Many months, three applications and a homestudy later

So, it seems there will be a Baby Barto after all. Back in January we decided we were ready to adopt again from Ethiopia. We contacted our old agency and started in on the paperwork. One of the steps was to get a new homestudy, so I called up the people who had completed our post placement reports. While on the phone, the social worker asked if we had thought about domestic adoption. Not really I told her, but asked her why she wanted to know. Welll, she had a birth mother who was looking for a family with an African American or bi-racial element to it. She was due in the summer. We decided to explore this possibility, filled out more paperwork, made a book of photos and waited. She didn’t pick us.

Right around this time things in Ethiopian adoptions were changing, becoming more uncertain. We wondered if it made sense to invest the time, emotion and money into a program with an unclear future. But we also didn’t feel totally comfortable with the domestic agency we had worked with. We did some more research and found a local agency that we dig. We had to let go of our visions of another Ethiopian in our family (for now anyway). We’ve filled out more paperwork, attended classes and had our homestudy yesterday.

Now we have to make a book of photos and we’ll enter the “pool.” In this adoption, a birth family will choose us. It will be open. More than likely we will bring a baby home from the hospital. I have started to knit a blanket. Jose has bought tiny Michigan pajamas. Turo has books about being a big brother.

We’re getting ready to become a family of four.