[wenrl]

Hello fellow waiting parents! I've been around on these boards for a long time, but just joined the ranks of the waiting for the second time.

My partner and I currently have a nine-year old adopted daughter through foster care. She's been with us almost 1.5 years. Although we have only just started waiting again (and I mean a couple of days), I already have anxiety about how long this will take this time -- last time was 2 years!

So for the sake of talking about waiting, I have some questions for anyone who cares to answer.

1. What is your family make-up now?

2. Are you waiting for a boy or girl and what age?

3. From where are you planning to adopt?

4. How long have you been waiting?

5. What is your biggest fear about adopting.

6. What is your greatest hope for your future little one?

7. How many times have you been matched? What has been your experience been like so far?

These are my answers...

1. We are a two mom family with one nine-year old girl.
2. We are waiting for one more girl, 1-4 years younger than our daughter, so 5-8 years old.
3. We want to adopt through our state DCYF.
4. We've only been waiting a couple of days.
5. I'm afraid we'll be misled or someone won't know enough about our new child's needs. I'm afraid we'll bite off more than we can chew and not have the right resources for all her needs and she will not be able to grow and improve to her best ability with us as parents.
6. My greatest hope is that we'll have a repeat of what has transpired with our first. She will blossom and exceed expectations with our family. She'll feel loved and be able to love us in return. Of course, having been through this before -- I know that won't come easy and will take some work from everyone in our family, including the child herself.
7. We've only been matched once and that is with our daughter. We were only matched after moving out of state after waiting such a long time with nothing from our own. It was really difficult and there was a lot of harrassing her worker for months before we were actually matched.

So tell me about you.