[sfbaymom2000]

Noel,

I would call the SW avery few weeks if I were you. It's great if you have a "reason"...like something to update her on. But even if you don't, call anyway. Also send a card from time to time. For us, that was easy because we could send cards for Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc. You want to keep your name in their mind, because don't forget that they have probably 30-40 other families besides you.

As much as I like our SW, I was shocked when I said something about a 3 year-old (we had said over and over our rage was 2-5 yrs) and she said, "Oh, I was thinking younger than that for you." It was like "What????" During another conversation, she seemed to think our preferences about race were much more narrow than we had stated. So make sure she remembers who you are and what you are looking for.

Another thing we did was prepare a photo album for our future child to look at. I tried to make it really cute, and the SW seemed very impressed. She asked if she could show it to children's workers, and I said, "Of course!" She said she showed it to any of the kids' workers that stopped by, so that may have put us into the mind of M's worker...I don't know.

One last thing I did was call her about kids I was interested that I saw on online listings of Waiting Children. Even though I knew we had to stick with the county for six months before seriously looking outside of our county, I think it let her know how really serious and eager we were.

Good luck to you. Hopefully you will someday look back and think it really wasn't that long .