Goodbye 2007

What a year it has been for our family! It's amazing how one year can bring so much change, I am certainly not the same person I was this time last year. We've been on an absolute roller coaster and after a gut wrenching course of twists and turns it has indeed delivered us safely to where we are today. Here's a little peek at what 2007 looked like for us.

In January we were brand new to the adoption scene. We mailed in our application right after Christmas, and were eagerly awaiting the instruction packet that would guide us through the formal application process with the agency. We were excited, anxious, but so relieved that we had finally veered off the infertility road and were making our way towards adoption. We had no idea the ride we were in for! On January 23, we had our first home study meeting, and met our social worker for the first time. He was quite the character, and immediately put us at ease with the process, a nice way to start!

February brings many birthdays in our family. My new brother-in-law Michael kicks it off on the 2nd and then my mum, sister-in-law Amy, and sister Michelle all fall over the 15, 16 and 17th (weird huh?). Michelle and Amy were born a day apart, in the same hospital, here we are 30 years later and Amy is married to my brother. Yes, I did say 30, both Michelle and Amy turned 30 this year, and we celebrated with a combined birthday at our house. Lots of fun! We had our 2nd and 3rd meetings for our home study as well this month. In our third meeting, the home visit, our social worker met Ian and instigated what is now fondly known as "the booger incident", remember that? If not, read this post under the February 20th heading, I can look back on it and laugh now.

March is a bit of a blur I'll admit. End of February into March we were kind of crazy working on our dossier for the Guatemalan adoption...paperwork, paperwork, and more paperwork! We were also working on Michelle's wedding invitations, and preparations for her shower, so it was a very busy month!

April was busy as well! We had last minute preparations for Michelle's April 14th bridal shower, and then the shower itself! It was a wonderful day, and we were able to pull off a surprise for Michelle right up until the last day when she started to suspect something. Well, at least she came looking beautiful! We told her we were going to work on the place cards for her wedding, she could have shown up in sweats and a baseball hat...I'm thinking that would not have been her first apparel choice for her bridal shower! Later in the month, we had our fingerprinting appointments for our I-600A application (this is for the advance processing for immigration of a child adopted outside the country), that was an experience! Then at the very end of the month we were presented with the opportunity for a domestic match. We were so excited, yet completely freaking out as the baby was due right around my sister's wedding, and I was the matron of honor!

May was a very bumpy month. Over the span of four days we were brought from the unbelievable high of watching my sister get married to the absolute excitement of hearing the baby we were matched with was born the very next morning, the anxiety of traveling to Connecticut to meet him, the instant love and connection we felt with this little one day old infant (we were going to call him Max), the contentment and excitement we felt all that night and the next morning, and then the crushing blow of learning the birth mother had changed her mind. Driving home that day we felt so empty. The vacant infant car seat, the piles of freshly laundered baby clothing, the empty bassinet, they were all reminders of what we almost had. It was a very difficult couple weeks for us. Not only did we lose this child we had started to consider our own, we had been derailed from completing our dossier for Guatemala and were set back about a month. We channeled all our disappointment and frustration into completing our dossier. Our social worker advised that we take some time to grieve but we were just aching to keep going, we had already lost enough time getting to our baby!

June was very nice, I have to say. We watched our little boy graduate from kindergarten, as well as perform in his very first piano recital. I couldn't believe how grown up he was getting! We also completed our dossier and got it submitted amidst it all, we were finally on the waiting list for Guatemala! It was such a relief to have gotten that far! We were looking forward to a great summer!

July started with a trip to visit some very good friends out in upstate New York. We had such a good time just hanging out with them, doing all sorts of fun things including tie dying, a trip to one of the beautiful Ithaca waterfalls, and a trip to the zoo. Little did we know that on that first day of July while we were enjoying a visit to the zoo a little girl named Ana was born in Guatemala. That little girl would soon change our lives! Ana shares her birthday month with her daddy, we celebrated Greg's birthday with a party at home still oblivious that our daughter had been born.

In August we celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary. Greg couldn't get the actual day off, but was able to get the day before. We decided to go mini golfing, and about a quarter way through the course received the phone call we had been so anxiously awaiting. Our social worker announced "It's a girl!". We had been matched with Ana, and if we could get to his office soon we could see her pictures. Greg's mom just happened to be in the area and picked up Ian for us so we could hurry to meet with the social worker. We were so anxious and excited making that drive, what would she look like? When the pictures were presented to us, there was this amazing feeling of contentment. I'm sure I didn't hear a word said to us, I just stared at that little face the entire time. We had found our daughter! The summer is kind of a blur, but I know that at some point Ian learned to ride a bike, to swim without floaties again (because he was doing it the summer before, he just forgot he could do it!), learned to tie his shoes and started to really sound out words (in fact, he is pretty much reading now, when he wants to that is, sounding out lots of different things and surprising us every day...our days of spelling things to each other to hide information from Ian are pretty much over!) A wonderful month it was, but not without it's lows. We sadly lost one of our beloved cats Sophie that same month. We miss her very much.

