Butterflies and a little Hoot!

I have butterflies, serious butterflies in my belly!  This is getting real, very real!  Today we received our LSC.  I know an acronym, so annoying, so I shall enlighten you.  That is our Letter Seeking Confirmation which means we are officially approved to adopt our son.  We received pre approval at the beginning when we first started the process last August so this has been in the works for awhile!  So now I have some serious butterflies!!  This means were are a few months from travel, for reals!!!  Probably September.  That has been our goal but just that.  This is making it more concrete!

I also have butterflies because I have more to say.  This is just getting so real.  I feel like I need to cut to the chase and then I will tell you all how this miracle happened!!  After 5 whole years of tears and waiting we are also bringing home a daughter!!  Yep, it's for real, there will be another female in this house!  My Scattered butterflies are coming home!!  How???  It's a miracle really.  I couldn't have planned it because planning hasn't quite worked out for us.  This happened because it was meant to happen.

When we started the process to bring the Scholar home we also formally left the Ethiopia program.  The program wasn't moving and we knew it was time to say goodbye.  We had The Scholar to focus on and that made it easier.  Of course, my mind kept thinking about a girl!!  I asked Gamer if we could adopt two kids.  Um, he gave me the crazy look!  He was a little hesitant because, hello, that's 4 kids at home!!!  We only have two and doubling it seemed a bit nuts, not to mention the financial responsibility of bringing home another.  Well it really was a long shot anyway so I wasn't too sure it would happen.  We had looked at the files of girls waiting and we didn't see one a girl that was a good fit for our family.  This is the part of adoption I hate!!!!  All these children are precious and deserving and I felt a bit like God picking out a child.  That part of the experience is hard to reconcile at times.  But I had to consider the needs of all my children.  Boom Boom has Down Syndrome and Autism.  He requires a lot of attention and also has limited mobility.  The Scholar also has a disability (more about that later) and has limited mobility.  So really, baby girl, had to be a child with minor needs.  There are actually more boys in China in need of parents than girls.  All the girls we saw had pretty significant needs that I knew would be difficult for me to manage.

The next step was to wait for a match.  We told our agency what needs we were open to and the age range.  So we waited.  We really didn't have a lot of time.  We started this process in September and had until about April to have a match so we could pick up the kids on the same trip.  Seems like a lot of time but not really!  We had a few potential matches but upon medical review we knew that we couldn't proceed.  Again, the part I don't like!  All these girls were precious and deserving.  I sometimes wish I had 8 arms and had an endless supply of energy so I could have done it!

On January 14th, 2015 we finally got the match we had been waiting for!!  A beautiful 2 yr old girl with a repaired heart condition.  We were ecstatic!!  She would be the same age as Potato bug was at the time of adoption.  We thought how awesome is that!!  Then on January 16th we lost her due to a computer glitch!!!  We waited forever for this girl and she was gone!!  The CCCWA (The China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption) hosts a giant database of all the children available for adoption in China.  When a family identifies a child for adoption they are matched with that child in the database.  It takes the child off the available list and allows the family to proceed with their adoption.  Well just a week or so before we were entered into the system they had just done a huge system update.  Well apparently these don't always go over so well!!!  Has our case manager was entering us into the system we got deleted!!  Right as she pushed the "accept" button we got deleted and our dear daughter went back out onto the database!  Agencies from all over the world peruse this database to find potential children for their adoptive families.  Once they lock a file it's theirs to have for 3 days.  They have 3 days to either lock her file (what we were trying to do) or to release her for another family.  This all happened on SUPER BOWL SUNDAY weekend!!!!!!  When this happened on Friday it was already Saturday in China so there was nothing to do until Monday.  So if no other agency took her we could maybe get her back.  Worst weekend ever.  Crappy crappy crappy SUPER BOWL LOSS of all time and we lost her.  Monday came and she was gone.   Seriously there must be some cosmic force that is telling us a daughter is not in the cards for us!!

Gamer and I were contemplating our situation.  Can we afford to proceed?  At this point we had spent about $1500 in just medical reviews and the emotional toll was just as high.  I've never had a miscarriage but this felt just as painful as I could imagine that being.  On January 22 I was driving Boom Boom to Seattle Children's Hospital for Gtube surgery.  Phone rang and it was our agency they had another girl.  I was kind of hesitant and said I'd look later.  She urged me to look at her file ASAP.  So I pulled over and couldn't believe what I was seeing!!!!  I kind of freaked actually.  Seriously nobody gets two perfect matches in a week!!  This match was a bit scary at first though, I really wasn't sure we could take on this need.  This "need" required diapers, bottles, and all that baby stuff!  Yes, we just got matched with a 9 MONTH OLD BABY!!!!!!  We were not planning on that at all.  We were expecting a 3-6 yr old!!  She is the cutest little thing!!!  After the initial shock and panic wore off that we would be the parents of a 1, 4, 8, 12, and 23 yr old- we said yes!!!   Oh and the parents of 3 grandkids, can't forget those darlings!!  Our youngest will be younger than our grandkids!!  

