You're going to be sick of this before our adoption is finalized, I just know it.

Apparently our first meeting with the social worker at our adoption was the trigger that I needed to open the floodgates of full-fledged obsession. At any point in the day now, whirling around in my head are thoughts about our impending adoption. It seems a little unfair to the rest of you who had babies the biological way that you miss out on this. I mean, I know you got the thrill of obsessing madly about all things related to conception for however long it took you to conceive how ever many children you conceived. And, if you were lucky enough to have infertility issues, you got to prolong and extend that obsession into mind-absorbing things like injection dosages and locations, daily ultrasounds, and whether or not it was really a good idea to bring badly behaved children with you to the RE's office and let them run amok while multiple hurting, barren women sat and watched with a mixture of glaze-eyed amazement and horror at the unthinking insensitivity even as one little niggle that there might have been no other option tried to niggle it's way in there. But even if you got to experience all of that, if you decided not to persue adoption, you missed out on this fun new territory. Let me tell you, it's a joy.

The main difference, honestly, is that with all the above madness the focus is usually on "Pleasepleaseplease let it work this time." And now it's equally spread across items like "Please please please let this Dear Birthparent letter not suck so incredibly that they read it and roll around on the floor at the thought that someone would actually want to give a child to us." and "How much inclusion of the fact that you recognize that this is very hard for them and you admire them for making this choice is good and how much crosses the line into unbearable sucking up?" Then there's the inevitable realization (at least for us) that we're supposed to include photos. Photos of us. And most of our vacation photos...well, they could be postcards. (I have this loathing of cameras, you see, since they push the reality of what I actually look like into the forefront rather than letting me remain in the blissful ignorance of my self-image. There are days that I wish the Matrix was real - cause with residual self-image? I so would not look like I actually do.) I wonder if I could just draw some stick figures and photoshop them into places we've been? No?

Finally, there's the "service plan". Now, first of all, just calling it a service plan makes me wince, but that's what the social worker called it (and what's typed at the top of the page.) It just feels like we're going over options for a new car or a cellphone or something. But, service plan it is. And I realize the necessity of it, but it's this whole new world that people who go through pregnancy never have to deal with. For example, I am guessing (now mind you, this is just a guess) that nobody, while pregnant, sat and listed out what race or mix of races they thought might apply to their unborn baby. Generally, you know all that ahead of time. There was no deep rumination on the repercussions of being really ok with this set over this other set. There was no questioning if deeply desiring a child that would, at least superficially, look like you and your husband made you a racist in some way. But you fill out the form and you check off your yesses, nos, and maybes - all the while feeling like you're doing something a little bit wrong by "designing your child" - because it does help make a better match.

And now that that's out of the way, I can move on to wondering when, exactly, I can finish (oh fine, start) the required reading. And why exactly I need to read books specifically about raising adopted children - don't you raise them the same way you raise biological children? You love them. You correct them when necessary. You do everything within your power to help them grow up into strong, capable, indpendent, Godly men and women who have a solid foundation built on the fact that their parents - all four of them - loved them more than they'll ever probably understand.