ask for 2 sibs, wait even longer?

I noticed that no one has responded to you yet, so I'll try and do it. You posted questions that are very personal in nature, and I really don't think anyone can guide you in what choice you should make. It's not easy to tell someone else - "go with 1" or "go with 2." Maybe if I knew you better I would have been able to say, "definitely go for 1, you won't be able to handle 2" or "you should go with 2 because you can do it."My husband and I wanted 2, but when the referral came for 3, and we saw the photos and saw the age difference we decided that this was the perfect family we wanted.Would we advise someone else to do the same - nope. It was the right thing for us, and we got really lucky in many ways.Adoptions from Poland are different from one agency to another. One agency seems to specialise in the sibling groups of 3 or more, and another seems to specialise in younger single children. There are pros and cons to each decision you make. You may want to word your question to ask everyone to weigh in on adopting multiples versus one. Then when you read all the pros and cons from others who've been there - you can make a more educated decision of what is best for you.For example, we like the choice of 3 siblings because when it comes to doing anything or making any decisions - one child will always have the opposite opinion. So we always have a majority in deciding anything. If one child misbehaves I have two children convincing the one child to behave. If I have two children misbehaving (hardly EVER happens!!!) - then they notice we are showering the third with love and attention and their competitiveness makes them behave.I love watching my three children play together (not always all three, but always two). I love the see the bond among all three. I'm not sure if a similar bond would have existed with two. They may have ended up hating each other due to competitiveness, or they may have loved each other. But with three, it gives each one an option to separate from one child and migrate to the third one on any given day.You do need to come to terms with whatever decision you make. One of the things that keeps us going with the fact that we chose 3 eventhough we asked for 2 - "mistakes happen in real life. So what if we have a mistake." Since both my husband and I were a "surprise and unplanned pregnancy" it's very easy for us to accept that we now have 3. I'm sure there are millions of families around the world that wanted 2 and ended up with 3. We just happened on this through adoption.Are there any cons to adopting three at once - absolutely! You can never bond with each child separately when you have three very jealous monsters who get angry when you hug one and not the other. So it took us FAR longer to bond with each of our children, and one of them is still on the fence with this bonding deal. But at least we kept the family together and did not split them.So yes, it's difficult, but every adoption is difficult.

Hi,I would recommend that you post your question on the FRUA board (Families for Russian and Ukrainian adoption, [url=http://chat.frua.org/]FRUA's popular chat board[/url], a large and active self help network that works with a broad range of adoptive families, including parents adopting from other EE countries), and then also try to set up meetings with parents who adopted sibling sets from Eastern Europe. My understanding is that there is a high incidence of alcoholic and substance abuse and prenatal exposure within the vulnerable populations in Eastern Europe whose kids end up placed for international adoption as sibling sets. What that means is that the children that are placed for international adoption as sibling sits may have a high incidences of FAS and/or may have lived in dysfunctional households where there is substance abuse going on. Educate yourself about the potential behavior consequences associated with this background, and try to spend some time observing what kinds of extra accommodations adoptive parents have to make to parent FAS kids (e.g., lots of expensive therapy, one parent staying home/remaining out of the workforce to home school, etc.). Then ask yourself "can I do what it takes to parent more than one such child at once"?

Personally, if you aren't sure, I would tell them you prefer siblings, but don't want to state it as an absolute on the homestudy request. This gives the people doing the referral some flexibility when they are trying to find the perfect home for the kids they have. I think what you want/can handle differs based on the profile of the kids. For me - I couldn't do more than the one that we adopted, plus the bio already at home. I love my dd, but she is a handful, emotional draining, manipulative, and has really come so far in such a short time. It has been two years, our heads may be coming back-up for air, our ds has said that he feels dd has transitioned into the family so he is ready for another brother/sister-----I am not fully back-up though so we won't be going down that path just yet, in fact I've said no dogs either - nothing that increases responsibility. For me, I couldn't do two kids with this same profile at the same time. One was all our family could have emotionally handled without making other types of big changes like one parent going part-time or staying home full-time. But with a different profile and different issues would it have been possible to adopt siblings - yes. So I think every person, every family, every kid, and every background has to be evaluated together to know whether 1, 2, 3, or 4 can be handled. I hope you receive a referral soon.