Inching closer to the contract

I got an email last night from our home study social worker, and she was emailing the updated home study to CC last night. She said since it was just an update that she was talking to them over the phone instead of doing it face to face. She said that should be done by the end of this week. After that we should be able to sign the contract with CC.

I am sort of starting to nest. With the reality that a baby could happen at anytime, I need to have things clean and ready. This past weekend I went into the attic and brought down the baby swing, car seat and bathtub. Plan on spending the next few days giving them a good cleaning. I want to be able to put them in the nursery and forget about them. I am still picking up things from the store one at a time. I forgot how much stuff babies need. I don’t have that much and it has taken over the nursery. I hope to have the crib voucher this week and crib situation taken care of this weekend.

J and hubby have been going to the pool pretty regularly. J is big on associations. He associates pool time with his cousin. We usually go swimming at their house. Yesterday, J and hubby were at the pool and J was calling all of the little boys there his cousin’s name. He was also trying to talk to them (which is good that he is wanting to interact with peers) in “little einstein speak.” They really did not know how to take J, but hubby said they were nice to J. J has to be taught EVERYTHING. Most kids pick up social cues naturally. Not my J. This has me back thinking he is on the ASD spectrum. That is pretty typical of kiddos on the spectrum. It will be interesting to see how he does in the typical pre-K class in the fall. He is getting to an age that kids are not going to be as accepting of “different,” and we are really going to have to work with him to get him where he needs to be. When J was medically fragile, we knew what tangible things we had to do to keep him alive. I find this stage harder. What do you do to get your child where they need to be socially?

A bit hard to read

I have been keeping up with different VN adoption blogs of families that started the process the same time we did. The hard part of it is a lot of these families are on planes as we speak to VN to pick up their children. It keeps me second guessing the decisions I made. I could have chosen a larger agency (these families are with larger agencies) but purposely chose a small one. I thought I would get better service. Happy for these families but sad for me.

Spoke with CC today and we should be getting a call from the home study social worker by next week. It has been slow moving but at least we are moving in the right direction.

We met with a new neurologist today for J. His old neuro retired and it has been about 18 months since we have been. I know bad Mommy. J was a wild man. There were no toys in the room (now tell me why texas children’s did not have toys in the rooms?), and he was getting into everything. This new doctor does not see Autism. He does want us to have a neuropsych evaluation to really see and see where we need to focus on from here. He feels J looks great and just “a bit” hyper and maybe impulsive. Like I said, he was all over the place. At one point he was on the exam table trying to do flips and twists. I was mortified. He also said he saw a very high intelligence in J. That is always nice to hear. He feels J gets frustrated b/c of the speech delays and acts out. He also felt he is manipulating us and the behavior is mainly behavioral and not neurological. So, now we have two differing professional opinions. We will see what the neuropsych says. The jury with J is still out for me. I am doing the wait and see. He has really matured over the past few months. Really liked the Dr. He is a Catholic High School (the brother school to my high school) grad from back in the day and a LSU grad. We did not know this before the appointment. As the doc walks in, he comments on J’s LSU crocs (his fav shoes). It is nice to have that connection here.