I have one birth daughter, one step daughter, two adopted sons, and one foster son.

With regard to our first adopted son: Coincidentally, 9 months after my {now ex} husband and I went through the adoption homestudy, I received a telephone call from our adoption caseworker informing me that she had a son for us. The only thing the caseworker would tell me over the phone was his age {16 months} and that he was healthy.

The next day we went to the agency to hear more information and to see a photo. I remember the caseworker placing that photo face down on the desk while she told us how this toddler had come into the child welfare system. She talked on and on and I remember thinking "okay, okay-show us the picture!". I guess the caseworker knew what she was doing, because even thought she told us that the child was not yet free for adoption, as soon as we saw his picture I knew that he was ours. The next day we met him, and the day after that we brought him home to join his older sisters. It wasn't until 2 years later that he was legally freed for adoption. By then, we had found our other son.

By then I had become an active member of our local adoptive parent group. That group often had 'adoption parties'. Adoption parties were a way for adoptive parents and perspective adoptive parents to meet and greet each other and share stories & tips in an informal social setting. One of the core activities of adoption parties was to look through adoption books. These books had photos and brief informational captions about 'waiting children {children who were available for adoption}. At one adoption party that my {then} husband and I attended, we {well really more me than he} spent alot of time looking through adoption books from Pennsylvania and New York. These books specified what state the child was in, but they didn't specify the city or county. For some reason I was captivated by the photo of one little boy. He became our youngest son. The irony is that out of all those books, unbeknowst to us, we chose a child who had been born in Pittsburgh and who had the very same caseworker as our first son.

Three years later, I received a phone call informing me that our youngest son's older brother who was then 10 years old was in need of a foster home. Two days he moved into our home.

And that's how we met our sons.


Azizi