Today we celebrated the 5th anniversary of our daughter's adoption day. As always, it brought back wonderful memories of my journey to motherhood. Many of the events and emotions during that journey are so fresh... I can't believe we will be embarking on a similar adventure soon. In honor of our oldest daughter's adoption day, I will share her Adoption Day story here:
TOGETHER AT LAST
Our bus, filled with every emotion possible, and 11 families, pulled up to the Office of Civil Affairs, the place where our dreams would finally come true. Coincidentally, the babies arrived at the same time, so as we departed the bus, a wave of orphanage workers swept the babies inside from the van in which they arrived. Anxiously we waited for the tiny elevator to take several trips up and down, until we finally made it to the lobby where we would meet our daughter. Two couches cradled 11 babies, all dressed in matching lime-colored outfits. The babies sat there very alert to the chaos around them. I immediately found the face of our daughter, whom we had seen for the first time in an e-mail just 5 weeks before this day. We made so many copies of that picture when we received it...one for our den, one for each of us to keep at work, and one for each of the grandparents, aunts and uncles. We even put one in an ornament frame on our Christmas tree... being just a couple weeks before Christmas, her referral was the best Christmas present we had ever received. And now, about a month later, I was seeing her face to face for the first time. It was the most beautiful face I had ever seen. I waved my husband over, who kept asking me, "Are you sure that's her?" I had no doubt in my mind. I so wanted to run over there and scoop her up, but we waited as the director started calling out family names. We kept taking pictures of her, and listening impatiently for our name. We stood there, beyond arms reach, waving and crying, and then it happened - her eyes met mine and she smiled, as if she knew who I was. One by one the babies were placed in the arms of their new families. I thought they were never going to call our name. When they finally called our name and put KaiLi in our arms, tears ran down my cheeks. KaiLi just smiled at me as if to say, "It's okay Mommy, we're together at last!"
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