AUTHOR: M. DATE: 10:38:00 PM ----- BODY:

"I'm going to have a wheat-free sugar-free ginger cookie, doo-dah, doo-dah." This is my favorite of I.'s songs today. The outfit consists of pajamas and a barrette holding her inch-long bangs straight up above her forehead. Dog tired, wiped out, and also exhilarated: that's the M.O. around here tonight after our second home study meeting this afternoon. We met with Leah again, forgot most of the paperwork we were supposed to bring her, talked about the placement situations considerations worksheet, got a lot of legal information, and answered a bunch of questions about our relationship. She answered a lot of our questions about the birthfather situation. Here's the scoop, as I understand it: it seems that the best case scenario is to have a birth father who is in the picture, willing to sign off on the paperwork to terminate parental rights, and everyone gets a DNA test. As she explained it to us (after her I'm-not-a-lawyer caveat), birth parents actually sign off on consent to an adoption - not actually on waiving their parental rights. So there's a bit of legal limbo during the time between when they sign off and when you finalize the adoption - which usually takes 6-7 months. The limbo time also underscores the DNA testing issue. If a woman is married to a man who is NOT the birth father, both the birth father and the husband - who is considered the legal father - have to sign off. If she's married, and everyone assumes that her husband is the birth father, and then after the adoption is finalized it turns out that someone else was the birth father, we're all set, legally speaking. If that happens before finalization, it's riskier. Then there's also the whole "I claim no responsibility so I don't want to parent but I won't sign any papers, either" birthfather stance (see previous posting re: pain-in-the-ass birthfathers). Apparently this is pretty common, and carried some legal risk, but in that case the agency would file a 210 to terminate his rights, as they would do through Department of Social Services or another situation where parental rights were terminated by the state, not by the birth parents' choice. The rest of the time we talked about our relationship. A lot of it was social work 101: when we met, what attracted each of us to the other initially, when we committed to each other, when we got married, what we argue about, how we deal with household stuff, etc. Isadora admitted that the first time we met she (and Anne) invited me over to see their tree. Leah observed that we make each other laugh a lot. I'm glad she noticed and I'm glad it's true. Next up: we both have to write autobiographical statements. I. will meet with Leah alone next month to talk about her family relationships, personal history, and anything else that comes up. I'll do the same the following month. (By the way, all this work will end up looking like this, only minus the heterosexual-white-midwestern-christian flavoring). So. A dose of reality, in both the good sense and the bad. There's legal risk involved, but in most cases it doesn't materialize and everyone carries out the original plan. Also, Leah likes us and doesn't think we're crazy people who would raise a raving lunatic. Once again, calm reigns. Props to Leah and the forces that make the universe (and my acidic stomach) a sane place, at least some of the time.

-------- COMMENT-AUTHOR: FemiKnitMafia COMMENT-DATE:8:59 AM COMMENT-BODY:Shit. That homestudy looks tough. You think we'll pass? Or perhaps we should all start praying that our judge will give us an exemption. --------