Blah

Having a bit of a blah day today. There are up days and there are down days in life but they somehow seem more pronounced when one is dealing with the "endless wait". When you decide that adoption is the route you are going to take to form your family you have to be forward looking in a rather unromantic way. What i mean by this is you have to decide how many children you think you would like to have (birth families also go through this) and you have to plan accordingly. Unlike with birth families you cannot just "try again" once your child arrives. As adoption takes such a bloody long time you have to start putting you name on waiting lists before the ink has even dried on your paperwork from the current adoption. We have always known that we do not want only one child. There are numerous reasons for this but the 2 most important are: First, I am an only child (as were both my mom and dad, which made for a small family considering my mom raised me and I was born overseas) and I have always felt like I have missed out on not having any siblings. It was lonely at times, no doubt about it. Second, and most important, is that I want Van to have a sibling that he can relate to. Who has gone through the same experiences as him. Who will have a similar face to him. Those who have adopted a child from an ethnicity not their own will understand this point. Our little guy is going to grow up not looking anything like us. He is going to face hardships because of this. He will face discrimination and racism, something we will not be able to relate to. We will do our best to protect him and raise him to be confident and happy with himself and proud of his incredibly rich heritage. However there will only be so much we can say and do. We think it is so important that he grows up with someone who is experiencing the same things. Someone he can look in the mirror with and see similar hair and similar eyes, similar life experiences. When we are gone he will have someone else who is his family. A sister or brother to be an aunt or uncle to his children (if he has any) etc.

So, having explained two of the reasons why we want Van to have a sibling, brings me to the planning the next adoption. Adoption these days is complicated. When we first started our journey we were on a small waiting list and adoption was easier. Now there are so many people wanting to adopt that the wait times have become startling. For instance, domestic adoption through CAS can take upwards of 10 years if you want to adopt a child under 4. China is now close to 10 years apparently. When we started with the Vietnam program the wait until referral was about 4 months, now it is supposed to be 3-4 years! Knowing all of this we decided to go a different route for our second. We knew we wanted to stay with Asia (for the second reason above), so we settled on putting our name on the list for South Korea with a different agency. At the same time we have put ourselves back on the list with our current agency because we wanted to be prepared in case we decided we wanted to contemplate a third child (better to be prepared than not). We were on the list to adopt from S. Korea in 2011 (Korea has a quota system so families are on lists for specific years) and all seemed well. However, a family has to be home with their first child for a year before submitting their homestudy for a S.Korean adoption. Well, as people who know our journey know that was meant to be us. This past summer we were meant to be beginning that year home. But things did not work out that way. So now we are, if things go well, looking at starting that year in January 2010. What this means is that we will have missed the window for the 2011 quota as our homestudy would have to be done next fall...well that's not a year. So our second adoption is now up in the air. But since we have become pros at the this waiting game what's another year eh? 2012 quota here we come? Of course we'll be in our 40's by then (yikes!). I'll be 40 and Pat 41. Van will be 3. The question is S.Korea or Vietnam as the wait times will be similar now.

The thing I love about blogging is that allows me to put everything down in writing and look at it. It's not all swirling around in my head. After writing it out and looking at it I don't feel as bad about these most recent turn of events. At least we're on lists and things are moving forward in their own way. Ok, time to refocus back to our current journey. I'm not religious at all but I will pull something from Buddhism that has been helpful to me at many points in my life: Live for the day and appreciate every moment as it happens. Do not spend too much time dwelling on the past or looking to the future.

So we will do whatever planning needs to be done to ensure the future happens as we'd like it to happen, but not spend too much time dwelling on things that are out of our control (easier said than done when it comes to adoption lol)! Onwards and upwards as they say (whoever the mysterious "they" are).

Meg :)