September brought a new year of school (another year of kindergarten just because of his age), and Ian's first time on the school bus (far more difficult for me than him!). We passed our first milestone with the receipt of Ana's DNA results, and with that we got our first glimpse of Ana's birth mother. Our first baby turned six years old which was celebrated over a marathon birthday weekend, I still can't believe he's actually six! And we got our first feeling for how bumpy the ride on the Guatemalan adoption roller coaster is. We made plans for our trip to visit Ana under the uncertainty brought on by announcements made by the US Department of State that adoptions from Guatemala may cease to be processed after the first of the year. A very scary time for any one involved in an adoption from Guatemala!

October brought yet another bumpy month. We started the month by receiving Ana's visa pre-approval from the US Embassy, yet another milestone completed! Two days later we were boarding a plane to meet our daughter, we would spend five glorious days with her. This little three month old with the black sticky up hair and a smile to brighten any one's day burned a place in my heart the moment I saw her. Our time with her was amazing but it was clouded with the news we had just heard days before. There was a lot of information flying around about the statements being made regarding the future of Guatemalan adoptions. We were so committed to this little girl, and we were hearing reports that we may not be allowed to complete her adoption. It would have been hard enough to say good bye to her without the rumors, but leaving Ana there in Guatemala with so much unknown was undoubtedly the hardest thing I've ever had to do. And during all the adoption business, our little monkey lost his very first tooth receiving 5 gold coins from the tooth fairy! He dressed as a mad scientist for Halloween and had a blast trick-or-treating. It was a nice way to end the month!

On to November, an interesting month! Greg and I spent a good portion of the month feeling lousy. We believe we caught the bug Ana was fighting while we were visiting. After all the testing (remember the couples' night in the emergency room?) we believe we were battling a form of mono (wouldn't that make a great VISA commercial? Airfare to Guatemala $$$, Hotel for 5 days $$$, catching mono from your 3 month old daughter, priceless...). It was miserable, and Greg got strep on top of it. Anyways, life continued. We watched as Guatemala elected a new president, and entered PGN, the final big hurdle of the adoption process. We endured more ups and downs regarding the implementation of new adoption law in Guatemala, a literal roller coaster day to day (sometimes hour to hour!) that I dealt with by indulging in bouts of retail therapy. We celebrated a wonderful Thanksgiving, and shortly after, my 33 birthday. We spent the end of the month getting Christmas decorations up, and enjoying some family time. I love that time of year!

And that brings us to December. We started a new tradition this year, a new way to count down to Christmas. Each day, well almost every day (we ran into some issues getting an activity in every day), anyways, the plan was that each day we would have a new activity to do. These activities were written on tags and numbered so that each day Ian got to take a new tag off the tree. I really enjoyed this idea and am hoping to continue it for years to come. It gave us time every day to do something special together, isn't that what's best about this season? On top of our daily activities, we had Greg's brother come in from Alaska which was a special event. He hadn't been home in quite a while so it was really nice to have him home. We also got to see Ian sing in his very first school Christmas concert, a very cute show! And then there was the whole tooth extraction fiasco, not a high point, but it did result in my witnessing a prescription for ice cream for the first time ever! We held on tight as our case eased it's way through the PGN and are hoping to hear some news this week regarding where we stand. We celebrated a wonderful Christmas with our family and spent last night with my sister and her husband and my mum and dad. Ian stayed awake to see the New Year come in and had a glass of "champagne" (sparkling cider of course) to celebrate the occasion. He outlasted some of the adults, right Shelle, mum and dad?

As I look back over the year, it's really amazing to see where we've been. It has truly been a year of extreme ups and downs. For all the bumps along the road though, I am happy with where the year brought us. We end 2007 with many life lessons learned, and surrounded by the love and unending support of our families and of our friends, many of whom we have gathered through our adoption journey. I am very excited to begin 2008, after all, I truly believe this is the year we officially become a family of four! But I know regardless of where 2008 brings us that we are truly, amazingly blessed. So goodbye 2007, you were interesting to say the least and hello 2008, what do you have in store for us? Bring it on!