Women who get pregnant and have their nine months to prepare for the birth of their child may have a marked advantage over those of us who take an alternative route, like adoption. After a foster-care experience that didn’t turn out exactly as my husband and I wanted we received a call that we were “teamed” to become the forever family of a four-year old little girl.
Now, don’t get me wrong, my husband had been to a state adoption fair three months before the call and told DCF that we were interested to learn more about the little girl that we eventually received the call about. She was a beautiful dark-blonde haired; hazel eyed beauty wearing a purple feather boa in the first picture that we ever saw of her. Honestly, by the time the call came we had all but forgotten, thinking that some other family had been chosen to adopt her.
The call did come, and we met her for the first time about two weeks later, which was followed by another visit where she wanted to come home with us, then a weekend visit, a long weekend visit, and she moved in. So, in all we had roughly one month to prepare ourselves and our house for the arrival of our daughter. We were scrambling to paint her room her favorite colors, pink and purple, to get her bunk beds and to make sure we had day care arranged for her as we both work full-time.
Within days of her moving in this perfectly behaved beauty began calling us Mommy and Daddy and we were even more wrapped around her little finger than we had been. I took a one week leave from work to get her settled in the routine of the house and just to take a deep breath and realize that I was now a mommy. It was a daunting thought, I wasn’t all that sure that I knew how to be the mommy of a pre-school child. She made it very easy, that first week she was more perfect than I can put into words. She sat quietly in her room and played by herself and didn’t wreak any kind of havoc at all. I should have known that life wasn’t going to stay that easy forever, but I left my rose-colored glasses on and told people that we had adopted the perfect child.
It was smooth sailing for a month or more and then I began to see cracks in her perfect façade. She was slowing becoming an emotional, dramatic and mouthy child. I have since learned that this is normal behavior for a child who is four going on five. This child could win an academy award for her dramatics at time and I didn’t know that I knew nothing about anything – but she makes sure she corrects me at all times. I have to say though, through it all we love this little girl with all our hearts and nothing could have made us happier than when her adoption became final in April 2006.
I am sure the road ahead will be awash with bumps and grooves, but as scared as we are we are looking forward to helping this girl grow into a beautiful young woman. If she doesn’t send us over the edge in the process.
