more adoption paperwork

We had our first in-person meeting with the Social Worker here in Norfolk. Again, this is a step toward becoming foster parents, so that if my step-cousins end up needing a home, we're ready to get them to Virginia the most painless way the system has. We met at her office in Downtown Norfolk, and appreciated her pleasant, informative, no-nonsense approach to the children and the situation. By no fault of the woman here in Norfolk, she came into the meeting not knowing that the boys' mother had passed away. They (she and the worker in Arizona) had been communicating, and she had e-mails sent after their mother's death, but it was never mentioned and came as quite a shock. Of course, that changes the whole situation (no chance of that reunification), but she asked us for everything we knew, and gave us a lot of good information about the whole foster care process. We handed her a pile of paperwork, and she gave us three times the paperwork back to fill out.

So, the road rolls onward. This round includes all of our finances, background checks, physical health, and driving records etc. We have a couple of weeks before our next meeting with her, which will be our home safety evaluation (home study) and will (obviously) take place inside our home. We have to have individual interviews, and the next one will be my individual interview, as well as the home evaluation, so she's scheduling it when Matt's at work.

On the pregnancy front, I'm sixteen weeks today and get to hear the heartbeat (again) on Monday. Looking forward to finding out the gender of this Nowak baby in less than a month!