Well, it is official… creditors and families have voted overwhelmingly to revive Imagine Adoption. And with that, the hopes and dreams of so many adoptive families, waiting so patiently and working so hard to adopt from Ethiopia and Ghana and other countries, have a chance to come true.

I am so happy for them.

I am also so happy for the children whose futures now include a family who will love them and raise them to help their dreams come true, too. So many bright futures for so many wonderful children!

The news also means that if ever we decided to adopt a sibling for Stinkerbelle, we now potentially have the option to do so. And that’s kind of cool.

I love it when there’s good news to start the day.

Finally, at long last… two of my favourite people in all Teh Internets, not to mention IRL, Rana and Yvan, got their referral yesterday!

It’s a BOY!

Go give them your warmest congratulations and your biggest virtual hugs! If any two people deserve it, after such a long wait, it’s these two.

(And you thought I was slacking off and not posting, while actually I’ve been sitting on this news all day!!)

Adoption Journey – Day 494 (1 year, 4 months, and a bit)

Well, as you saw, we got our referral yesterday. A tiny, perfect little girl. 6 weeks old. 7.5 pounds. And a whole lot of hair.

It’s been an amazing 24 hours.

Yesterday started like crap. I was sore, as I posted about in the morning. Then around noon, I looked out to see that the chipmunk that I had been feeding for a few weeks now had fallen into the neighbours’ rain barrel and drowned — within the past half hour or so. I could have run out and rescued him, if only I had looked out the window sooner.

I was bummed. So I messaged BDH and told him I was really having a lousy day, and I was going to sit on my exercise bike and try to work out some of the pain (and some of the sadness) by riding a bit.

I was pedalling like mad and about an hour into a chick flick when the phone rang. I checked the call display and saw it was my agency, but I didn’t think anything of it. I picked up and it was my adoption worker, who I had never spoken to before. She asked if BDH was home, but I said no — they talk frequently, so I thought he had called and asked for some information — so I asked if there was a message.

She said no, but that she had some news. She had a referral for us.

I stopped. “Really?” I asked.

She said yes. So I said, “What do we have?”

She asked if I wanted her to tell me, since she was emailing the info out. I stopped short of saying, “DUH”, and said, “Sure” instead.

She took a deep breath, and quietly she said, “You have a little girl”.

I was gobsmacked. A GIRL. I knew that girls were frequently requested, and since we had not specified a gender, I just assumed we’d be referred a boy. In fact, I was sure we’d have a boy.

I was thrilled. I stifled a “SQUEEEEE!” and told her how thrilled I was.

Then, she got all excited. “She’s absolutely BEAUTIFUL!” she exclaimed. Well, everybody says babies are beautiful — nobody every says, “Wow. You have an ugly baby.” So I kind of mentally skipped over that part. But then she said, “And she has SO MUCH HAIR!”

I burst out laughing.

“Well, then,” I said, “OBVIOUSLY she takes after BDH then. He had a ton of hair when he was a baby too.”

She laughed. She was clearly really happy to be bringing us this news, after such a long wait.

I started to get all welly, and my mind was just blank. I said, “I’m kind of all meshuganneh here. I’m stunned.” I was a little giddy.

She said, “We get all sorts of reactions. Some people just cry — INSTANTLY. Others say, ‘Oh, well, that’s nice’. Very calm.”

“That’s definitely not me,” I said.

She told me she’d be sending out the referral, and what was included. She briefly told me what would happen next.

I said, “So this must be a pretty good part of your job, delivering this sort of news.”

She said, “It’s my favourite part.”

“Mine too,” I said.

I got off the phone, and I lost it. I started to cry. Out of relief, out of joy, out of shock, or all of the above and more, I can’t say. I just knew I was going to have a little girl.

I rushed to call BDH. Who was, unusual for Mr. Connected-to-Technology-At-All-Times, nowhere near a phone. Completely unreachable, actually. (To completely understand how unusual this is, you must understand that I can call him on his desk phone, his Blackberry, or message him, or email him, pretty much at any hour of any day. So this was a SPECTACULAR act of Murphy’s Law.)

I left messages. And while I waited, I read through the file. I stared at her pictures. I cried over her birth mother’s report. And I counted my lucky stars that she entrusted the care of her beautiful girl, ultimately, to us.

When he called back, I said, “Hullo, Daddy. You have a baby girl.”

He blurted out, loud in the middle of the office, “I am a DAD!”

The he asked me to send him the referral, but it came out like, “SenditsenditsenditSENDitsenditsendITsenditSENDITSENDIT…”

So I did. And then he sat there, smashing the refresh key on his computer again and again and again. No email. If it had been, say, “Hey, how are you?” the message would have been there instantaneously.

When it finally arrived, he printed out a couple of copies of the pictures, as he was on his way to a meeting. When he entered the meeting, he held the pictures up and announced gleefully, “This is my new daughter!” After congratulations all around, the meeting started. Midway through, he confessed, “You know, I saw your lips moving, but I have no idea what you were saying.”

He made desktop wallpaper of the pictures for his computer. And sent one to me. And then he showed her picture around to everyone, while I started calling family and friends, who were also not near a phone.

