Finally, we are bringing our daughter home from China. This is the daughter I decided to adopt way back in 2002. Of course she wasn't born yet, and we hadn't done any paperwork, but the idea was born.
In the meantime,we decided to take some time off to have fun and live our urban chic life (ha!), I went back to work as an elementary school teacher, we finally put in our adoption paperwork for China in 2006, and then we added a baby boy to our family by concurrently adopting in 2008 from Vietnam. Whew!
A lot has happened since that summer almost ten years ago when I decided I wanted to adopt a daughter from China. At the moment I decided to adopt this daughter, I didn't even know yet that it would be China. All I knew was that JCPenney commercial spoke to me. The couple waited anxiously at the airport as they saw their new baby girl for the first time. It was obvious that they were adopting this daughter from somewhere in Asia and she was brought to them by possibly an adoption worker. They held out their arms to greet this beautiful daughter and at that moment I knew that I would also do the same.
Little did I know it would be almost ten years until my dream would come to fruition. To say this daughter has been a long time coming, would be quite an understatement. I have probably logged (at least!) thousands of hours online related to this daughter's arrival. I've shopped, blog-stalked, researched, and repeated........over, and over, and over.
I've looked at the faces of other girls adopted from China, Vietnam, Korea, and wondered what our daughter's face would look like. I've cried countless times while reading the adoption travel blogs of other families. I've written down hundreds of girl names, hundreds of times, in the attempt to pick one for our daughter. I've crafted hand-made birth announcements to help the time pass while I waited. I've designed and decorated an entire nursery for our daughter over five years ago, in a place we no longer even live. In fact we've lived two different places since that time. I've read books, magazines, blogs. I've dreamed, anticipated, waited.
MY TIME HAS COME. The time to be a mother to my one and only daughter is here.
And now, this daughter, who was originally going to be our first child, is now our second child. She has a three and a half year old brother born in Vietnam. She will no longer be our first child as we had planned. She will have to share the spotlight with him. She will have to share story time, bath time, meal time, play time. In my original adoption plan hatched back in 2002, she was going to be my first. I would have all the time in the world to dote on her alone. Plans changed. I love her older brother, my sweet son, the most beautiful brown skinned, black haired boy ever created. Every day I do not measure up as his mother. I fail miserably, because he deserves perfection. How did I get picked to be his mother? He is my light and I should be his. I hope I can improve every day.
I don't expect my daughter to ever really understand what I've gone through for all these years in the wait for her, and I know I will never fully understand her losses of birthmother, birth country, culture, etc. Maybe, through our respective losses, we will find a common understanding and bond.
