Shosho worker

That's B-speak for social worker. She came last night for our homestudy update. She seemed very nice, someone we might have for a friend, in fact. That's a relief, since I was very nervous about losing the first social worker we loved.

The visit was short and no big deal. Basically we just talked about what's changed in our lives since our homestudy was originally written a year and a half ago. Not a whole lot -- we're earning more, M has changed jobs, I lost my grandma.

We're in a bit of a pickle, timing-wise. All the paperwork to renew our I-171H (which includes the homestudy update) has to be received by the USCIS no later than December 19 if we want to avoid paying the fees to renew (and trust me, we do). But we're expecting a referral any time between right now and two or three months from now. Once we get our referral, our social worker will have to do an addendum to our homestudy about the particular child we're adopting, and what we know about her medical condition. It would be a bummer if she wrote the update & turned it in, then we got a referral a week later and she had to write up an addendum and turn that in. It would be much easier (& less expensive -- there's a fee for state approval each time you turn it in) if we could just do the update and addendum all at once. She's going to find out the last possible date she can send it in for approval in order to meet that Dec. 19 deadline. She told us last night that just last week she hand-carried a homestudy to Adoption Alliance for approval then to the USCIS office. That could be our situation in another month.