Q-Boo

(continued from last blog post)

But they hadn't found Princess T. My heart fell. They'd found another little girl with Bladder Exstrophy and would we like to look at her referral?  A referral is magic- fairy dust and marshmellows and moonlight all wrapped up into one email attachment - it's the whole reason that an adoptive parent goes through this mess. It is the tangible proof that somewhere there is an end, there is a child. <cue music>

Okay, actually what a referral is, is information. It is all the information released by the Chinese government about the child...with PICTURES! The pictures are the frosting but the info is the cake. You may fall in love with the pictures but you pour over the information, trying to read between the lines, trying to figure it all out. You get everything that they've got - the original Chinese documents (so that you can have them translated if you want to) and the tranlasted English documents. And then, you get about two weeks to decide if you want to proceed with the adoption. Two weeks to make a decision, with not a lot to go on, that will affect the lives of eveyone that you love.

Pressure? What pressure?

I've got to admit to you that I only agreed to look at this new referral because I was planning on looking, waiting a few days, and then emailing back, "No, thank-you." I mean, seriously, I was really trying. You want to feel like a great big piece of mean, guilty, nasty, human? Look at the videos, pictures, and info of an ORPHAN and then say, "No."   Boy, is that hard! We'd already turned down two referrals (in non-special needs and minor special needs, you get matched to a child that fits your criteria but in more moderate/major special needs you get to see the referrals and chose whether or not to accept the child- I told ya, this is COMPLICATED) and I was NOT looking forward to turning down a third. But, I was trying to keep an open mind - trying not to get tunnel-visioned- all the while not wanting to give up on my hope that they'd find Princess T.

So, in early July, Q-Boo's little face came scrolling SLOWLY across my computer. It took up my whole computer screen and my heart started beating harder as I scrolled down to look at her. It was love at first sight. You hear stories, in adoption, about someone seeing a picture and KNOWING that that is their kid. Skeptical, does not even begin to cover it. You can not understand it until it happens to you. Honestly, I still don't understand it, I just feel it.

Everything in me, all the way down inside the deepest part of my bones was screaming, "Oh, yes!!" I could literally hear the words, crashing like cymbals, inside of my head, "OH, YES!"

The "Oh, yes!" picure. This one is framed all over my house.

There were five more, of varying ages, and we've had to guesstimate how old she was in each one:

6 months?

3 or 4 months old?

This was a tiny wallet size picture on her hospital intake forms
so she was about 24-36 hours old, best guess.

9 months?

I really wondered if I should post these last two photos.
I decided that it's the truth, these were part of the referral,
and I couldn't put in the referral photos without them.
This is not all Disney World and magic,
we're talking about here. This is real life.
 We had these two photos and some info from a hospital stay to
decide if her needs were too big for us to handle.
Talking to the specialists in the States was invaluable-
they told us that her needs are NOT NEARLY what they could be.

We'd found her. After 20 years of waiting, there it was, my daughter's face.

But wait, there was research to be done. We have other kids, their sister has to be a sibling not a burden and eventually, her care, if she needs it, will fall to them. Thankfully, my husband and I are a good balance. So, while my heart was screaming, "She's my daughter, just tell me what needs to be done!" My husband was asking, "What are her needs? Can we do this? Is she a good fit for our family?" You need both. When you're making a decision with ramifications like this you need heart and mind - emotion and logic. So, we called an International Adoption Doctor, we spoke with the world leaders in Bladder Exstrophy, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and our local specialists, Scottish Rite of Atlanta. We talked and talked and TALKED.

In the end, we decided what my heart already knew, "Yes." Seriously, I could have sung an entire opera by myself right then. I know I danced around like I was in one.

But, I was confused. My gut told me that Q-Boo was THE ONE but it seemed like we had been led straight to Princess T. What about Princess T? What about all those people who'd I'd contacted and said, "We want to find her, how do we do it?" AND, I was scared. I knew that if we accepted Q-Boo's referral we would really lose all hope of finding Princesss T. Saying "yes" to Q-Boo was saying "no" to Princess T, no matter how far out the prospect. I know that God does produce crazier miracles. I pulled both of their pictures up on the computer and looked at them together. I was astounded that everything in me really did say, "It's Q-Boo. Q-Boo is my daughter." I couldn't believe it- not Princess T? No, not Princess T. (I found out later that, right around this SAME time, Princess T's family was receiveing the news that they'd been praying for for MONTHS-Princess T would be their daughter.)

