Thoughts About Our Journey - The Beginning

Way back in fall of 2005 we decided to build our family through adoption and started our first steps to the girls.  I remember filling out the application and being so afraid that the agency would turn us down.  We had faced so many ups and downs already trying to start our family that I just couldn't yet let myself hope and fully believe that we would ever be parents.  We sent the application in the week before Thanksgiving and I made my hubby call the agency on thevWednesday before to find out if we were approved - I couldn't phantom the thought of going through the holidays not knowing.  Happily we were approved and the paper chase began.

My hubby was a true hero/knight in shining armor.  He stayed strong when I was freaking out and followed each step that our wonderful agency laid out for us in their dossier prep booklet.  We had a couple of hiccups, bad advice from one agency worker who is no longer working for them.  It was a minor thing, but given the mysterious/often debated slow down in China of NSN adoptions, wound up delaying our match from May of 2010 to November of 2010.  The delay bothered me at the time, but as I look back I realize that those delayed days were leading us to our girls.  People can debate meant to be (when you adopt - one of the hard parts is the realization that your joy, your family, comes from a terrible loss), but that mistake put us in the right part of the line to be matched with our daughters.  Their loss of parents and our loss of our biological babies led us to each other.  We are a family stitched together with a red thread of loss, hope and love.

During the wait, which wound up being almost five years, we went on a few cruises and learned how to drive motorcycles.  I had three promotions, my hubby's office downsized and my youngest sister got married.  We all got older.  We painted the room, put up a fan, collected bibs through a bib exchange, read books about attachment and parenting and fielded lots of questions.  I had co-workers think I should give up and my dad was convinced it was a con.  But all the waiting didn't stop us.  Funnily enough it turned out that we both believed we would be referred twins, but never shared it with each other - other than to pick out a second name "just in case".  

We both frequented a very popular and busy adoption site for parents adopting from China.  The owner of the blog keeps very sophisticated set of statistics and projection charts so we were able to watch the slow progress toward match.  So when the calls were coming out for our LID days we knew that it was our turn...  

On November 2, 2010 our lives were changed forever.