FINALLY!

We have a home study...FINALLY!

Last week I threw in the towel with the adoption process. I had put call #6,749 into our home study agency's office trying to find out when we would have our completed home study report and was informed that our social worker was at a doctor's appointment. The secretary told me she would call me back as soon as she found out if our social worker would be in the office that day. On Friday's they only work until noon and I called at 10:00 a.m. I knew I had a better chance of being abducted by aliens than getting a return phone call so I hung up the phone and let out a long, exasperated scream/yell/grunt and shouted as loud as I could, "I'm done, I'm out, I'm finished!!" I scared the bejeebers out of Artem but the event was therapeutic for me.

That afternoon I told Randy I was done, I was tagging out, they beat me down and I was content with only having one child. Period. The end. Thank you very much. We drove to San Angelo that evening to meet David, Kami, and Jack for dinner and when Kami asked how the home study was going I told her I was done, and I meant it.

I handle 99.9% of the adoption paperwork but this past weekend Randy told me he was going to the home study agency's office and demand our report. I was already planning our life with an only child, but he wasn't ready to give up just yet.

This morning he went to the office, it got a little heated in the beginning, and they asked him to return later since the whole office was participating in safety training. Randy wasn't taking no for an answer, he kicked over a trash can, turned a desk on it's side, and ripped a phone out of the wall. Okay I might have made that part up, but it did get a little heated and he did tell them he wasn't leaving without the report. A few minutes later I got a call on my cell phone to meet me in the Home Depot parking lot so he could pass the report on to me, I was shopping for paint at the time.

He got the report! That's right...you don't mess with my man...take no prisoners...Ninja moves...booty kicking...ahem...so we have the report!

Our dossier needs one more piece of paper, and would you believe me if I told you that I asked our agency for that piece of paper back in October? Of course you would. They said they are still waiting for that paper. Uh-huh, that's code for, "We have filed your request in our round file." A fellow adoptive parent from our international agency gave me some contact information for the state agency that handles this paperwork and I'm trying to bypass the home study agency and get that piece of paper directly from the state.

But at this point, our dossier should be on it's way to Russia with another family from our international agency in less than two weeks. And then the wait for a referral and travel dates begins.

I have a little Artem funny for you. My sister was talking to Artem this weekend about getting a baby brother, to which he reminded her again that he's getting two (holds two fingers up) baby brothers. She asked him where he was getting his baby brother's from (she was thinking he would say Russia) and he matter of factly told her, "From the 'doption agency".