I'd like to blame it all on Irma Bombeck. It is her fault that my children are giddy with anticipation as my husband and I wait nervously for the arrival of a child at a San Francisco Airport terminal. In her poem "If I Had My Life to Live Over," Bombeck wrote: "I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained and the sofa faded." In my family's case, the carpet is stained and the sofa faded, but we have invited a child we have never met and know nothing about to become a member of our family for six weeks.