Sorry for the dramatics, but on January 23rd we lost this one as well.  Same problem.  Our agency was assured that the IT (computer tech) had fixed the problem after the last loss.  Again it was Friday and Saturday in China.  Our whole team was devastated.  I actually feel sorry for our case manager having to be the person to call me.  I lost my shit!!!!!!  This didn't just wreck me it wrecked us all.  Our agency was at a loss as to how this could've happened again.  In hindsight we never ever should have done this on a Friday.  We should have had the CCCWA on the phone as we entered her so they could manually hold her for us.  Once she's gone they can't reverse it and take her back from another agency.  The staff watched the list all weekend to see if she was still there.  If I remember correctly she was gone at 1:00pm the following day.  Another agency had taken her.  Because of her age I knew she would find a home.  In the end that is what is important (only comfort I could give myself).  She would never know what she meant to us or that she was our daughter first.  I'm sure she'll go on to have a happy life and wonderful caring parents somewhere else.  We were so heartbroken.  The first one was hard this one was impossible.  Parenting during this time was difficult has was being a wife, this was the darkest of darkest days for us.  I know we aren't the first person to experience the loss of a child but this was our reality and this was a death.

This was the end for us at this point.  We were done and were now just going to focus on our sons and bringing home The Scholar.  I was trying to find the excitement but it was hard.  I reached out to every adoptive mother I knew and poured my heart and grief out to them.  No one knew we had a daughter (small circle of family and that was it) so it was so hard to be grieving and everyone around us thought our lives were just plugging along.  I was very thankful for these mama's , they probably thought I was a little cray cray because I was!!!  Ugh, never want to be there again.

On January 28th our case manager called.  Gamer had just got home from work and I was bawling.  I told him I couldn't get over this.  How can anyone be attached to a child they never met?  She was only ours for 2 days.  How can I be this messed up?  To me she was Ethiopia.  She was the baby we wanted 5 years ago.  We had made piece that that was over.  I was ok with not having a baby and was prepared for a older child.  So when we got this little girl it was a miracle!  She was the end and beginning of this crazy journey.  She was where we started 5 years and was finally the daughter coming home.  That's the only explanation I could come up with for losing my marbles.  My phone was still ringing.  I told Gamer I wasn't answering it.  I hadn't talked to our agency since we lost her.  I couldn't talk to anyone.  I was worried they were going to have a file for us and I had no desire to ever see another file.  Gamer and I sat in the middle of the kids playroom for awhile and the ever patient husband listened to my heart ache.  Finally I decided to listen to the voicemail.  It was a bit before 5 and she wanted me to call her.  She was going to wait until 5:30.  I was pretty annoyed as I did not want to be bothered and frankly I was mad at everyone at this point.

Our conversation:

Me:  Hi, it's Madre, just returning your call.  (haha, if only I said Madre!)
Her:  I'm probably the last person you want to talk too.
Me:  Yes you are  (I'm so mean!!!!)
Her:  We got her back, she's yours, we found her.
Me:  Most ugly cry imaginable!

I then proceeded to throw the phone at my husband and bawled like a baby.  I never got a word out.  Nothing, nada!  So proud of Gamer and his ability to soldier on!  He caught that phone, paced like a madman,  and talked in a "I just won the mega millions!!!!!" voice!  Still kind of a blur to be honest.  Once sanity returned and I was able to speak and listen I found out the story.  The other agency that had her couldn't find a family for her!!  HOW????  She's beautiful and perfect!!  She has Spina Bifida, a very mild form of it but they had no families open to that need.  So our case manager happened to be on the database that morning.  She saw our baby, our Hoot!  She said that was a miracle of all miracles!  And here is where it's a real miracle.  Our agency couldn't lock her.  Once you release a file (in our case lose!) you can't lock that same file for 7 days.  However the CCCWA said that is she became available again they would manually lock her for us.  So our dear sweet case manager (love her again) stayed at the computer all day refreshing the screen as our translated tried for hours to get the IT person on the phone.

So there you have it!  We are going to China to bring home our Scholar and our Hoot!  These kids are so loved and we fought so hard for them.  Every ounce of pain, tears, insanity, and heartache was worth it.  Phew.