Request for ChildREN

This is something, so far, I have waited to comment on. Seth and I have the nasty habit of putting off big decisions. We talk, chat, pray some, and then just wait. I don't know what we are waiting for, perhaps to get the right decision in the mail? Or maybe a phone call? But, nonetheless, we wait and then discuss our options again and again. We have done this with our child request for this adoption. Timidly Seth mentioned that maybe we should adopt two kids. "Yipes," I thought, "Two kids?!"

Where is the guy who was fine without any more kids? But the idea had some merit. So we talked about it...for a few months. We waited until our social worker asked us last week what we wanted in our homestudy. We didn't have an answer for her. We talked about what we'd like to do, which took about 5 minutes to explain. Our oldest is only 6, youngest is 4, we have two boys and a girl. We'd like one girl, but understand that girls are more requested, so we would like to adopt a boy, but then Ella would be the only girl in a family with four boys...you see where I'm going?

When you are pregnant with a child, God doesn't ask for your input. You get what He gives you. Period. In adoption, God doesn't ask for it, but you get to put your input in official documents. Then you get what He gives you. When we adopted Ella we expected to come home with a Ukrainian baby girl. When we came home, we had a 2.5 year old Korean-Ukrainian girl. We were surprised that we were so off in what God had planned for us. With that sort of history, we aren't too sure what our request should be. One thing we became certain of though, is that we do want to adopt two children. Moving on from there, this is what our family coordinator said we should put (this gal, she's got some skills to condense what we said into this statement):

"We are requesting two healthy children and are open to either siblings or a non-related pair. We would like to request an infant boy between the ages of birth and 12 months and a girl between the ages of birth and 3 years, understanding that if siblings are unavailable that there needs to be a 9-month age gap between the pair. If twins of either gender are available at this time, we are also open to adopting twins."

Yep, she said twins. Now wouldn't that be fun?