I don't mean to be greedy, but I want another one.

One of two photos I have of D in the hospital.
(A dog only gestates for 60 days.  A monkey varies.  The little
guy in the middle??  Well, for us it was just over 900 days)

It’s been exactly one year since we got back on the list to adopt again.  We had to wait one year to even get on the list to begin with.  It took three months to get our physicals and paperwork done and another seven months to finally get our interviews, and then two more months of processing before receiving the call that we were officially waiting.  They tell you to consider yourself pregnant when you are on the list because a child could come any time.  Well, it’s the longest gestational period I’ve ever heard of.  I was looking at a list of animals with the longest gestational periods (yes, I’m random like that) and with D we were only beat out by the Black Alpine Salamander which gestates for two to three years and some sharks which can gestate up to three and half years.  Well, technically we might have tied with the salamander since it was two and half years of waiting before we got D.  And, really, if you count the extra fourteen months of waiting for the adoption to finalize, then really we win!  Sorry sharks!  So I guess, right now at twelve months, we are only up to the Bottlenose Dolphin, and it didn’t even make the top ten list.  Perhaps maybe I just need to cool my jets.  Oh, but the waiting can be so hard.  

D is growing like a weed, and I so want him to have a sibling or two and I want to have more children.  Sometimes after a hard day with him, I wonder what the heck I’m thinking in wanting more.  But most days, he is my funny little companion who keeps me on my toes and makes me see life in a whole new way.  He reminds me that there is still purity and innocence in this world.  He reminds me to stop and look at bugs and leaves and funny cloud shapes.  He reminds me that no job I hold down right now would be as important as these experiences with him.  He reminds me why I wanted to be a mother.  And he reminds me that even though I hold fear that we might have another heart-wrenching experience like losing our little Isaac, we could also have another experience like keeping our precious D.  And so we wait.  Next month, we’ll pass up the Manatee, and by the time D turns four in May, we will have shot right past the camel, velvet worm, rhinoceros and walrus and we will be neck and neck with the giraffe.  I hope we don’t catch up with the elephant.  And I sure as heck don't want to catch up with those extra-long-gestating sharks.  I hope it's soon. I hope we have more kids in our home before the 2013 holiday season sets in.  I hope we get to keep those kids forever. I hope.

(side note...the last part of this post was inspired by the last few things Red says in Shawshank Redemption, lest anyone think I was stealing the idea....which I was, but at least I'm giving credit.  His last paragraph or so has stuck with me lately, and describes in a way how I feel about this whole process)