Wow! It's been a year now since my little girl came home. From now on I'm going to call her M. It's much easier. She's doing great and still such a sweet baby. When she said "Ommy" and gave me a big hug the other day it made me swell with joy and pride.

This was taken July 13, the day of her birthday party.

In remembrance of last summer I'm posting an article that I wrote for the school newsletter where I used to teach. It sure brings back a flood of memories.

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"Adopting M" or "How a Phone Call Transformed Me from a Teacher to a Parent"

- - - submitted by Mrs. April H.

During the summer of 2004 my husband, D, and I decided to add to our family through domestic infant adoption. The process of adoption has been compared to a woman's pregnancy. You research adoption and make the decision to adopt during the first trimester. In the second trimester, you complete all the paperwork and take classes necessary to adopt. The third trimester is when you wait for a child. As in a pregnancy, the third trimester is the most trying of your patience; however in adoption, unlike a pregnancy, there is no due date. This is the time when you have the least control, and when your faith in God's providence is put to the test. While D and I were waiting to adopt we often reminded each other that the right baby would come to us at the right time. All we could do was wait and pray.

In January of this year we were approved to adopt and became a "waiting family", beginning the third trimester of our adoption process. When my 4th-6th grade students learned I was adopting a baby, they were excited. They thought it would be great to have a baby in the classroom. They joked about how he or she could pass out their papers in a walker. I played along and said that I would bring a baby swing to use at recess. I didn't have the heart to tell them that I would be leaving them once I brought a baby home. They eventually did find out, and school continued on as normal. Occasionally students would ask how things were going with "the kid," and I would tell them that babies were being born, and that I was waiting for the right one to come along.

The school year ended and the carefree days of summer began. At least that's how I viewed summer from a teacher's perspective. In August, otherwise known as the seventh month of our third trimester, Doug and I took a trip to Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire. We thought it might be our last vacation without children and kept our cell phone nearby in case we got a call from our case worker, but we tried not to get too hopeful.

We returned home on a Tuesday, and I planned to go to school and get my classroom ready the following week. Thursday morning at 8:30 the phone rang. It was our adoption case worker. She never called that early in the morning, and when she asked me if I was sitting down, I knew she had some good news. She told me we had been chosen to adopt a three week old baby girl! I quickly called D at work and tried to make sense of it all.

This phone call began a week of scurrying around buying everything a baby would need, going to the adoption agency, reading books on infant care, visiting our new baby, and choosing a name for her. After a week we were able to take our little M L home with us, and since then our life has made a complete change. D and I both agree that God sent us the perfect baby. We can no longer imagine our lives without her. She is such a blessing and an answer to prayer.

Although I no longer work at the school, you haven't seen the last of Mrs. H. M and I stop in occasionally to visit with the staff and to see the kids. We don't want to be strangers to our friends at [school name]. We hope to see you soon!

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I will be teaching that drawing class once a week for one period to the high schoolers at my old school. It took all summer for the lazy board to offer me a contract. Now my babysitter isn't calling me back to discuss childcare. I think I'll have to call her again. I left a message Monday, and I know she isn't on vacation. How rude!

I have a little update on my daughter's foster/interim care family. They send us a package a couple weeks after the adoption confirmation with a note and a cute outfit. Sadly there were no photos included. They said they couldn't come to the court date because they had surprised their kids that morning and taken them to Mackinac Island for the day. They say it's the thought that counts, but I would have been much happier with the photos instead of the clothes.

I am nearly done with everything related to the adoption. We now have M's birth certificate. I just need to get her a social security card. I keep forgetting to get it. Maybe next week I'll remember.

We are currently working on adoption number two, which I will write about in my next entry.