Another loss

It's heartbreaking to say that another one of the baby boys referred in September passed away late last week. He had been in and out of the hospital for an illness...I'm still not quite clear on what it was. Some sort of a bug or flu. These children are taken to the hospital by the orphanage when they are sick. Can you imagine how many Ethiopian parents lose their babies because they can't take them to the hospital?

---

We've gotten some questions about timing...

Our agency doesn't really share with us what "the list" looks like. They have a message board specifically for Bethany families adopting from Ethiopia. Going by that list, there are about 12 families ahead of us. However, I've heard that there could be as many as 30 ahead of us, because not all of them are active on the web forum.

Of the people ahead of us on the web forum list, there are only three who are open to a sibling set. These people have specified "one child under X years old...or twins...or siblings". We're the only ones who have specified that we definitely want siblings.

I don't know what that really means for us. For the other families, it could mean that they're just given a referral for one child. I guess all I'm saying is that, if a sibling group comes up, we could quickly jump up higher on the list since most people are just looking for one child.

So where does that leave us?

I have no idea! If I had to guess at this point, I would say that we may get a referral around the March/April/May time frame. That seems like so far away. But in reality, that would be best since Marc would be done with the teaching year and have summer break off to be with the new kids.

We'll see...