The 1st visit was about an hour long and consisted of getting to know each other. D had to spend most of the visit keeping the kids entertained because the visit went into their bed time and our kids tend to get a bit noisier when tired. I think Dr. A was a bit turned off that D wasn't actively involved in the discussions, but if he had been, the kids would have made sure there were no discussions. At least none that were audible. We've still got more visits, so they will still have time to talk. But, I explained to Dr. A why we are wanting to adopt and told her about our little girl and how we think she will fit into our family. Her job is to prepare us for any extreme possibilities, so she wants us to think about how we will handle it if our little girl is extremely aggressive, hoards food, etc. It's hard for me to be able to give answers that I feel are "complete" because everything I have read in her file indicates that she is very shy and quiet, so I honestly haven't considered the possibility of her being an aggressive child. I know that when we bring her home, if she does react to the transition violently, we will handle it. But, since I'm not expecting it, I don't really know what we will do. Heck, I don't think about how I will handle my own children when they misbehave, but when they do misbehave, I handle them. Not always well, but I'm learning. I would say that I'm doing pretty good lately. And, when I find something that "works", it usually doesn't take long for it to stop working because the kids will move on and I will need to adjust to meet them where they are. Is there such a thing as reactive parenting? I think that's what I do. On paper (or a monitor), it doesn't sound like a very wise method, but somehow it works. Most of the time. You know, when I'm not tired or overly stressed out. But, if I am tired and stressed, I'm not sure even pre-planned disciplinary tactics would work because I wouldn't be coherent enough to follow the plan. I'm just guessing..... Enough about that! I'm writing about the home study. So, the 1st visit went rather well. I was asking her about the process of bringing our little girl home. Before we can return to Germany, we have to first go to the US to get our little girl's American passport. I thought we also needed a Certificate of Citizenship, but Dr. A said that wasn't important and would probably be easier to get from Germany anyways. She said that we will probably only need to be in the US for a few days, just long enough to get an expedited passport. That's great news for me because I thought it was going to be months!
The 2nd visit was the next morning. (Yay for not having to deep-clean the house again!) Dr. A did a walk-through of the house to make sure that our little girl would live in a suitable environment. That did NOT go as well as I had expected. I lost count of how many times she said, "This house is just not good for children" or some variant. By the time she left, I was quite upset that we might be denied just because we live in a German house! German houses are just NOT kid friendly like American houses are. It's just how they're made. We've made the changes we felt we needed to make in order to keep our kids safe. Our kids are not your "easy" kids. They are climbers, they are explorers, they get into EVERYTHING and NOTHING can deter them! DJ can unlock just about anything and can climb to reach things that I have trouble reaching on chairs! I figure that if it's safe for these 3, it's certainly safe for another. But, she couldn't get over the fact that we have typical German windows....LOTS of them! The German windows are large, easy to open, have no screens, and open all the way so it is easy to fall out of them. She said that we would need to install locks on EVERY SINGLE window in the entire house, all 21 of them! She was also quite concerned about a half-railing we have on our top floor. It's about 6 feet wide and maybe 3 1/2 feet high and has slats. The slats are 4 1/2 inches wide, so much too small for a child to squeeze through. Right now, we have our toy box and another floor toy against it to keep the kids from constantly rolling/pushing toys off the edge where they then fall to the next floor (loudly!). I admitted that the toy box is too easy to climb on and that it was not my best idea, but that we hadn't found anything better to put there yet. I also explained that only DJ & L are allowed upstairs alone and they know not to climb over the edge. Any time N is up there, he is supervised. Our new little girl would always be supervised as well. Apparently, that's not worth anything, because she suggested that we cover the railing with something and maybe even put barbed wire at the top. She half-admitted that she was kidding about the barbed wire, but that's how badly she hated that railing. Then there's the "yard", that is basically a little patch of grass before a steep hill down to a busy road and there's a bus stop right outside our dining room window. When we first moved in, we were told that our landlord was going to make the yard more functional. She was supposed to level it out so that we would have a bigger usable area and put up a fence to give us a bit of privacy. Well, people came out to give her estimates, but evidently it was too expensive. So, instead of doing the promised work, she sold the house and we now have new landlords. How that's legal, I'll never know. Anyways, back to the home study. Dr. A hated the yard just as I do. It's about the worst yard for children, which is why we NEVER use it! It's a bathroom for our dog. Otherwise, we wouldn't even bother opening the back door. I explained to her that I rarely even take the kids out there, but when I do, they are to stay on the small "patio" portion and color with chalk. They are not allowed in the grass or we go back inside. If they want to play outside, we go across the street to the playground, which is much more fun anyways. She still suggested that we put up some kind of little fence of some kind. I really don't want to put any work into that yard because of the betrayal it represents to me and the fact that we never use it. If it's going to be the difference between having our home study approved or denied, I'll do it. But, if it's not that important, the new lock on the door to go outside will have to suffice. Then there's the open stairs leading from the middle to the top floor. I have hated those stairs as well, but there's nothing I can do except always be with the kids whenever they go up or down them, which I do. I'm not with DJ or L every time because they are more than competent with stairs, but even still I try to go with them whenever possible. After she had given me a lot of work to do on the house, I gave her the paperwork that we have so she can go through it and we discussed the permission from the Germans and why it is so elusive. Apparently, we still don't technically have their permission, but it seems just within our grasp. We discussed possible ways to actually get it. That was good. If she was going to just flat out deny us because of the house, then she wouldn't have bothered discussing the permission....right?
Wow, I really didn't intend to go into so much detail. Anyways, we have 2 visits left to go before she will write up the actually home study. Once that is complete, we will submit our I-800A to the US, which is basically requesting permission to adopt. Once that is approved, we submit everything to our agency and they have everything translated to send to our foreign country for final approval. Then, we wait for our travel papers and can get our little girl! I'm sure there's something I'm missing in there, but that's the big picture of the rest of the process. Getting closer!
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