A few days ago Nate was holding one screaming child, I was holding the other. And as I watched the blood drip down my leg I realized something: we were going to be fine. I don’t mean in any profound, the world was ours for the taking kind of fine. I mean that the babies were going to get fed and changed and loved on and the four of us were on one continent so really, what else was there?
Sure, within twenty-four hours of parenting two children under two I had somehow managed to put a diaper on one child but forgotten to fasten it so it ended up around their ankles and completely useless, and sure I had absent-mindedly given the eight month old a piece of pizza instead of the 22 month old, and yes it was true that Nate asked to gatecheck both of the children, but we were going to be fine. After all we cleaned up the first mess, didn’t actually let the eight month old eat the piece, and Nate assured the ticket agent he actually wanted to get boarding passes for the kids, not gatecheck them. So yeah, we would be fine. I would end up limping for the next however many days and the sidewalk would need a hosing off and my favorite pair of jeans got ruined in the fall but we would be fine. Better than fine. But there’s nothing wrong with fine either.
My parents stayed with us the first week home, that was amazing. They did everything, and we just loved on the two little ones and tried to get Tal on the right time-zone. It’s special to share those first days with the people who raised me. I miss them. Thane really misses them. They sing to him and read to him and love him like crazy.
Nate is lucky enough to get a month of paternity leave, and we’re cocooning hard around here. There’s something completely breathtaking about waking up and realizing you don’t have to wonder how your baby is doing, you know. You can tiptoe to his crib and listen to him breathe. You know when he’s crying and when he’s happy. He lays against my chest while I rock him to sleep and I feel lost in this fog of wondering if this is really real. Because it seems too good to be true that the wait is over, that he’s with us. That the process of making this his home has begun. It’s a surreal feeling to know that the “happily ever after” of my side of the adoption story is the “in the beginning” for his. Because he had a home. A country. A culture. A foster family who loves him and cared for him. This isn’t home. Not yet. I call it home, yes. Because it will be so. Because it’s waiting for him whenever he wants it. Whenever his little heart is ready for it.
Next month will be three years since we dropped our application to agency #1 in the mail. At that point they said we would certainly have a child home within a year. That seems so ludicrous now. Two years ago this month, a few days ago actually, was the anniversary of our first referral – the baby who didn’t make it. And a year ago this month Thane had been with us just two months. And now here we are, the four of us together. It didn’t go like I had planned, it wasn’t what I imagined, it isn’t even what I would have picked. But I look at these two children and I catch my breath at the thought that I get to mother them. The honor of that is more than I can say.
{{All pictures from his first week “home”.}}
