Wow, it's been a whole year. Not since Landon got home, not since we started the process, the day we first saw his little face. One year ago today we were surprised with a referral. It was sort of surreal.
We had barely sent in the information to switch to a single child, I was driving home and my cell phone rang. I didn't recognize the number but it was from Maryland. Hmmm... coincidence or the agency? I answered and talked with the head social worker about an email with the referral waiting for me at home. She wanted to talk to me before I read it since this was going to be quite a change.
Heather got home while I was on the computer looking at the referral, not realizing what was about to happen. I gave her a funny look and told her that we got a referral. We had gotten a document of medical info and some bio and a picture of what would be our son. He was such a cutie, not just because he was cute but because we were finally able to put a face to this unknown child that we were on a journey to meet. It made it more real. To go from an idea of sorts, siblings to a single child, an fuzzy thought of some child, boy, girl, who knows. Now we had a face, an age, a name, a real child waiting for us. Things quickly came into focus as we saw the end of the journey, could see ourselves meeting him for the first time, all the hassle of paperwork and dreadful waiting swept away by this little boy looking at us, into us, into our hearts, latching on with his little chubby hands, pulling us to him, thousands of miles away, wanting to meet us, not knowing how big a deal it was, just pulling us along.
At that point, any thoughts we had of being in control or having a say went out the window. We knew we were just along for the ride - and what a ride it has been.
Here is a comparison of the picture we got in the referral and one from this evening. Landon was I think 10 months old in the referral photo. The referral got to us just before his first birthday, and we are preparing to celebrate his first one with us.
Quite a bit of a difference, eh? Even though the whole process has been going on longer, it has been one year since it really began for us. Here are some pictures from the past year.
