Getting Caught Up...

Many people reading this will know all about our journey to become parents, but in case you don't know the whole story I thought I'd start there.

Lisa & I met in 2001, when I was trying my hand at being single. After a rocky start, we started dating just before Christmas that year. It didn't take us long to start talking about having kids, and by the following summer I was trying to get pregnant. The whole pregnancy thing was quite the ride - thanks to some wonderful friends, we tried known donor insemination, we tried working with the fertility clinic, then with another doctor. A couple of times, we were certain I was pregnant. Bottom line is, it just wasn't happening for us.

Skip ahead to the summer of 2007. I was at a community event when I got a call from a friend about a social worker in another community who was working with a woman who was pregnant but not likely to be able to parent. She was wondering if we'd be interested in adopting the baby. After considering it for about a second, we said yes and jumped into the land of adoption without really knowing what we were in for.

That adoption didn't pan out, but it did get us talking about other options for having a family. That July, we applied to adopt through our local social services office. We were told there would be a wait - probably a long one. In August, 2008, we received a letter saying we'd been released for our home study. We were excited. We weren't getting any younger, you know!

We met with our adoption worker, we took 9 weeks of parenting classes (a program called PRIDE, ironically), we deliberated about the type of child we wanted (in adoption lingo, our "range of acceptance", which includes age, gender, and culture along with every possible issue, behaviour, health condition, history you could imagine) and we waited. Our home study report was completed on March 6, 2009. We waited some more.

On June 15 we got THE CALL. We'd been matched with a 5-year-old girl. We went into the social services office to review her profile, and it seemed she was perfect for us. She likes playing dress up, swimming, fishing, camping, and joking around. She loves movies. She liked school, and did well in Kindergarten. She's not a picky eater. She's healthy and developing well. And, if all those things didn't "get" us, she's absolutely adorable.

Her name is Tyla.

We wanted to meet her. Right away.

We waited some more.

On July 24, we finally got to meet Tyla at a park in Regina. We were nervous. What if she ran away screaming when she saw us? What if she didn't like the idea of having 2 moms? What if her foster parents didn't like us?

Well, all of our fears were unfounded. We met Tyla, her foster parents, and her worker, and it went better than we ever could have imagined. She loves playgrounds, so showed us around her favourite play structures (she likes slides and climbing on things, but isn't so fond of swings) and then got us involved in some very elaborate games she'd created. She seemed to have fun, especially when she created a "hotel" where we each had our own room - she was the manager and would bring us room service, pyjamas, slippers, and let us stay up as late as we wanted to! She loves to collect leaves, sticks, feathers, and the like, so we came home with piles of souvenirs from our first meeting, as well as our very first family picture:

Since then, we've met with Tyla as much as we can. We've spent a lot of time at playgrounds, which she loves. She's told Lisa & I that she's going to "get us into shape". I hope she's right!

We've done lots of exploring, and collecting, and playing. We can't wait to do more, more, more.

We had our first sleepover, which was a grand success. We played Chutes & Ladders, hung out with the cats, and watched the movie Cars, which is her current favourite (she always cracks up at Tow Mater!). By the end of the movie, she had moved from her own chair to snuggle in between Lisa and I on the couch. At that moment, my "mom heart" dropped into my chest. It was amazing. In the morning, we all went to the Park Cafe for her first breakfast (of many) at our favourite weekend brunch joint. She's my perfect fruit cup companion - all of the things I don't eat in my brunch fruit cup (cataloupe? honeydew? gross!), she loved and polished off gladly. It was heaven.

This week we haven't seen Tyla at all. We miss her. Last night she called and left us a message to say goodnight. I cried.

Her birthday is this weekend, and we can't get down to see her or be at the party her foster family is having. We've promised that, when she comes to live with us, we'll have a second birthday party and it will be fabulous. She seemed okay with that - I think most kids are okay with having two birthday parties!

She's coming back to see us next week - there will be more sleepovers and then, if we're all ready, she will move in near the end of the week.

A week from now, we will be parents. My stomach just flipped as I wrote that.