THE CALL (Y'all want details?)

Setting: Monday, October 19, 2009: 2:51pm. In my office at work. Suddenly, the phone rings. THE ring. The crazy one I had just the night before programmed into my phone so I could stop being so jumpy whenever the cell phone went off.

Caller ID: It's our case manager!!! Hands start shaking. Brief surprise that the phone actually works in my cement block, no window cave.

Me: Hello!?!?!

J: Hi, M, this is J from *our agency,* is this a good time to talk?

M: I had a feeling you might call today. (Nervous laugh and now the tears are flowing.)

J: She laughs. It's a good day! I have a little girl to tell you about.

At this point, I'm dashing upstairs to my friend H's classroom so she can be there. If A isn't with me, I want her there.

J starts to give me details as I sprint down the hall. I ask her to wait a second as I make it to H's room, gasp her name, and say "PAPER!." I kick some kids out of the workroom between H and another teacher's classroom and sit down.

I'm shaking so much I cannot write as J begins talking again. Tears are all over my face, and H eventually gets me a tissue or 5.

J tells me her name. Starts with a T, and I've never heard it before. She spells it for me, but I can't grasp it and spell it wrong. No matter. I learn MY DAUGHTER is 8 months old on paper, but she's small, very small, and if that is the case, she's most likely a bit behind what most children can do at 8 months. If she 8 months, she's most likely been malnourished for at least part of that time. The HH doctor thinks she's probably more like 4-6 months instead.

She is from the southern part of ET and came to HH on Oct. 12. She looks like other ET children I've met from that area. R is from the north, and so they both look Ethiopian, very much so, but in different ways. The eyes, they're beautiful. I see her spirit in them. She's tiny but strong. I so wish I could share her picture with you. Obviously, not yet. But I hope soon.

Blood work results came back on the 16th, and she's good to go. She has pink eye, and they're giving her drops. Her sweet head is shaved because she has fungus (very common, I'm guessing ringworm) on it. She had diarrhea when she arrived but is better now. She has a bad cold, but she's doing fine. She's 12 pounds. (That's how much R weighed when she came home at 3 months, so I know how small she is.) She's cutting a tooth and trying to roll over on her own. J says she can't sit on her own, but in one of the 3 pictures we have, she is clearly sitting up.

She makes eye contact and is very alert. She's perfect.

I call my husband. He says, "and why are there no pictures in my inbox?" J was sending them right then.

By then, it is 3:05, and the students are dismissed at 3:10 so I tell him I'll call him back when H's room clears out.


I text a few people. I can only get out the word "Referral" as my hands are still shaking. A lot. (My dad calls A and ask him what that means. He tells him it means he has 2 granddaughters now.)


I call A back. We look at the pictures together, over the phone, just like with R. Her daddy is speechless. He's in love with her.

She's our girl. Our sweet, tiny, miracle of a girl. Our baby E! Her big sister is so proud that she had to bring her own copies of the 3 pictures we received with her to my friend M's house today (she's there when I'm at work).

She's older than I had imagined her to be, and we got our referral in less than 1/2 the time we thought we would. When we got on the list in May, we were told the wait for a girl referral was 10 to 12 months and that it was slowing down. It's been 5 months.

So, my girls (if we keep her birthdate as is-- will decide later) are 15 months apart instead of at least two years like A and I had meticulously planned. (Sweet, she was born when I was still 29!!) But she's our girl, and I hope that my sweet daughters will love being so close in age.

And again, this is a lesson that we cannot put our timelines on adoption. With both, we've been completely wrong about timeframes.

That's it. :)