Aaaand . . . Exhale

So, a month later:
On August 21st, Len and I went for our initial interview. It was long and intense, it lived up to expectations. We had to answer all sorts of questions, some about me, some about her, some about us together, some about our moms, some about our cousins, some about our exes, some about our friends. Everything.

This included the interviewer asking about mental health, asking about anxiety issues and then turning to Len "are you anxious? Are you anxious right now? You seem nervous." I love having a wife who said "Yes, I'm nervous, this process is intense." (said with a certain tone of "duh").

I realized that talking about things and people that you miss or even negative things from the past that make you think of things you miss, makes the missing a lot heavier. By the second hour, I was ready to move to Roswell to reconnect with pre-school friends.

After 3 1/2 hours of talking our intake specialist let us in on another step of the process. I'm coming to see that it's not that process is necessarily complicated like everyone says, it's more that when you're going through it, no one ever tells you the step by step. You don't learn the details of the next phase until it's upon you. So you are continually surprised. Which makes things seem convoluted and complicated.

So, back to my narrative. Our interviewer informed us that she was trying to decide wether to present our family for the month of August or wait and present us in September. The timing of this 3 1/3 super intense held in a dimly lit room with a big old one-way glass window, made either month an option.

And what does it mean to present one's family? Well, once a month the agency holds a meeting in which they look at all the new families and select which families will go forward.

If you aren't selected, this is where the whole process ends for you.

And how many families do they select each month? Is each family judged on it's individual merits? No, their not, they are compared to the other families for the month and no matter how many families are presented the agency only chooses to proceed with 2. Yep, 2.

Our interviewer knew that there were at least 12 families for August. We could wait and go with September and hope for a smaller number, but there was no guarantee. The interviewer seemed to be rooting for us, but was clearly intimidated by the 12.

Yeah. So learning that our next step was "ultimate judgment" (the moment at which someone might say "Nope, you are not suitable to parent . . there are a number of these moments in the process) didn't make the interview any less intense.

We left the august/September decision up to her.

She said she would call us on Monday and let us know what she had decided.


(have I mentioned that she's as bad about returning calls as I am?)

On Wednesday I called her.

Surprise! The agency shifted the August meeting and had made their Ultimate Decision on Monday. (OK, maybe the process is a little convoluted all by itself) Our interviewer said she held onto our case the whole meeting, trying to decide whether or not to present us. At the last moment, she went for it. And somehow, magically, of all the families presented for the month, Elena and I were one of the two chosen.

Our next step?

A home visit and another 3 hour interview.




(Which was today. I need to process it a bit -and go to lunch and the office- so I'll write about it soon. Also, I've recently realized how annoying i think blogging is, and how as a writing exercise, this blog wasn't the best tool, but now some of you are invested and reading and it is a good tool for record keeping . . . so those are my new motivations, yeah, I'm sure they'll change shortly.)