It's a Boy!

I didn't think I could go through it again for the fourth time - the feedings, the cleaning up and picking up after, the toilet training. The very thought gave me panic attacks causing me to wake up in a cold sweat some nights. I was just starting to feel like I was regaining some control of my life again. A. is mostly out of diapers and can go for prolonged periods without a tantrum, a full-blown one at least. There are mornings when I can pick up the newspaper and read an entire article without someone demanding to be fed, changed, or just noticed. In a pinch, my 12-year old can, with the able assistance of her sister and cousins, babysit her 3-year old brother. Without activities to drive the kids around to, my evening stress-o-meter on most days barely registers a reading after having hovered in the red zone for several years.
But the girls insisted that the family was incomplete and that they needed that one other member, that fourth sibling, to complete the picture! Before we left NJ, we had caved in the face of their unhappiness over the move and promised to think about a new addition once we were in India and now they were holding us to that promise.
And so, despite all our misgivings, B. and I decided to take the plunge. We knew we wanted to adopt this time around. I found out about a place in Hebbal, a home for abandoned babies. And so we set out for this place on a Tuesday morning - A. and I and my sister-in-law, the latter providing some much needed moral support.
The babies were in a large outdoor playpen. A few of them were napping, huddled in a corner. As I gazed at them, one walked unsteadily up to where we were standing by the gate and looked up at us with his large, brown, slightly mournful eyes. "I like that one", A. said. I put my hand in through a gap in the gate and was rewarded with a lick. "Hi, doggie*", I said, "do you want to go home"?
*Ringo is a five-month old pup of unknown pedigree that we picked up from CUPA, an animal shelter in Hebbal, Bangalore that provides refuge to several homeless animals including cats, dogs, and cows. They even have a camel!