She Needs a Sibling, Doesn’t She?

No, that is not my baby with Grace. (Silly people! That baby doesn’t look anything like me!) That is Baby Amy, Esta’s daughter, whom she has been bringing to work with her. Grace is enchanted by Baby Amy and smothers her with kisses every day.

But I can’t wait for the day when there are two children in my family pictures (or three…or four…) And the last few days have been discouraging in that department.

Once again, we are waiting…and waiting…for our adoption of a baby boy. I have been waiting for a month now for the regional social worker to write a letter to International Social Services. Every time I call her she tells me, “Next week.” That’s happened for about 5 weeks now. I contacted our lawyer for advice today, and she said that sadly, the social welfare office seems totally unmotivated to help anyone with adoptions right now. One family has already been waiting 18 months to get approved–which is the longest anyone has waited so far.

This was discouraging for me, since I was hoping that we’d have our baby boy this summer. I am not giving up….last week I brought cookies to the social worker, and she’ll be back in the office next Wednesday so Grace and I will bring her more cookies. But, today I also started making some serious inquiries into international adoption from other countries. Gil and I have talked about this for a long time, and were going to wait until after we got our boy, but decided that considering the circumstances we should start now.

That is daunting too. The process is so long…so involved…so expensive…and even more so for a family trying to adopt internationally who is not living in the U.S. So many orphans in the world…and it’s so hard to bring them home.

But…I take a deep breath…and here I go.