The social worker had to meet with us together twice (once in her office and once at our house) and she also had to interview us separately. The process of completing the homestudy was delayed due to a number of issues that came up, including documents that did not list our names precisely the same way, and our social worker had a significant delay in being able to provide us with the final version of the document. In retrospect, that delay had a big impact since had we completed that process months earlier we likely would have been matched a couple of years ago. But as I mentioned in an earlier post, it is already hard to imagine not being matched with Fen and Mei.
Since so much time elapsed from when we started to adopt and this year, we actually had to go back through the whole homestudy process, which is even more rigorous in Montgomery County, MD. We had a social worker who was very helpful and efficient, so that was a blessing (and we will work with her to provide our periodic updates on how the girls are doing for the next five years). We also had to have a sanitary inspector come to the house. We passed that somehow. We had to get new fingerprints taken both by the local and federal law enforcement agencies. We got letters of reference from neighbors and friends. The list goes on.
One highlight, at least for Stacey, was the fire inspection. I thought it was a pain since I had to go buy fire extinguishers of a particular size, test our detectors and draw a floor plan and escape route for the house. Our house is not exactly cavernous, so it is pretty obvious where the nearest exits are. The final step was to have the Fire Chief from our local station come for the inspection and sign our form. I arranged for them to come to the house, but it was Stacey who was here to greet them. So, apparently four very attractive firemen showed up to conduct the inspection, matching every stereotype. Stacey did not mind at all showing them around the house.
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