Stunned

We had a call last night asking if Nice Little Agency could show our profile to an expectant couple.

We said no. I'm going to start being a little more circumspect than I normally am, though if you are a regular reader/commenter I'm happy to share more by email. But basically there was a risk and a financial element and the risk was one we had not had a chance to consider, and the agency thought our reasons for saying no made sense.

I don't think they will now mark us down as hard to please and indecisive but sod's law of course dictates there will be no other matches in the next year.

Why do I bother?

As of today, we are officially "parents in waiting". Of course this does not mean the paperwork has stopped, as several things need renewing, but our ducks are enough in a row that NLA is going to start showing our profile.

My mother, on the other hand... I've been trying to keep her updated and in fact have just sent an email to say exactly that. She has a fairly big birthday coming up early next year and wants to do something exciting, so she was trying to make some suggestions and maybe even book something. I said that we could not really commit as we have about a 50% chance of a match in the next year. "What do you mean, a match?" was her reply. I have left her to think about why that was a silly answer.

Well that wasn't awkward...

I had a visitor at work yesterday and was taking her out to lunch, with another colleague, in my car. We had just been talking about my visitor's kids (she's a good friend, and she also works with kids). My colleague said "oh, your car is tidy, for someone with children"!!

Both I and my visitor experienced a slight disconnect - we first thought he was meaning the car was hers, but he knew she hadn't driven up. And his surprise when I replied "but I haven't got children" made it plain he didn't mean that. So we were left with no clue as to why he thought I did.

But is it legal?

NLA says that all they need from us now to start showing our profile is a) some money (of course) and b) the actual profile. Both should be with them by the end of the week. They are pretty good at communicating with us directly, not so good at remembering to cc in OHP. Since we know OHP is the one that really has to decide if our paperwork is in order, they are the ones who really need to give the go-ahead. But it's nice to know we're nearly there.

On the communicating to us but forgetting OHP, the way it works with overseas adoption in the UK is that we are only supposed to hear about a match through our agency (and they hear from OHP and the UK government department). This is supposed to make it all legal and mean all matches meet our criteria and everything is above board. But I just know NLA is going to forget this and tell us first. Well, it's not my job to tell them the law.

Of COURSE

the paperwork isn't complete. Why would it be complete?

Still do to: resend some profiles to NLA (they didn't arrive - plan is to get them printed locally rather than ship them) and a small pair of agreements for them (which we knew weren't there but hadn't got round to). Renew for OHP (head-desk-repeat) our criminal record checks and probably our medical reports. And (head-desk-multiple times because this one they could have told us without seeing the dates on the paperwork because they have seen UK home studies before, get our referees to write exactly the same thing they wrote on our referee forms only in a referee letter.

My head hurts now.