Is your house ready for inspection?

That's kind of the call I got last week.  Arrow want's to come back out to the house and see if we have made the changes talked out in November and if we finished construction and have a safe and appropriate room ready for our future foster child. 

Does this count?

And that's when I had a mini panic attack. 

You see, they came over in November and looked at the house and mentioned a few things we needed to correct.  We need a fire extinguisher, some smoke detectors, a bedroom ready for a child, a locked medicine cabinet, and the tools in the garage put away. 

From the November visit to last week we had accomplished one of those things... the tools in the garage are all put away... and I really didn't help with that. 

So they called and want to come take a look because 3 months is a logical amount of time to finish those tasks.  Isn't it? 

I went home to take a look around and snapped the picture above so I could prove to you my panic attack was reasonable. 

Then we got to work.  Finishing the bedroom is the first priority.  Sticking smoke detectors to the ceiling and putting in a fire extinguisher shouldn't be that hard so I wanted to focus on the biggest mess.  It was and is a long process of moving piles of stuff from one side of the room to another and from one room to another.  My mom came to help and moved more piles around.  Then I got tired and moved a bunch of stuff to the garage and told Mike to shove it in the attic.  I don't know what's up there, and I don't care.

The room doesn't only have to be cleaned out, it has to be appropriate for a child to live in.  A child who could be anywhere from 0-3.  That's a big age range when we are talking development. 

Planning this room should be easy for me, designing is what I do, after all.  But it has brought up a range of emotions I did not expect.  I feel rediculous buying furniture and decorations for this room.  It's silly really but I'm not pregnant and we are totally operating on faith that God will place a child in our home and it's hard to move forward on faith.  It just is.  I hate to say that because this whole journey has been on faith and it is so exciting because I want to see what God will do and I want to learn to depend on him and trust that he will provide everything we need.  I still DO trust that but it's still easy to let our human emotions take over.  I feel like people must think I am rediculous for picking out a bed and bedding and decorations but hello, I shouldn't care what others think.  Could I put a pack and play in a guest bedroom and call it a kids room?  Sure.  But I don't want to.  I want each of my children to have a room to call their own even if they are only "mine" for a temporary period of time. 

So the crib is here, the bedding is on the way and the room is almost ready to become a real nursery.  Hopefully I can post details of that soon.