwork/stuff (that's a technical term) that we need to do for this part of the process.

The stack of paperwork she gave us is literally 3 inches thick - but, to be fair, a large chunk of that is a batch of articles about adoption issues; she's gathered these articles and I'm glad she shared them!

The "real" stuff she gave us includes:

• Their standard financial agreement to conduct the home study
• The information we have to have before we can go further with the home study process - this includes pictures; copies of birth and marriage certificates, social security cards, drives licenses, passports, etc.; income tax statements for 2 years, financial statement with monthly budgets; and guidelines for our to-be-written autobiographies (Brian's already dreading this; I'm already working on my opening paragraph in my head)
• Physician's forms for both of us to have doctors fill in, including spaces for medical treatments, illnesses, etc.
• A financial statement for income, home and mortgage information, assets, vehicles, etc. We also need to get two credit reference letters from institutions with whom we have accounts (utilities, etc.) as well as a letter from our bank indicating that we don't bounce checks regularly, etc.
• A monthly income and expenses sheet/budget listing of all expenses
• A profile sheet about the kind of child we'd like to adopt
• Affidavits that we've never been in major criminal (or even minor criminal) trouble
• Child Abuse and Neglect Central Registry forms that certify that we've never had charges brought/filed against us
• Kansas fingerprint forms - we have to be fingerprinted by our local law enforcement and have them certify that we've not been in trouble locally. This is in addition to the federal fingerprinting we'll do later.

I won't be bored any time soon, that's for sure! Certain things we have to do before we can move the process along, but other stuff we can work to gather concurrently with home study interviews, etc. We'll meet with the social worker in her office for a 2-hour interview together; 1-hour interviews apart; and at our home for a visit as well.

That's all for now - I'm off to organize my forms. Lovingly signed your geeky organized fanatic...Holly

P.S. While many good adoption things happened today, I also got some bummer bad news: the company I work for doesn't offer any paid maternity leave for adoptive mothers. If we'd gotten pregnant and I delivered vaginally, I'd have gotten 6 weeks of paid time off; 8 weeks for a C-section. But, because that's impossible and we're building our family through very expensive adoption? I get nothing as far as maternity leave. But, I'm required to take at least 6 weeks off after the adoption (this is in addition to the weeks off I'll require to go to Russia twice) to bond with our new child.

Thank goodness there are resources out there to help lobby companies for adoption maternity benefits, so here I go...The next time you see me I might be wearing my lobbyist cap!