Continuing the Update

I left off on the update to fostering with our licensing worker saying she would tentatively be back December 9th to do our final homestudy/interview at which time she could then finish with writing up her part and send it off.  Well, our December 9th meeting didn't happen.  In fact, due to her busy schedule and the impending holidays, and other people needing to get renewal things done before the end of the year, it didn't happen at all in 2011.

However, on January 18, we were able to meet.  We sat down and answered a few final questions about our childhood, talked about the age range and number of kids we were thinking, a few more similar questions, and that was it!

As she left, she mentioned that she would probably have the final draft (20-30 pages) finished in a week or two, then she'll send it off to Lansing for their approval which would take 2-4 weeks, and we would be licensed.  So we figured, especially since getting this second meeting took so long to get schedule, we were probably looking at 4-6 weeks before we would be licensed... so no worries, and it would come just about the time Tim was done with his clinical hours. 

Then, January 27, I get an email from our licensing worker with a few questions needed to finish the homestudy.  I send back the reply and not much later suddenly get this from her...
Hey, do not even have your homestudy to Lansing yet but..... may have a 2 yo boy for you......!!!  What do you think???

It was Friday, Tim and I both were off school, I had just sorted through all the baby clothes I've collected over the years in order to figure out what we really had, and suddenly we are asked if we'd consider a 2 yr old... although I responded back that it wasn't the right time, too early for us, it certainly made me realize how unprepared we really were for taking in a child.  Which suddenly determined our plans for the rest of the day.  We spent all afternoon and into the evening visiting a baby store and another general items type store [common places but I don't really feel like putting the names here for all search engines to find] registering for our upcoming shower (in March).  It was a lot of fun!  And we may have gone a little crazy scanning things!  But don't worry, I tried to clean up our lists a bit once we got home. 

So then we were just waiting again to find out when we would be licensed.  I check my email obsessively over the next week or so, completely expecting another email similar to the one she had just sent us.  But the only email I received was on January 30... our homestudy had been sent to Lansing.  Now just waiting to see how long it would take there, and if they would really, actually approve us...