Our parents have been sharing the news about our plans to adopt with some of their close friends and relatives. It's interesting how our plans to adopt get everyone talking about others who have adopted.

On Thanksgiving my mom, who was unable to share about my brother's upcoming engagement (I saw the ring, and he's planning to propose this week!), told my dad's sister and her daughter about how my husband and I plan to adopt. Mom said that they were excited for us, and that they started talking about their daughter/sister who adopted one son before having a biological son 18 months later. I had kind of forgotten about this adopted cousin-one-removed of mine. I think he may about six years older than me. That branch of the family hardly ever goes to family functions.

My husband told me that a cousin and husband of my father-in-law came over to visit his parents the Friday after Thanksgiving. After my in-laws told these relatives about our plans to adopt, they also had stories to tell about a sister and husband who had adopted their kids through the same agency as ours.

Thursday was our home visit, and it went smoothly. Our case worker just asked us a few questions to clear up some things she wasn't sure about. Then we gave her a tour of the house. I showed her what I had done so far on our profile. She thought we had a good start and gave us a suggestion to improve it. She said that we can't be approved to foster until after we have training, but she asked us a few questions that had to do with being approved as foster parents. We were told about the next foster care orientation class on Tuesday, January 4 at 6:30 pm. We told her that we plan to come.

We paid our next adoption fee, $1,000. The next fee will be when our home study is completed and we are approved to adopt. Our case worker is now just waiting for the references to come back to her. She'll be going on vacation during Christmas, and she wasn't sure with all the busyness of the holidays whether she would get it done before then. She said she would call us in a week or so if she was still missing some references, so we could check-up on those people and encourage them to get them mailed back.

Right now the birthmother counselor is working with 6 or 8 women due between December and March. Two are leaning toward parenting themselves. One is due on December 18, and just made the decision to place her child for adoption. There is also a birthmother due in July. This all seems very good to me. The more babies there are, the sooner it may be before I have a baby to call my own.

The last time I wrote I said that I knew of only one pregnant woman at my church. Well, that is true no longer. Yesterday at a family Christmas party my sister-in-law told me that her best friend from church is pregnant and due in June. At first I was very envious, but then I starting seeing the good side. I now know that there will be kids around the age of my child. In fact, more people need to get pregnant! I don't want my child to be without friends his or her age.