For last year's birthday, I was hoping to become the mother of a soon to be 12 year old girl named Jessica. This year I am the mama of a 9 month old boy named Eric. Would I change anything about this past year? Absolutely not!
Paul and I took training classes to upgrade our homestudy so we could adopt an older child. We were hoping to get the chance to adopt Jessica, an 11 year old girl who was a "foster sister" to Paul's cycling friends' adopted daughter, Tabatha. We were matched in February and soon got the chance to meet with her officially. I say officially because we did "secretly" meet her when we had dinner at the Wessler's house. She did not know that were interested in adopting her. Jessica flat out stated that she did not want to be adopted. We believe that she was holding out hope in being reunited with her family, which was not going to happen. So, we said we wanted to be unmatched, no sense in trying to force her to do something she doesn't want and then make our lives hell. We continued with our wait for a baby with Catholic Social Services.
May took us to Charleston, SC for our anniversary trip. Monday afternoon, May 14, Paul and I toured the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown. Paul noticed he had a voice mail message on his cell phone, which he figured was unimportant and would check it later. Kind of hard to get cell reception when your traipsing around the belly of an aircraft carrier. I said "hey, who knows, it could be something important." (I had this nagging feeling that we would get called on vacation that we were going to be getting a baby.) He humored me, checked, and it was Carol, our social worker. I get foggy about details here, can't remember or not if she said she had a possible match for us or just to get in contact with her. Well, it was after hours and we could not get a hold of her. Carol called us Tuesday morning that a birth mother had chosen us and another couple to be the possible parents for her son. We were told he had a number of medical issues, all that were repairable. Would we be interested? Of course! She wasn't able to set up a phone conference until the next day. So, we waited on Wednesday to talk with a possible birth mother. While waiting Paul was making phone calls trying set up a fishing trip, we wanted to go that day but the phone call was delayed, so we got it for Thursday and ended up being lazy that day. Finally, Nicole, the pregnancy counselor, called and we talked with Elizabeth. She asked us a bunch of questions, including if we were willing to keep he son's name, Eric. Yes, I said that it had been on my baby name list. She didn't care if we changed his middle name, Christopher. Later that afternoon, we agreed that if we were chosen we would keep the middle name too. Good, I also had Christopher on the list. She asked Paul if he would teach him to fish. Of course. We said were in the process of planning a fishing a trip for the next day. She liked to go fishing with her dad when she was young. Due to his medical issues would we be willing to learn how to feed him a special way. We would do what ever we would have to do for this boy. We really had no questions for her. So, we hung up and waited, knowing she had another couple she was interested in. Thursday brought a hazy day, actually it was smoke from the wildfires in Georgia, and a light rain. We ended up being the only ones on the fishing trip, which was nice. Out in the middle of no where my cell phone rang. It was Nicole telling us we were chosen! I was in heaven riding on cloud nine. All kinds of emotions. Thoughts reeling through my head. We were finally going to be parents!
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