What happens next.

Now that our application is at Barker, we wait. Get used to posts about waiting. There's going to be a lot of it from here on out. Barker has a committee that reviews applications - they meet on Tuesday. If we pass muster there - and there's no reason we shouldn't - they call/mail all of our references. I'm not sure what kind of things they ask our references, and I just realized there is only one couple on there who actually have a child. Hmm.

So, paperwork goes out to our references. Then Allen and I get called in to Barker for an in-person interview. Presumably that will happen in the next week or two, but I'm not sure the exact timeline. Once we have completed our in-person interview and all of our references have returned their paperwork, then we begin the homestudy.

I expect the homestudy to take a month or two, though since we are doing a domestic adoption, the process is less complicated and I think the homestudy will take less time. I'm telling myself two months so I don't get frustrated when it takes longer than four weeks, but I'm hoping for four to six weeks. Again, I'm not sure the exact requirements for the homestudy, but I know we need fingerprints and certifications from the state that we don't have any kind of criminal or abuse record, birth and marriage certificates, three visits from the social worker to our home, financial documents, things like that.

So far, adoption has been long periods of waiting in between short bursts of frenetic activity. I think that's the typical experience at least, so welcome to our new normal.