A Letter to Rose-- February 21st

Dear Rose,

Three weeks from today, you'll be officially ours. Last winter, when Daddy showed me the picture of his friends who had adopted a baby and that started me on a relentless path to do the same thing, I don't think I thought it would actually happen. Something would stop us. Someone would get cold feet, or our families would talk us out of it, or we wouldn't pass our homestudy, or we would decide that it was too expensive/long/discouraging and drop out.

I don't think I started to believe it might happen until the night I saw your face. I'm not a crier, Rose, but when the phone rang that night, I cried so hard I could hardly talk to our caseworker at the adoption agency. And every time she's called since then, I've had this Pavlovian crying response. I see the name on the caller ID, and the tears start.

I believed it a little more when we got our Letter of Approval right before Christmas.

And a little more with each subsequent step.

And then, last Thursday, the final call came, the big one. We now have permission to go to China, and adopt you, and become your parents.

When I was pregnant with Bryce, I signed up for BabyCenter's weekly emails, with updates each week to track the pregnancy. When I was pregnant with Isaac, I was one of the featured pregnancy and baby bloggers at sheknows.com, and every week I gave and update on how things were progressing. This time around, I couldn't count weeks until the end, and I knew that a lot of people who hadn't been through the experience before would understand, but I found a group of women at Rumor Queen who were going through exactly the same thing. Each week Molpugh tracked a chart of our progress. When I got on the chart back at the beginning of October, I was in the 130s. Look at me now! As much as I'm glad that the waiting is over, this journey has been kind of fun, with its waits and its ups and downs, there were also lots of opportunity to think about what kind of Mom I'm going to be to you and to recognize that there's an entire community out there whose families look like ours.

 Once the travel approval arrived, I had several sleepless nights, and spent a few days in a frenzy, getting appointments confirmed, emailing people, buying plane tickets, and on Saturday night, 20 full days before we'll get on planes bound for San Francisco, Hong Kong, and Nanjing, I pulled out the suitcases and started packing. Annie's bag is nine pounds under the limit and mine is eleven (but she doesn't have any clothes packed yet). Baby stuff weighs a ton!

But things have settled down, and I'm glad. We have three more weeks until our lives are going to change-- all of them, and I want to have some time to focus on Dad, Bryce, Annie, Isaac, and Maren for a while. I know you're going to take lots of my time, energy, and love for the next few months, and I am fully prepared to give it to you-- I can't wait to become your Mama, but I also don't want anyone else to feel left out.

The waiting is almost over. In seventeen days we leave for China. In twenty, we'll be united as a family. In twenty-one, we'll adopt you. I'm thrilled to know that this journey to you, the one I almost refused to have any faith in, will end with you in our arms.

Love,

Mommy