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leenie, you might end up increasing the amount of work you have to do if you get some of those documents too far in advance. Things like the child abuse and criminal clearances probably have to be less than a year old, so it's better to get them later so they don't expire while you're waiting for your child. The process is pretty quick anyway. I think it took something like two weeks for ours to come back from Harrisburg.
We are doing an international adoption of older children, so the rules are different in our case. But our agency uses the same general safety rules for the home that they use for domestic adoptions and foster care. This includes smoke detectors on every floor, a fire extinguisher, a fire safety plan, a locked fence around any open water (pool or pond), etc. We thought we were going to have to redo one of our stairway railings because it is too open, but since we're adopting older children the issue didn't come up.
Anyway, if you have any such issues at home you could start to address them now so that you don't have a last minute flurry of activity before your home study can be approved.
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