Toby is 7 and some Tough Family Building

Happy 7th Birthday Toby.

I tried to find a puppy picture but apparently I need to scan one. He was such a cute puppy, and he still is cute even when he is being a Jack Russel Terror.

I know you probably don’t care but it is my blog so sometimes the tough stuff is going to show up. I am really frustrated by the current time line of my life. You might have noticed but I am not a parent. I feel that every decision that we have made toward becoming parents has backfired on us. Getting pregnant did not work and we wasted years trying to do that. The wait in China has grown exponentially with no significant sign of changing. As soon as we sign up for the China waiting child program, China changes the system and files stop coming to our agency (there were some brief rumors about being able to change agencies so that you could adopt from that program but that does not seem to be the case. If we did we would have to start over with new agency fees and a new dossier.) I research Ethiopian adoption and start looking for agencies, then our China agency opened the Burundi program and I figured that we already knew them and it should go relatively smoothly. That has not been the case. Oh yeah and in the middle of all this, somewhere, we had a failed domestic adoption. So as you can see it has been a little more than a bumpy road.

So recently I have really been trying to decide what I need to do because I really feel that things are not working right. I am worried that if I change courses it will be the wrong decision. I am worried that if I don’t change it will be wrong. I am trying to search inside myself and discover what action to take and it is weighing heavy on my mind. I think that China will eventually come through so we are sticking with that program no matter what. However we have always wanted more than one child. If we wait for China and then wait another year or so to start another adoption, will we then be too old for other programs?

It seems to me that adopting a baby in Burundi is going to take a lot longer than we thought. So do we change the profile of the type of children we are looking for? Do we look at older children? And if we do that what is the age range that would be acceptable? We are not parents so the logical choice for me was baby so I could start at the beginning and learn as I went. If I don’t ever have a baby in this house will I regret it? Do we look for another agency and/or another program? We would then be put on another waiting list and have to pay more agency fees. Do we just wait a few more months to see what happens? Do we just say, 1 is enough and wait it out for China?

On top of all this and I am sure you guys all thought we were millionaires but we don’t have unlimited funds. So even if I decide on a course of actions I then have to determine if we can even afford it. And then currently I am sitting on 3 weeks of vacation that I thought we could use on an adoption trip but that has not happened. According to company policy I am supposed to use them by June. I am sure they will let me carry them over but not for that long especially if I have nothing planned. So do I use vacation or push my luck carry it in hopes that I will have some sort of referral before they decided to take it away?


So any suggestions on why I have not been sleeping well? I know that there are stresses in life that are far worse than this. And I know that there are many people out there including some that probably read my blog that are going through really hard times right now but this is what is happening in my head. I feel blessed to have what I have in life and because of that I want to share this life with a child. It is just figuring out how that has me stumped.

Please keep in mind that all of these questions are rhetorical and I do not expect (or want) anyone other than myself to answer these questions, I just wish they were easier to answer. If you made it this far thanks for letting me rant a little, OK a lot.