"Won't you be my baby?"

Buck & his cousin, Pahina, playing in the pack-n-play crib at Christmas.

I posted that our adoption social worker, Claire, was coming a few weeks ago - but I had gotten the date a week off - and then her children became sick and so we had to postpone our first home study visit to last night.

Claire came over to our house at 6 after dropping her kids off at the local ski hill (only in Canada). She is originally from England and she has lived here for 5 years with her husband who works for (drumroll) BP!! RKZ was so happy that he didn't write anything negative about BP in his home study assessment papers (referring to why we moved so many times). We are guessing that her husband is pretty important in the company by the description of his job. It was a funny coincidence, anyway. And she and I had a few good laughs when we discussed "paternity leave" options for RK once the baby comes. These laughs revolved around the fact that she and I both know that husbands who work for oil companies rarely can take any time off (although RKZ is committed to doing whatever necessary, of course). It will be interesting to see what happens.

The home study itself will take 3 sessions. The immediate difference between using this private agency and our first experience of Children's Services (in California) is that Claire suggested that the last 2 studies be done on nights all within the next 2 weeks in order to complete our home study meetings quickly. We will be completely done with our meetings by Feb. 18th! And Claire told us that she will be writing up our study each week after she meets with us, so that she should be finished with the evaluation by the end of February and we will be on the list for birth moms to review. I asked Claire if this means we should get our birth mother letter and picture portfolio done and she said, "They normally ask that you have it in before the home study begins so that they can show your profile to a birth family immediately after the study is finished. It happens quite often that they are chasing down pictures and a letter because the family seems to be a great match for a birth mom's requests." Claire made it seem that everything moves rather quickly. It's exciting, but unnerving.

This first meeting was the "background" meeting where RKZ and I had to describe our "family of origin" and our experiences growing up. I'm sure you'll all appreciate that. Just so our families know, we did describe you all as perfectly healthy, happy individuals who are like walking Saints - so if anyone calls - be on your best behavior :) [don't worry, no one will call]. We had been through it before so it was a pretty basic meeting. RK even commented that it was more easy than he had expected - not too in depth. It was actually like having a long conversation with a new friend who just wants to know about your family. And Claire is very nice so it was easy to talk to her.

The funniest part was discussing "how many drinks you have on average." When I told her 3/4 weeks a month, she said, "That is how much everyone in Calgary drinks." We all laughed and I told her that before Buck, my answer would have been really different (as many of you know) but that it's hard to get up with a toddler in the morning after a night of boozing. RKZ's answer was awesome - I won't write it here, but he does work for the oil industry and drinking is part of his job - so you can figure that it's more rather than less. And RKZ rarely (if ever) lies about anything.

So - we've analyzed our families and our childhood lives (you all came out looking great) and I guess the next meeting is how RKZ and I met and how we parent. Buck was at the meeting last night and spent most of the time doing "stamps" and making a huge mess with the ink pad. He also used every trick to get attention from Claire. She commented that he "has really great sentence structure." My response was, "Yeah, you'll get to hear a lot of that during the meeting." She just laughed, but I wasn't kidding. I do think that Claire will ask Buck about his feelings on getting a sibling and sharing, etc. He told me that he'd like a sister a few days ago. We'll see how he responds when it's going down on paper. Our next meeting is next Wed. night, so I'll keep posting about the process!