There were two things that bugged me about this adoption: K names and a first birthday.

The family name in our family is "Kenneth" (hence, calling my hubby K-Man) and many of the men have variations of this name. In fact, both of my younger kids have K names. I wanted to name Q-Boo, "Lyric" because she, obviously, is the words to this song that has played for so long in my heart. Would she be upset because she didn't have a K name? Would she feel different? Would it matter to her? Q-Boo's Chinese last name is "Qin." (In China surnames come first so, to American ears, it sounds like her first name.)  I was prouncing it like "Quin" in English in my head and it wasn't until I heard the translation that I realized that it really sounds like "Ken."   Q-Boo had a K name, already. (In fact, she HAS her grandfather's name.)

I LOVE first birthdays, they are special. I love the mess and the fun and the milestone. I WANT first birthday pictures of my kids but with an adopted little girl, odds were that her first birthday would pass by, completley uneventful in my life. Pictures were not even on the radar. But......according to her referral, Q-Boo's first birthday was the next week!

So, on July 8th, 2011, on Q-Boo's FIRST birthday, we accepted her referral. On Q-Boo's first birthday she got a family and we got a little girl. As soon as I got off of the phone with my agency, I RACED off to the bakery and bought Q-Boo her first birthday cake. I'd mentioned to my agency that I wanted a picture of Q-Boo and her foster mom and, a few days later, one arrived in my email. It had a digital tag date of 7-8-11. I have a picture of Q-Boo on her first birthday. Um, wow.

Happy Birthday, Q-Boo!

Q-Boo, in her foster mother's arms, ON her first birthday!

I am so excited. I am also so excited that Princess T is a permanent piece of our adoption experience and must be included in the story of how we found Q-Boo. Without Princess T, I would never have known that I was open to Bladder Exstrophy and I'd never have alerted my agency to that fact- they'd never have offered us the chance to look at Q-Boo's referral. In fact, I would have been completely scared of Bladder Exstrophy but I'd spent almost 5 months watching Princess T's progress and falling in love with this beautiful little fighter. Then, amazingly, she became the bridge to my daughter. I still shake my head. I can't wait to tell Q-Boo all about Princess T and how God often directs you in one way to get you back to something totally different, but better, for you. Yes, when God directs it, the ends get all tied together.

(Right after this, we were sitting at a restaurant and K-Man said to me, in A-Girl-paraphrase, "You seem so content, aren't you going crazy to get your hands on her?" I thought about it and then I answered, "You know, don't misunderstand me, I WANT her...but, for 20 years she's been a thought in my head, a maybe, a wish...I've always wondered about her. And, now? Now, she has a face, she has a name and a history. I know who she IS. I'm just sorta marveling in that right now." It was true. I'm waaaaay past that phase, now. hahahaha Now, I just WANT her! But it was amazing when it happened.)

In a totally unexpected and SO COOL twist. I recieved a friend request from Princess T's adoptive mom on Facebook. Yeah, I know! Take a deep breath and THINK about that!

She'd heard about me from some of the other women in the "We love Princess T Club," and she contacted me. She has a blog, we email! (The story of how Princess T came to be their daughter is WOW!) Which means that I've gotten to keep a tiny piece of Princess T -FOR COOL! I got to "watch" as her mom and dad went to China to pick her up, I've seen pics of her in her new home with her brothers - I get to watch her grow up! How wonderful is that???

Princess T at home in the States with her daddy and her mommy.

(A-Girl sidenote: Her mom has an etsy store, WildPoppyShoppe , which I LOVE. Her stuff looks exactly like stuff that I'd make which means that Princess T will grow up with an artsy mom, a dad that adores her and two big brothers in the house, just like Q-Boo!!!!)

OH! AND, I found her! I found Lyric, she's being fostered through Grace and Hope for Children  (she's known as "Naomi" through them) and I've already spoken with people there. As soon as the adoption is official, they can give me pictures and pages of information that span the entire time she's been in foster care -since about 11 days after she was born.  Oh, yeah!

<deep sigh>