We're going to have 2 children

Common sense statement, I realize, but it really hit me the other night.

Carter was pretty sick with a cold and had a horrible time sleeping. He woke up a bit before midnight, hot & sweaty, unable to breath through his nose, and just needing to be held.  I felt so badly for him imagining how it feels to have the worst cold and then not be able to blow your nose or take more than Tylenol. The poor guy felt so horribly that he let me just rock him in the dark of his room (if you know Carter, this NEVER happens).

We finally got him back to sleep, but I was left awake thinking about our soon-to-be baby. The way the process works, once you get a referral (being matched with a child), you have to wait a month or two for your court date. You then travel to Ethiopia and go to court and then, fly home and await your Embassy date. The wait could be another month or two or it could be a couple of weeks, you never know.

The first bit of waiting, knowing who our child is and just having to wait for court, will be hard enough, but after you pass court, the child is yours in the eyes of the Ethiopia government. So basically, OUR child will be waiting for us in an orphanage just because we are not there to take him/her out of the orphanage.

I'm not worried about his/her safely really. The orphanages are well run and the children are well cared for as best they can be with the number of staff they have. I just kept thinking the other night, who will hold and comfort our child when he/she has a bad cold while we are in our nice warm home waiting for our Embassy date? Shouldn't that be me? The child will be OURS by then, shouldn't it be mommy holding them in the middle of the night?

But what about Carter? I couldn't possibly leave Carter for weeks!

That's when it hit me. We will have 2 children. Our lives will no longer be about just Carter. They will be about our children.  I can't leave Carter will family who love him for a few weeks, but I can leave our infant alone in another country where food, electricity, clean water and medical attention are scarce?

Obviously there are some things to work out to see if this is even a possibility, but if the possibility exists for one of us to stay with our baby while we wait for the Embassy clearance, we may need a bit more help from all of you then we had anticipated.