Referral!

It was 9:46 am on April 17th when the call came in.  I looked at my cell phone and saw that it was Kate from All God’s Children calling.  I didn’t get too excited for a couple of reasons.  First, Jeff and I had recently become so discouraged by the way the process had slowed down that we were convinced we would never get a referral.  You can start to feel that way after waiting so long and hearing of changes in the law that could halt the process.  We officially decided to adopt from Taiwan 2 years and 9 months ago.  Then we waited 11 months for the Taiwan program to officially open so we could start the process.  After a 6 month home study process we started out at #9 on the waitlist.  After 9 months on the waitlist we had moved from #9 to #1 so we thought we would hear something fairly quickly.  Then we waited and waited and waited.  After being #1 on the waitlist for 6+ months we thought we would never get a referral.  Second, I had just sent Kate a question by email the day before and I thought maybe she was just calling to talk about that.  She wasn’t!  She said she had some exciting news to share and it was that she had a referral for us!  It’s a girl!  She was born 1 week ago on April 10th, 2012.  She is 5.8 lbs and 20 inches long.  About the same size that Maya was when she was born!  I calmly took down all the information that Kate gave me.  Then I hung up the phone and started shaking.  I called Jeff at work.  He’s not supposed to get calls at work, but he had his cell on.  He heard it ringing but didn’t get to it in time so he called me right back.  When I told him that Kate had called he didn’t seem to think that it was with a referral either.  When I told him she had a referral for us he was shocked and all he could say was “No, way!”.  He said he wanted to get something to write the information down and all he could find was a paper plate.  I told him that Kate was going to email me all the information and some pictures.  I asked him if he wanted me to wait until I got home and we could look at the pictures together.  He said I could go ahead and look at them.  Thank God, because I would have gone nuts waiting the rest of the day!  She is so cute with lots of black hair.  I called to tell Angie and one of the things she asked me was if she had a name.  I looked on the paperwork I had received and read her the Taiwanese name Pan Ko-Han.  She said no, I meant does she have an American name yet!  Oh my gosh, I had been so shocked by everything that I hadn’t even thought about that yet!  The answer was no.  We had a boy’s name picked out, but we hadn’t officially decided on a girl’s name yet.  Now we need to get it decided ASAP!!!  Then, I looked at the date and time she was born and I noticed that I was at the dentist at that time and I realized that I was scheduled for another dental appointment on the referral day.  Maybe she is going to be a dentist when she grows up!  I got done at my dental appointment early so I stopped and picked up a balloon for Maya.  When she got home I told her that the adoption agency had called.  I had the balloon sitting there inside a pillowcase.  She wanted to know what was in there, so I told her to open it up and read what it said.  She pulled out the balloon and read “It’s a Girl!”.  She was really excited!  She wanted it to be a girl really badly.  Now we start the next round of paperwork and waiting!  

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