I got a bit cranky waiting and was very happy when the meeting with the social worker arrived. She gave us 'the speech', which served to either try and scare you to death or make you cry. Being realistic is very important so we needed to hear all that - all that being about what these children have been through and what children were available.

One of the most important things she told us, which she had to remind me of several times, is we need to be prepared to be honest and stick to our guns. It was key we take a long hard look at our lives, past, strengths and weaknesses. She was there to help us and together we needed to come up with what kind of child we wanted.

I knew we'd have to do that but it still gave me creeps. The good side is saying yes to parenting a child - the bad side is saying no to so many others. The idea that I would have to look at a child's profile and say 'no' was very depressing.

We knew we wanted one child and possible one other sibling and a big one for us, we wanted them to be at least still in elementary school. Neither of us come from big families so we didn't have a lot of experience with raising children. We were first-time parents. We knew what we had to offer as a strength was educational opportunities, time and access to resources. I felt like I was being horrible when I spoke about those things, as if I was some elitist turning my nose up at children. Our social worker Janice really helped me work through that. She explained that we'd be doing a disservice to a child who had special needs that we couldn't fulfill. Honesty was the best policy and our requests were fine but we needed to be prepared it might take a long while to find a child that matched.

We knew it would take time - we knew we might have to wait two years. My husband was the strong one who was ready to wait for the child who was a match for us - me, I might have taken in every child out there whose profile crossed our path.

After the social worker was convinced we knew what we were getting into, she gave us enough more forms to fill out than I'd ever seen in my life. It almost became comical. Then we scheduled home visits. I made a mental note to scrub every inch of my house with a toothbrush and then hire a cleaning crew to do it with a q-tip. I'd shave the dogs to keep the dog hair away and force my husband to never ever wear shoes in the house again. Maybe that plastic stuff on furniture wasn't so nutty after all.

Fast forward two weeks. I've worked on the paperwork every day, assigned my husband things to do and a schedule. I cleaned my heart out and yes, I hired a cleaning crew to come in. I emptied closets I hadn't looked at since we moved in. I cleaned under beds and wanted to move the stove to clean behind it. I was so nervous about our first home visit. I'm dressed up as if to say 'confident, unflappable suburban soccer mother in waiting'. I drilled my husband in responses to questions.

We wait. And wait some more. 30 minutes later I get this bad feeling in my stomach and I run for my calendar. The appointment was next week, not this week. I wanted to kick something but I was afraid I'd mess up my house. Could I keep it clean for a week? No, my house doesn't work that way. I informed my husband I would need to hire the cleaning crew again. Jeff, who didn't think it was needed at all, told me that wasn't happening. I rolled my eyes and considered again removing all his shoes from the house.

A week later she arrived and yes, my house was still pretty clean. I was sad to find out she wasn't going to look behind the stove or in the closets. She checked out the house generally, didn't look under or in anything. She checked the stove worked, which was actually on a form she had to fill out. Naive me thought it was a joke at first.

I had been diligent in my completing of my part of the forms, so we went over those. We talked more about foster children, about how we were raised and about how we hoped to raise our children. She talked about the high percentage of children available for adoption that are sexually abused. That was scary to hear. I expect a bunch of them to be molested but not the 90% she cited. It still seems to unthinkably high to me.

The MAPP (Model Approach to Partnerships in Parenting) classes that the agency offered were starting soon and she made sure we were all signed up. We lucked out applying when we did because the MAPP classes started just three weeks after we were approved. Four Tuesday nights, two Saturdays and with all the paperwork in place, we would be licensed foster parents before March!