Right before I left work on Thursday I called the
International Adoption Clinic at Riley Hospital for Children just to see if there was anything I needed to set up in advance for them to review our referral information, you know once we actually got our referral. There wasn't, but I did get the email address that I would need to send the information to. As part of the process of officially accepting a referral we need to have our child's medical information reviewed by a international adoption pediatrician. After I made that call, I packed up and headed home.
When I walked in the house I heard the phone ringing and I got a little excited. Monica answered the phone back in our bedroom. I looked at caller id and when I saw the area code I quickly grabbed my cell phone to see if that matched up with any of the AGCI numbers I had stored in my phone. Right about the time I had matched them up Monica came out and told me Christy was on the phone. Monica's version up to that point involved seeing caller id before she answered and realizing this was probably the call, talking to Christy, and telling her that she might cry.
Once we were both on the phone, Christy told us that she had a little boy to tell us about, but she wanted to make sure that we wanted to proceed because he was younger than what we had talked about early in the adoption process (see
previous post for discussion of a baby referral). We both agreed that we wanted to hear more. If this is God's plan, we want to go along with it. Christy then began telling us about our little boy. His name is "B". (Side note, I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post his Ethiopian name on here, at least until he's legally our son. Maybe I can, but I'm not risking it until I know otherwise. We definitely are not allowed to post his picture.) B is two months old. Christy told us what they know about his background (not much) and then told us about his test results and the results from the pediatrician checkup done at Hannah's Hope. While she was telling us all this stuff, the oven timer was going off and Sawyer, our 16 month old, was wanting one of us to hold him. It was a little chaotic. We wrapped up our conversation and Christy said she'd be emailing us all of B's information and pictures. We snapped a few pictures of each other while we were getting "the call" to document the moment.
After we got off the phone, we scurried around to try and get Brennan and Sawyer ready because we were supposed to be leaving to go watch
Donkey basketball. It was a fundraiser event for one of the elementary schools in the school system Monica teaches in. We thought about not going but Brennan was really excited about it and a bunch of our friends were going to be there so we could share the news with them. We got the boys ready and then checked our email and got our first look at B. Right away Monica noticed that he's got a cowlick like our boys do, particularly Brennan. We printed two pictures of B and headed out the door.
On the drive we both were on our cell phones calling our parents, siblings, and friends to tell them the good news. I had called Carla (also adopting from Ethiopia with AGCI) to tell her and she had just gotten to the "basketball" game. She was waiting for us when we got there to see B's pictures. At the game we were able to show off B's pictures and tell several of our friends.
Now it gets even more interesting...During the halftime intermission Monica was talking with one of her co-workers and Carla was holding our son Sawyer. All of a sudden Carla came running up to Monica and gave Sawyer to her. Christy from AGCI was on the phone! They were getting their referral too!!! Seriously, was this really happening???? For those of you that don't know, JB & Carla are some of our very best friends. We go to church together, were youth leaders together for five years, our oldest boys were born about three hours apart, and we only live 4 miles from each other. We started this adoption journey together but were 5 spots apart on the boy list. They received a referral for a 2 year old boy "M". Well, they think he's 2 but don't really know. He
certainly isn't 5 months old like the birth date given on his information. For the AGCI families tracking numbers, JB & Carla were #9 on the boy list and #22 on the girl list at their official February update. How awesome that we got our referrals only a few hours apart!
After we got home and put the boys to bed, my parents came over to check out B. It was a great evening. As we've shown off B's pictures to people, a common theme has been that people think he looks like one of our boys. We agree. When we told Brennan (our 4 year old) the good news he was really excited. He thought we would be leaving right away to get B. Most of his excitement was based on the fact that when we go to Ethiopia he gets to stay with Grandma Kathy and Papaw.
So what's next...We have to fill out more paperwork, get the medical review done (see above), have a conference call on Tuesday with AGCI and the other families who received infant referrals last week, and then write another check to send in with our paperwork. After that we'll wait for our court date. I'm guessing our court date won't be until May based on the recent court dates other AGCI families have received. We will probably travel 3 or 4 weeks after we pass court. So my guess is that it will be at least June before we can go get B. Obviously we hope to be able to travel with JB & Carla. We've been hoping for that all along but now it feels like a real possibility. That's our prayer.
Seriously, this is a ridiculously long post. I'm done for now.
