We are still both still in a weird state of calm shock.
We found out officially at around 3:30pm Monday. Our adoption clinician called from her cell phone, a Boston area code, which confused Joshua, he let it go to voicemail rather than answer it, which is funny as he was trying to keep the phone line open for her call! Once Joshua called her back we were able to do a quick conference call with all three of us; our adoption clinician in her car, Joshua at home and Anthony at work.
She told us the committee loved us and it was “a slam dunk”. They were very impressed with the prep we had done for our kid and loved that we had taken the 3 day FASCETS workshop. She also told us that she had big old stack of info for us that our son’s caseworker sent over for us and she would get it to us.
Once Anthony got home from work we had dinner. Anthony had cooked up a fresh back of beans the night before. We of course didn’t know if it would be good or bad news, so we figured a yummy easy comfort food dinner would be best. Homemade bean and cheese burritos with homemade guacamole, chips and salsa….. Super yummy! OH and one bottle of chilled champagne! Or as Anthony described as bubbly rotten grapes (he had Sprite). Before dinner was cleaned up we figured we should tell the world so we posted our “it’s a boy” blog.
After dinner our doorbell rang, it was our first adoption clinician; she lives nearby and volunteered to deliver the big old stack of paperwork to us. She was unable to come in and celebrate as her car broke down and she had to have her family come and rescue her. So a quick congratulations and we were alone again, but this time with 7 inches of double sided paperwork.
None of the paperwork was signing rights to us or anything like that. It was just a lot more detailed information on our kid. Everything we have seen up to this point was like the “readers digest” version; this was the full long form information. Some of what we got was revisiting of what we had already seen, with the exception that none of the names were blacked out. We read through all of his hospital birth records with all the doctors’ notes and lab tests. Read about how he came in to custody of the state and learned more of his birth families back-story. We knew most of this information, at least the summary version of it. We were very lucky to have good people representing our son who were very forthright with information about him.
Now the funniest part of the paperwork happened this morning. After about 2 hours of reading Anthony headed up to bed, intending to finish in the morning before work, Joshua of course kept going and had some sort of OCD moment. When Anthony came down stairs in the early morning hours, what did he find? But all of the new paperwork with new handmade post-it tabs ordered in to chronological order and Marked with more post-its by chapter and subject heading. It was the funniest sight ever and also made Anthony cry, but in a good way.
For the next 7 days we are in a kind of blackout period. 7 days for us to review the information and allow us to back out if we see something new that we are uncomfortable with or learn something big that we were not told. It also gives a small group of official’s time to appeal the committee’s decision if they feel the committee has made a error (Will not happen in our case). Also, our son will also not be told about us until the 7 days have lapsed.
We sent an E-Mail to our new son’s caseworker this morning saying we had finished the paperwork and we did not see any reason to not move forward with him. What a great feeling to get back a one word response…. “YAY!!!!” We really have this great feeling that we are joining a great team of people all there for our son and us.
Thursday we are meeting that great team for the first time. We also get to see the school he is currently attending. We will also find out Thursday what the transition schedule is going to look like and get a better idea of when we will meet our son for the first time.
Overnight a literal flood of well wishes have hit both of our Facebook accounts, a ton of text messages from out of state friends and relatives, lots of personal E-Mails and more voicemail then we have had in a year. The love we are getting from everyone is staggering and overwhelming! Even more staggering is hearing how moved people have been, several mentioning being brought to tears at the news. We are so lucky to have such great people in our lives, we love you all! But of course, you all know this mean we know where to find you for babysitting duty.