Except for Heather. She cried with me on the phone for a little while. Her dad cried too. And the most magical Miss Isabella assured me that she would help me with my baby, because I didn’t have one before. But she has a baby brother, so she knows about babies.

Sherri was home too, who seemed absolutely gleeful at the prospect of being an auntie once again.

And when I got off the phone with everyone, I stared at our referral pictures some more.

She was going to be our daughter.

It was one of our best days ever.

Now, we’re getting our last minute things done so our social worker can sign off on us and we can sign off on our referral. We have drawer latches to install, and a fire safety plan to submit, and cupboard safety locks to put on. Our wine has been sent to the basement for storage. Other things have been put up high.

We want to get through this as quickly and easily as possible, so that we can take everything in to the agency on Friday.

We want nothing to stand in our way, between now and going to meet this sweet little girl with the great hair.

Our daughter. Soon.

A GIRL.

She’s 7.5 lbs and about 21 inches long, and about 6 weeks old. With a head FULL of hair.

We have a girl.

I am verklempt.

Adoption Journey — Day 213

First, I just received an email from our homestudy social worker that said:

I was in touch with the Ministry this morning and everything is fine on your file so you should receive your approval in the next few weeks. Congratulations, you’re on your way!

As soon as you hear about a referral, please let me know. We’ll meet again at that time.

And, secondly… it’s raining!

SQUEEE! <happy clap>

Adoption Journey – Day 63

Yesterday, we booked our first appointment of our home study. Now it all starts in earnest.

It’s great news for us. It means that we are getting into the biggest part of the adoption process, the part that takes the most time and patience. If we get it done and successfully, we will be allowed to adopt a child. It’s the key to a future with a child in our lives.

I must admit I am intimidated. Not so much by the home study process, because I think answering the questions won’t be such a big deal. But I am intimidated by everything we have to get done before we can have someone in and “inspect” our home. There’s just so much.

Our house is day-to-day clean, in terms of what you’d expect from two busy and not-so-neat adults living together. And having 3 cats, one of whom is elderly and pees on stuff from time to time, certainly doesn’t help. But although it is tidy enough for everyday, there’s no way it’s clean enough to pass inspection, and it’s going to need work before we bring a child home.

We have here the clutter of 10 years of busy life together, 10 years’ worth of stuff accumulated by two pack rats. And precious little storage space. So, one of the first things we must do is start throwing things away. We have to be ruthless. We have to just bite the bullet and start getting rid of stuff. I have to learn to throw away my Canadian Living magazines and my craft stuff and clothes I’ve been holding on to that I will never realistically wear again. And BDH has to learn to part with his old computer components and gear, most of which is useless, and his hobby stuff. We have to chuck the lot.

And don’t even talk to me about the garage. I shudder to think about the work that will be required for our garage, since it has been impromptu storage all these years. That’s going to require days of work in itself.

We have to get rid of old furniture. We have to throw away dishes we don’t use and bikes we’ll never ride and tools that never get used. We have to just learn to live with less clutter. And we have to buy storage to put away all the stuff we do need to keep. We also have to replace any of our old not-child-friendly furniture with brand new stuff. And since we have only one income, we have to learn to be realistic about what we need, since we cannot take on any more debt than the already painfully expensive cost of the adoption itself.

We have to wash windows and paint walls and mop floors and vacuum carpets. And then we have to get the carpets deep cleaned. We’ll likely have to hire someone to come in and clean the house and deep clean the carpets professionally after we do it, just to be sure.

And, one of the hardest things of all: we have to put Opus in her cage overnight and when she is not supervised. Granted, we’re putting a little 7 pound kitty in a huge Great Dane sized cage, so she’s got plenty of room and a comfy bed and food and water and litter — she has everything she needs. And she really doesn’t mind it so much, because she is so old she sleeps all the time anyway. But it hurts to take away her freedom and her ability to run around, especially now that she’s so healthy and happy. But we cannot have her peeing on stuff.

And then, once we get all the cleaning and general maintenance done, we have a long list of baby-proofing things that must get done. There are things I expected, like getting cabinet locks and outlet covers. And there are things I had not expected, like buying escape ladders for the bedrooms and carbon monoxide detectors and bolting our bookshelves to the wall. I don’t know one single person who has ever done these things in anticipation of having a biological child, and yet, we are required to do so to adopt. So we will cheerfully buy outlet covers, and escape ladders, and fire extinguishers, and gear to hide all our electrical cords, and put a cat-flap in the basement door for the cats to get into and out of the basement.

Before, this was just an item on a list, something that had to be done sometime. It was in the future. But now, it’s immediate. When I think of everything we have to do, I get so overwhelmed. I want to just sit down and cry. Paperwork I can handle. Bureaucracy I can handle. But this is just so much to do, and all on my own essentially, since BDH is at work all day.

I just have to remember why it is I am doing all this stuff. I just have to suck it up and get it done. And when it’s done, it’s done. It’ll all be worth it in the end.

But I don’t even know where to begin. Hell, I don’t even know where to begin my list.