Reflection and the longest post ever

As we near our departure I'm in a fog as to everything that has happened to make this possible. I think about the woman I met who was in the process of adopting from China that got us reading and researching adoption . I remember the seminars that we attended and the year that we waited until I was old enough to become a parent, in China's eyes. Then there was the dreaded homestudy, I spent a full 2 days cleaning and scrubbing, all for that 2 hour visit that determined whether we were fit to be parents. She did not look in the kitchen cabinets, although they were neat and stocked. She did not look in the garage and my husband was disappointed after the work he put in. Next was the excitement I felt when we finally got our first dossier compiled and sent to Children's Hope, we had planned to have baby home within a year, in time for our sons 4th birthday. We bought asian dolls and Chinese art. We joined our local group and had play dates, secret swaps of baby toys and fabric to make a quilt. Every month we would hear discouraging news about the China adoption process but we just new it would change the next month. Month after month of waiting with a seemingly endless line of hopeful parents who barely moved an inch, all of us with the same goal in mind. After a year or more of waiting with no end in sight we tossed and turned with the idea of changing to Ethiopia, hating to give up on our dream, one we had poured our hearts and souls into. Finally making the decision to start all over again, taking another leap of faith into the unknown. We dutifully gathered the paperwork again but were a little more subdued in our celebration. We quietly waited, stalked and researched. I spent hours reading blogs of families that had brought their children home and somehow believed that it would happen to us. We have contacted so many adoptive families that have all become intwined in our lives and yet have actually met only a handful face to face. We saw and felt our family come together to help and support us in more ways than we could ever return. Then we sweated out the week that we hoped and prayed we would get the call but the call didn't come. Then I did the one true thing that makes no sense at all. I hoped and I prayed we would NOT get the call. I didn't want to be the family who got the call at the beginning of the rainy season and know about our daughter for months and months and do nothing. As fate would have it, 2 days after the courts closed we got the call that our daughter was ready, but we would still have to wait. We waited for 3 months and were told it still was not time. We waited another month...depressed doesn't even begin to express how I felt. I would think of this tiny baby, all 7 pounds of her every minute of every day. She was in my thoughts, in my prayers, in my tears but not in my arms. Finally my husband calls on THE DAY, The day I new would be the day she would be ready to come home. I couldn't answer the phone as I was in the dentist chair and didn't know if I could contain myself if the news was bad. I didn't know if I could contain myself if the news was good either. So I waited for the assistant to tighten and twist my braces and I smiled and told her that I may be a mother of two. On the way out of the office I began to cry. Finally I called my husband and then I cried some more. I cried hard and long and for so many reasons but for most of all it was finally time. 3 years from the beginning and exactly 2 years from our original Log in Date we were told our daughter was ready to come home. I could feel the relief in my husbands voice when he told me the news, happy to be a dad but I think more happy that his wife would finally be happy again. I could pick our son up from school and confidently tell him he was a big brother, that she would be home soon. In 4 days we will take a very long flight to meet our daughter. Her latest pictures show she is strong, beautiful and perfect. I use to wonder if the love you have for an adopted child is different from the love you have for a biological child. The answer is no, The only thing that is different is the way in which you fall in love.