Last Home Visit
Last week, Kevin and I had our LAST home visit with Bethany. Even though all of our paperwork has been sent off to NC sometime in December, and we’re just waiting on everything to get processed so the adoption is finalized, Bethany likes to follow up with their adoptive families for 6 months after placement. So, last week we had our last follow-up visit with our Bethany adoption worker.
When Jane* (our adoption worker) emailed me earlier this month, we originally scheduled the visit for Monday January 16th at 3:30. So I went ahead and put the appointment on my calendar at work and thought that was that. Not too long later, Jane emailed me back and asked if we could reschedule to Tuesday January 17th since that was MLK day and her office was actually closed for the holiday. Us accountants don’t get MLK day off as a holiday but it didn’t matter to us if the appointment was Monday or Tuesday, so I said that it wasn’t a problem to change the date.
Well- I forgot to change it on my calendar. Oops! So last Monday I left work at 3pm and rushed home to meet Kevin and Kate. Around 3:35, I knew something was up. Jane is usually a few minutes early, and never late. Then it hit me. Our home visit wasn’t supposed to be until the next day. Oops again!
I told Kevin that he could go back to work. Since I was already home with Kate, I took her to run some errands. We went by my work so I could get my laptop, and I think just about everybody I work with got to hold her. Then we went by Buy Buy Baby to get her a new car seat. That’s a post for another day, but basically she is already growing out of her infant carrier at just 5.5 months old. And then, we headed home.
The NEXT day, I again rushed home at 3pm to meet Kevin and Kate. This time Jane showed up right on time. We had a GREAT meeting. Basically, she just wanted to know how involved we wanted Bethany to be from this point forward. We don’t have any further commitment to Bethany, so if we wanted to be through with them, we could. If we had a closed adoption, this would probably be the case. But since we have an open adoption, Bethany is always there to be a facilitator of visits with Kate’s birth parents- if we want them to. So far, we have had 2 visits with Kate’s birth parents, and we have used Bethany to coordinate the meetings although we have chosen to meet with them at restaurants and the mall. It has worked well so far and our plan is to continue using Bethany as an intermediary until we build a further relationship with Kate’s birth parents. If at any point we decide that we don’t need to use Bethany as a go-between or coordinator, we would just start scheduling our visits on our own. Basically, Bethany’s involvement from this point forward is totally up to us.
Jane stayed for about an hour, and then we were officially finished with everything! The ironic thing is that we had our last visit with our adoption worker on January 17, 2012. We STARTED this whole adoption with our first informational meeting on January 11, 2011. I’m still amazed (and grateful) at how fast everything happened. God is so good!
On a totally different note, Kate figured out how to push the buttons on her activity/bouncy station and was shocked that they would light up and play music. It’s so fun to watch her do and learn new things!
