First up I will say Adoption is not for the feint hearted. International Adoption is only for the completely masochistic among us. I felt strange entitling my blog Where's My Child? I mean my 5 year old birth daughter is exactly where I left her, tucked up in bed at her Grandma's. The Child I'm referring to is the child that is already born, fast asleep somewhere in Russia that will, hopefully in the next year or so become my daughter.

It's surreal, knowing that out there somewhere is your daughter, you don't yet know her name, age, bithday, personality, what she looks like anything. At the moment I'm just concentrating on the next form that has to be filled in.

So some background.... I'm married to a wonderful husband, 2nd marriage and defintely the one. A word of advice for anyone - don't get married before you're at least 25 if not 30! And if it doesn't feel right in ANY capacity just say No! But I digress...

My husband, what shall I call him, I'll call him James because he's always been my 007, saving me from various life crises and being my rock and driving like a nutter. I have a beautiful, gorgeous, supremely talented, wonderful, child prodigy of a 5 year old not that I am in any sense biased but I am. She's a complete scamp and an absolute Princess. Bearing in mind she was born with my 1st husband, seeing how into pink fluffy stuff she is and taking a long hard look at myself I can only think, if it comes from her DNA her Dad must have some very dodgey tendencies.

Brings me onto the painful subject of ex-husband who's honestly not so bad, but it just wasn't meant to be and he annoys the crap out of me which kind of spells doom for a relationship! His live in gilfriend seems to be one of these long suffering private people who got together with a man and didn't bank on his baggage coming along for the ride. Ho hum...

God, digress again. So I have my own Bond, ex-hub and Princess Toodles. Add onto that 2 step sons, the 21 year old clubber currently working his way through Uni and defintely having turned the corner and becoming a really nice chap (the teens were painful) and the youngest who is 18 and there are many names I could refer to him as, however for for reasons that are frankly too long to argue about now, I shall politely refer to them as my Uni-Lad and Bebe.

Other people in the ol' life's sphere are my mother, who I have to say is not your stereotypical sweet ol' Irish lady, seemingly pulling more energy from somewhere than most people and sharpening her tongue at regular intervals. The final player in my life opera is my sister, trying to divorce her useless ex-husband (makes mine look positively fabulous and makes me realise I really do have nothing to complain about!); he could command the content of several blogs none of which will be very complimentary. A name for her? I'm at a loss, She is a wonderful sis tho' I have spent many an evening murdering a bottle of cheap South African Red and putting the world right with her. Her I shall affectionately refer to as Sis. Her soon to be ex-hubby will always be Arsehole although her new fella is a marked improvement despite his penchant for quoting Bob Dillon's lyrics and cooking with creme fraiche - need to think of a coining phrase for him...

So, everyone is there bar 1, my other daughter, as I said probably fast asleep in a children's home in Russia. James and I decided to adopt last November after failed IVF. I hadn't banked on it being quite such a long process. Madonna makes it all look so easy but trust me it's not a case of writing a cheque. We live in Kent and our local Social Services whilst being helpful have never given us the warm and fizzy impression. We were very lucky though to be assigned a social worker who is bloody fantastic to do our homestudy. I'll call her Diane because, well, that's her name.

She turned up on 29th July larger than life, armed with a clip board and 1000 questions. I have never filled in so many forms in my life. We took the approach of trying to do as much as possible ourselves to help her out and jolly things along. Adoption and Admin are pretty much the same thing, other words I could through in our justification, desperation with a mild dose of bankruptcy.

So where are we now, International Adoption is like domestic adoption only worse. First you do the homestudy although this time you have to pay. £4,700 kerching! Next you do a 3 day course to prepare you £700 kerching! Then it goes to panel - a group of people who someone has deemed qualified to read the papaerwork and decide if you will be suitable parents. Then it goes to London where it languishes before going to the lawyers to be notarised , trust me kerching, kerching,,,,before being sent to your agency in Americas as we don't have them in England. Thier bill still scares me $30,000 - kerching doesn't even begin to describe the feeling! Bebe did ask if we were adopting or buying a daughter - I'm hoping adopting but the line is getting fuzzier.

Right now we've completed the homestudy interviews and have done 2 of 3 days in our prep course and hoping for panel in November.

So for today, to Princess Toodles curled up asleep at Grandma's and her beautiful little sister who's out there somewhere I send a kiss to the stars and hope it finds you both.

Love Mummy xx