12 months ago

Twelve months ago I was sitting at the computer. It was about 10:30 at night and the phone rang. I looked at the caller ID and it was our case worker. I knew this was "the call" that we had been waiting for. With my heart beating faster I picked up the phone, said "hello", and ran down the hallway to wake up Damen. Groggily he followed me into the kitchen, having no idea what I had woken him up for. Our social worker was telling me about a baby boy that she had met during the trip that she had just returned home from a couple of days earlier. With a shaking hand I was writing down everything that she was telling me. I kept showing Damen the paper and before he would have a chance to read it I would snatch it awat to write the next tidbit of information down. Finally, Damen figured out what was going on and became as excited as I was. She wanted to know if we would be interested in adopting this baby and if we wanted her to send us his picture. Um, yes!!! We knew so little about this baby on the other side of the world. We had an age, a name, the name of the orphanage, and we knew that he had been there his entire short life, and finally after what felt like the longest three minutes of my life the email came through and we had a picutre. We looked at the beautiful boy who was going to become our son.

This little boy has been in my thoughts every day for the past 12 months. At the beginning we thought that we would have him home within nine months from his referral day. There have been delays and paperwork issues and frustration and tears. We are finally getting close to bringing our son home. We are finally counting down the weeks instead of the months until he is home.

He's changed so much in the past 12 months. We missed out on his first teeth, crawling, first steps, most likely his first words, his first birthday, and oh so much more. But I get to be his mommy for all of the rest of his firsts and I feel so thankful and blessed for that.

We love you Merveille!