Am I "Waiting for Samuel"?

I have been reading alot of adoption blogs lately.

The vast, vast majority of them are people adopting from China or the former Soviet Union.

I cannot find anyone else in my shoes - adopting from Vietnam. It could be because there are only nine agencies licensed to do adoptions in Vietnam, and they have only been able to start them up again since January, due to the moratorium from 2003 until January 2006.

But, anyway, I've been doing a lot of reading from these blogs, and many of them have titles like, 'Waiting for Emma" or "Waiting for Gwen" or "Searching for Samantha." (I'm making these particular titles up, but, they are typical.)

I also found a statistic yesterday, through a link on the adoptvietnam.org webpage, that indicated that 80% of people adopting from overseas are looking to adopt girls, and that slightly more than 50% of the children available from Vietnam are boys, but that the preference for girls runs to those adopting from Vietnam anyway.

So, this statistic just drove it home to me that the child who will be mine will be a son.

And I realized, with one of those lightening bolt kind of moments, that I am WAITING FOR SAMUEL. Actually, no. I am SEARCHING for SAMUEL. Because searching is active and waiting is passive, I prefer to think that I am playing an active role in this process.

Is this to say that when I actually receive the referral, I will insist on the naming the little guy Samuel?

No. I don't even know how Husband feels about the name Samuel, and does not want to discuss it without a picture and a given name in front of him.

When I was pregnant with Gabe, I usually thought of him as Sebastian, and referred to him publicly as "Fred". (No, we never had any intention of naming him Fred, although Sebastian was a very real possibility.) When he was born, and we saw his face, we knew his name was Gabriel, not Sebastian. (We had made a pact to decide between those two names after we had a chance to meet him.)

So, maybe when this child is made known to me, his name will not be Samuel. But, for right now, I sign off as

Law Mommy, Searching for Samuel