How to Raise Your Sister’s Kids, Part 8
You prepare for possible scenarios and answer your phone.
Right now we are preparing for the both the possibility that we will have four children by Christmas and the possibility that we won’t. It sounds straight-forward enough, but they are children, and it’s Christmas. These are kids who don’t have much at all to call their own. While our daughter has had the same room for all of her 8 years on this planet, these children have not. I have to suppress the urge to have EVERYTHING monogrammed to announce to them immediately, “this is yours”. On one hand we want to give them everything in all the catalogs, make up for all the Christmases they haven’t been able to celebrate wildly. And then a (wise) friend pointed out that we don’t want to set expectations too high in case we do get to adopt them. How would we ever be able to do it again next year?
It is a tricky thing to prepare physically for both possibilities. If they do not come out things would have to be returned. It sounds odd to say that, why wouldn’t we ship it all out to them? The answer is that their stuff doesn’t always follow them. They could be shifted to another family and their clothes, toys, personal items don’t get packed up with them. So while a child’s delight is a beautiful thing, having to leave it behind is so very sad and yet another loss. We have a gift plan in place and we feel good about how we’ve balanced it. What we have now would get shipped out if they are unable to be with us. If we get the call, we have one more shopping trip to make. I would happily endure the retail masses on this endeavor. 
Our phone now regularly rings with social workers on the other end. This has not happened before. This is one of the reasons I know this time is different. We are filling out paperwork (finally!), the social workers are filling out paperwork and the goal is to get the children here. We have talked to the children and seen recent pictures of them. This too is a change from how it has been before and another reason we know it’s different this time. We have been told that there is no other plan for our kids. We are the plan.