Preparing the House

We have finished preparing the house for the Fost-Adopt home studies. We will have two: one for DCFS (LA County), and one for the state of California. Here is the general breakdown of what we have done to our condo to prepare:

Installed baby-proof latches on all our drawers and cabinets
Installed safety device on the mini blind cords
Installed 3 baby gates (hooray for 2 flights of stairs!)
Bought/Installed a fire extinguisher in the kitchen
Found all the utility/emergency numbers and posted them by the telephone
Bought a locking box to store all of our medications
3-Story emergency ladder
Two convertible car seats

We also renovated our “spare room” into a full fledged bedroom:

Bunk beds & bedding

Dresser & Lamp

9-Cubby “cubicle storage unit” with 4 baskets (the other 5 cubbies work as a bookcase)

Multi-colored plastic bin toy storage unit

“Twilight Turtle” constellation night light

Elegant Baby piggy bank


We're pretty sure that we've been a little over-zealous with the preparations, but our theory is that it's better to be over-prepared than under-prepared!

For the State we've set up the fingerprinting for the 30th (which is also Jen's 23rd birthday!). It's going to cost $50/person, which is totally exciting.

For the County we've set up the first part of the home study process, which is 3 interviews: one with both of us, and one for each privately with the social worker.