Home Study visit and change of plans

Today we had our first Home Study visit. I know, what a great Valentine's gift! I was really nervous and cleaned the house up until the moment she was in the door, due to the fact that I was in the very back room of the house running the vacuum at the moment Rickydoodle let her in the house. So much for having her think that my house always looks this way. On top of that she didn't even want a tour of the house, all she saw was the bathroom and the dining room. Oh well, at least I have a clean house and one step in this process is down. YAY!!!! The social worker we chose to do this Home Study for us is a really nice lady and put as at ease right from the start. Plus, she seems to know what she's doing and has common sense on top of that. I have learned these are good qualities to find when dealing with anyone in the field of Social Work.

As to our change of plans. When we began this journey the plan was we were adopting a child from China, probably a waiting/special needs child. Then we switched to Vietnam and were going to request a healthy infant, then a waiting Vietnamese child. Then we started looking at any program we might be qualified for(every program has it's different rules). All along Rickydoodle has said that we should just be looking right here in the States, and I was open to that but I had my dream of my baby girl in my eyes and that's all I could think of. We looked at the AdoptUsKids website sometimes and even thought we'd like to adopt a couple of those kids, but I always thought that the "baby adoption" was gonna happen first and then we'd do foster care again and possibly adopt that way. So, last Saturday Rickydoodle was perusing some waiting child photolists he'd found through a contact at Virginia One Church One Child when all of a sudden he's calling me to come and look at someone. She is a beautiful six year old in Ohio who has some special needs. We won't be allowed to know anything more than what is listed with her profile on the website until we have submitted our HS, but that's ok with us, we're not really worried. We both have some experience with severely disabled children and know a little girl who has CP, is blind, and is significantly developmentally delayed. We know that if she needed a home we would be glad to welcome her into ours, and so, we know we won't have a problem doing the same for Little Beauty in OH. Now, we just have to hope that once we submit our HS we'll be approved to adopt her. I don't have any idea if anyone else is even interested in her and I'm afraid to ask her caseworker. Either because I don't want to hear yes or to be told she can't tell me that. That is driving me nuts more than anything, now that we have fallen in love with her I want to KNOW that we will be abe to adopt her. I know we weren't supposed to allow ourselves to fall in love with her picture but it just somehow happened. If she gets adopted that will be wonderful and we will rejoice for her but we really hope that it will be us.

I'm still kind of shocked at how this little one has managed to banish all impatience for a baby from my mind. We will most likely return to that plan once we have brought her home and allowed her to settle in for a while, but right now we are working on moving closer to being able to become LB's(Little Beauty) family. God just never ceases to amaze me, I know He is the only one who could have snuck this little "roadblock" in there and had me be happy about it.