Up All Night

Can't sleep. Had an adoption meeting tonight & now my thoughts are just running together...if we only knew 3 yrs ago what we know now, how different things would be! Ambrose received an inheritance in 2007, and we immediately started improvements on the house...a screened patio, a new kitchen, new floors....It seemed like the right way to use the money at the time, to invest in our house & increase the value. But if we had known then that we would have to adopt a second child, we would have given all those improvements up in a heartbeat & we would be waiting to be matched to a baby RIGHT NOW. Instead, we're struggling to save up the $30k+ for adoption, putting every spare penny (and then some) into an adoption fund, all while trying to stay afloat financially. I'm really starting to resent the kitchen, patio, and floors. And then there's the adoption tax credit, which expires in 2011...how wonderful to be able to recoup $13k of our adoption expenses! We just have to hurry up & adopt before the end of 2011...which, at the rate our adoption fund is inching along, will most likely not happen. I feel like a petulant child screaming "IT'S NOT FAIR!" when an older sibling gets to do something I can't...and, yet, it's NOT fair. Of course, knowing that it's not fair doesn't change things, nor does it make me feel any better about the situation. Not for the first time, I question why on earth adoption has to be so damn expensive! Again, IT'S NOT FAIR. Why should giving birth to a biological child be so much cheaper than adoption? Why should people who can't have children of their own, or who just want to offer a better life to a child, be penalized? No one should have to pay thru the nose to become a parent. (parenting classes & being required to pass an aptitude test before having children, adopted or otherwise, however, should be required. (; ) Trying to stay positive about the whole thing, but sometimes the unfair factor punches me in the gut, and it takes awhile to get back up.