One Year Ago Today

Lennah One Year Later

Our Referral Picture

Today is a very special day for our family because we became parents one year ago today. Well, we received our referral of Lennah exactly one year ago. To recount our journey; we got on the waiting list with our agency CHI on September 2, 2006. It was supposed to be a short wait but times would be extended and Keith and I decided to start looking at the special needs children. If you are a CHI family you may already know this but they would post the special needs children on a special page on their website. I knew that CHI was going to be receiving some of these referrals so I waited (not very patiently) by the computer waiting for these children to pop up. I know it sounds obsessive but it was meant to be this way. On Valentines day a little girl that was 2 popped up we were not the first ones to inquire about her and now she has a wonderful family. The next day 4 beautiful children popped up around 11am. Nguyen Thanh Thuy was one of those beautiful faces. I hurried and called left a message and sent an email. I was the second phone call about these children because one little boy was already being looked at and the other three children were still available to be reviewed. We had never been parents before and knew that an infant as young as possible was right for us so we requested the profile of Nguyen Thanh Thuy. As soon as I got off the phone with Nicky I woke Keith (who works late nights) and told him we had a beautiful baby girl. I knew even before the medicals arrived in our email box that she was destined to be our daughter. Several hours later and after talking to the pediatrician we formly accepted her referral. In those months before we traveled I worried about her health, what she looked like, what she ate, what her personality was like, how she would bond, and everything else a first time parent would worry about. Even though she lived thousands of miles away for the first 5 months of us becoming her parents we loved her more than anything. Now we love her even more than we ever would have expected 1 year ago. Adoption is so wonderful and I cannot express how happy it has made us as a family. Keith said to me several months ago that if he was able to have children she may not have been our daughter and he was thankful for this. I know many out there may think that is crazy but we could not imagine our lives without her; temper tantrums and all.

On a second note since our angels toys have taken over the house and with the impending adoption of baby #2 we decided we needed a play room for all of Lennah's toys. So we worked on this task last weekend and earlier this week. I am so happy with the way it turned out. We still have kept a bed in here for guests but we think this will be great for when the girls are bigger and have sleep overs. At least the noise and mess will be contained.So here are some pics of our project.