Christmastime with Michelle

We're so excited about Michelle's first Christmas. We dreamed about it for so long and now we're enjoying every minute. We've had so much fun shopping for her (perhaps a bit too much fun) and I loved baking cookies with her. I couldn't wait to have her help us decorate the tree. I took her out for a few hours and Roman got everything out and had the tree all set up and the ornaments ready to put on the tree. We thought Michelle would be really into decorating the tree but she put a couple of ornaments on and then completely lost interest. She handed them back to me and said, "Mama do it." At least I got a couple of pictures. I got her an Advent calendar and have some small Sesame Street ornaments for the gifts. She enjoys putting those on the tree. She has very definite ideas about where each one should go and some branches have three ornaments. I thought about moving them after she goes to bed one night but then I decided to leave them. Christmas is all about her now and if she wants three ornaments on one branch, that's fine with me. She loves the stuffed animals we have decorating the living room. My mom and I are really into moose so we have a ton of them sitting out for the holidays. Michelle has to kiss each one goodnight and she calls them cows. She also has a few stuffed dogs, a few snowmen and even a dancing jalapeno that she has to kiss before bed. We have to start saying goodnight a few minutes earlier now because it's taking awhile to say goodnight to everyone. It's absolutely adorable, though. Hmmmmm....Where should I put this one?
This looks like a good spot.
Did I do a good job?
Relaxing after a hard day of decorating
I'm excited about my presents!I love hugging and kissing my pandas.

December 6, 2007

The happiest day of our lives up to that point. I barely slept the night before knowing we should be getting the call that day. We were so excited and nervous. I was at work and I kept my cell phone next to me and kept checking it every few minutes to make sure it was on and the battery was charged. I told all my friends and family not to call me because I didn't want to take any chances of missing "the" call. The minutes were ticking by with no call. I was getting more and more nervous and antsy. I was shaking like a leaf, my heart was racing and my stomach was queasy. Finally at 11:20 a.m. my phone rang. I almost jumped out of my chair. I grabbed the phone and found I could barely speak. It was M. from our agency and she said "I have good news for you. We have your referral." All I could manage to get out was "Oh my God!" She told us our daughter's name was Sheng Xue Feng (in my nervousness and excitement I misunderstood and thought she said Seng instead of Feng), she was born on August 26, 2006 and she was in the Desheng SWI in Guangxi Province. I had my list of questions sitting next to me but I was incapable of any sort of rational thought. M. asked me what time we wanted to go in and told us we could go in any time after 1:00. I said 1:00 would be perfect. I called Roman the second I hung up and practically shouted "We have a daughter!" We met in the lobby of my building at noon to go to the agency together and we ran to each other hugged with tears streaming down both of our faces. That was a very long hour waiting for our appt at the agency. Finally, a little after 1:00 we met with M. and she showed us Michelle's pictures. We both cried again looking at this beautiful little girl who was about to become our daughter. We were completely overwhelmed and madly in love. We were looking at the daughter we had dreamed of for so long. We had to pinch ourselves to believe it was true. The rest of the day was a whirlwind. We spent the afternoon mailing out the visa applications and the referral information to the international clinic for review. Then we spent the evening making calls and sending out e-mails to our friends and family.

That was such an incredible day. I don't think I had ever experienced such pure joy in my life. I don't know how the matching room does it. Michelle really is the perfect child for us and we're the perfect family for her. We look at her every day and thank God for her. As painful as the wait was, we wouldn't change a thing. We'd gladly go through it all again to have our precious Michelle.

A year ago at this time...

We were just over 24 hours from seeing our daughter's face for the first time. Wow! Has it really been a year? I was such a nervous wreck. It was a Wednesday and rumors had been really quiet all week. I was checking Rumor Queen every 2 minutes but there just wasn't much out there. I was trying to prepare myself for the possibility that we might not hear anything until the following week when suddenly the first report came in from the West Coast. Somebody had just gotten "the call." I was so excited. At that time referrals typically arrived on the West Coast first and then the next day the East Coast got theirs. I knew then that we should be getting our referral the next day. I started shaking and I had to fight back the tears (since I was at work). I called Roman right away to tell him we were a day away from getting the most important call of our lives. He was cautiously optimistic after all the disappointments. It was so hard to focus on work or anything else. All I wanted to do was sit at the computer and check RQ. I couldn't wait for that day to be over. The next day we were going to be parents!

It's Official

This morning we went to family court for our adoption hearing to re-legalize Michelle's adoption. The adoption was official and complete in China but it's recommended that families have it re-legalized in their home state to make it easier to get an official birth certificate and things like that so we did it. It was very simple. We met with the judge in her chambers, she asked us a couple of questions and then signed the adoption decree. So now Michelle has been officially declared our daughter by the state. We were allowed to pictures of Michelle with the judge. Most people take pictures of their children sitting on the judge's lap. You can see below how well that went over.

This afternoon Michelle and I made sugar cookies. She had a very good time helping Mama. She helped me roll out the dough and make shapes with her cookie cutters. She was most helpful with sampling the dough to make sure it was okay. That was definitely her favorite part of making cookies. I spent so many years dreaming of baking Christmas cookies with my daughter. Today another dream came true.