So finally I can get to the point.

We want a daughter.

And when I say We, I mean: Me, GK, Enn, Zee. We want a little girl in our home. We want to expand our family to accommodate one more little person.

Pregnancy & childbirth have so many costs to myself & our family. Still, I have wanted to take that chance... roll the dice, try for a girl? Third time's a charm? What's 2 years of pain (emotional/physical/relational/psychological?) The boys are beautiful perfect gifts all wrapped up in wrestled energy, sweaty playfulness, and thunderous yells. I love them absolutely. Still, I have always wanted to share my life with a daughter. All my life. And I have always wanted to adopt, too. I just thought I'd have a daughter & son, then also I would adopt a child. I didn't think I'd be 33 and choosing to shut the door on bearing children now & forevermore, even though getting pregnant is not the hard part for me. It's pregnancy that is hard. So there is mourning involved here.

But, I'm in. WE are in. GK made an appointment for October 1st to have an intake appointment at the foster-adopt agency that I have spoken to in the past. Yes, GK made that appointment.

Then what? Four 8-hour Saturday classes in November. Piles of paperwork and hours of appointments and evaluations. Heart-tearing-out conversations as we talk through baby girls who are available for foster-adoption. Maybe (likely) months upon months (and still more months) of waiting for a daughter who fits our family, and the social workers making sure we're the fit for her, knowing she has suffered on some level already in her tiny life.

Patience. Communication. Patience. Hanging tough. Prayer.

I feel compelled to put my running shoes on, and start sprinting. But what I hold more dearly is the need to pace myself with GK, to hear him, to really hear him. I want to do this together. And it's just so way cool to see him embrace this. To see him really say, Yes, He wants a daughter, too. Yes, he really is inspired about adoption.

I want to understand that this process is unfamiliar, and I won't be able to really even have the illusion of control. What really is in my control? Even if I was pregnant, the unknowns are still there. But it is right about 9 months. But all those ?'s even then.... But this foster adopt thing... I've never done it before... what am I going to do? How will I handle it?

You tell Me.