Beginning again?

Because our adoption with Emily is a family member adoption we could have adopted another child at any time, including when Emily was born or even before. In fact the very day we got a call saying that Kristina had chosen us, we also got a call from our case worker, not two hours before saying that a baby had been born the night before with Down Syndrome. The baby's parents were painfully considering adoption because they did not know if they could care for this baby the way she deserved. (the parents were married with 4 other children and didn't know how they would be able to care for a special needs child as well since they didn't make a lot of money to begin with.) I can't imagine how hard that decision must have been for them. We had to make the decision on whether we would like to have our profile presented to them. Jacob's Aunt has Down Syndrome and our case worker knows this. So she called to see if we would want our profile presented because we were one of the families who had marked that we were o.k. with Down Syndrome in our profile with the agency. We considered it, but by the time we found out we were chosen by Kristina we had already made the decision to not have our profile presented. It was a really hard decision. I spent the next 24 hours wondering if we had made the right decision. But ultimately we felt that the parents were the ones to raise this sweet baby. And we were right. The next day we got a call saying that the family had been given help and resources to help with the care of their little one and they had chosen to parent. I was so happy for them. After informing our case worker that we were indeed chosen by Kristina, I asked her if this other family had chosen adoption, would we have been able to still be "in the running". She said that yes, because Emily was a family member adoption, we could absolutely adopt at any other time. Just before Emily was born we chose to have our file put on hold so that we could adapt to having a baby in the house and concentrate on our new family member. We didn't close our file, just put it on hold. And because we didn't adopt through our agency we won't have to do the full application process again should we choose to take our file off hold. We will need to update a few things, but that will be it.

Which brings me to a few weeks ago. We got an email from our case worker. She is leaving the agency to become a stay at home mommy. We are so happy for her, but sad to lose her as our case worker. She wanted to set up a meeting with us to discuss when we want to take our file off hold and to also introduce us to our new case worker. So that brings us to now. Our meeting with them is tomorrow. We need to decide what we are going to do as far as our future hopes to adopt. Do we want to pursue adoption again? If you had asked us a few months ago we would have said no. At the beginning when Emily was first born we couldn't wait to add to our family again. As the months went by we had pretty much decided that we were done. Not because we didn't feel we were supposed to adopt again, but because we didn't know if we could go through the waiting process again. So how do we decide. We have no idea..... We have prayed about it, we feel that we should adopt again. But we are just so scared of what the future holds. What if we wait years again? What if we are chosen right away? What if we are never chosen again? And so.... tomorrow, we talk to our new case worker. And we have pretty much decided we will tell them we are ready to start again. We want Emily to have another sibling. She loves Tamara to death, but by the time she is in school, Tamara will be out of the house and either off at college or married or both. We want Emily to have another sibling close to her in age. And we feel like our family is not complete. And so.... we begin again......


We have a family photo session set up for this weekend by the awesome Angie from Ray Of Sunshine Photography. We were originally going to do the shoot to celebrate Tamara's 16th birthday, Emily's upcoming 1st birthday and our upcoming 10th Anniversary, but it's looking like we will also use the photos for pass along cards and updating our profile. Exciting.... but nervous too!