About 10 weeks later we brought Juliette home from the hospital.
It all started with an email my friend didn't mean to send me, and I wasn't planning to read. I unlocked my phone one morning after dreaming we had adopted TWINS, to find my inbox open and an email pulled up that I did not remember opening. It was a forward from my friend from a California based adoption agency that she was on the outreach mailing list for, asking for more families to submit their profiles to a particular situation. What was extra strange was the the particulars were EXACTLY what Richard and I had discussed hoping for whenever we next DID adopt, from the gender of the child to the age of her birth mom - all down to the exact projected expense. So I decided I would just send it on to Richard anyway - see what he said. To my shock he told me he had gotten the strongest feeling a few nights prior that we would be adopting again SOON. So we should just send in our profile and see what happened.
And then we didn't get picked.
And then things changed - and we did!
After a late night phone conversation with the expectant Mom, Jasmine, she selected us to be her child's adoptive family. We were over the moon! BEYOND thrilled, and still so so surprised! We flew out to CA the next weekend to meet her and the baby's father, Carlos. We hit it off right way, and made a plan that I would return to California two weeks before the baby was due, so that I could help Jasmine run errands and make sure that I was there for the birth at the hospital. So mid-April Jack and I headed for California, and Richard flew in on the weekends after work on Friday. We had a blast just goofing off and waiting for baby girl to arrive.
 |
| Slurpy Time! Richard, Letty and Jasmine |
 |
| Carlos, Jack, Richard and Letty at the splash pad. |
 |
| Jasmine, Letty and Carlos goofing off. |
 |
| Jasmine and Jack (who LOVES her) |
Juliette Maureen was born on April 28th, 2015. We were all of us absolutely in love with her at very first sight.
 |
| Juliette and her birth-father Carlos |
 |
| Juliette with her birth parents Jasmine and Carlos |
 |
| Jack was absolutely fascinated from the moment he laid eyes on her. |
T |
| Jack, Jasmine (Juliette's birth mom), Letty and Richard |
The time we were able to spend with Juliette's birth family was absolutely amazing. Although it was a little bit frustrating she was late in arriving, all those days of hanging out and goofing helped learn a lot about Jasmine and Carlos. That knowledge is such a wonderful and fun thing to have now, because Juliette will laugh or pout or smile in a way that will completely remind me of them, and I can snap a photo and record in her baby book "This is TOTALLY your Jasmine look." And as she gets older I can tell her "You said that just like Carlos!" Open adoption is an amazing blessing!
Today Juliette is an thriving, precocious 2 year old. She absolutely loves to read books, and has an astonishing talent for memorizing their contents - she can repeat an entire children's book back to you after only having it read to her a couple times. She is obsessed with Princess Belle, and loves to belt her other favorite Princess's theme song "Let it Go!" at the top of her lungs. Like Jack she loves to dance, well, she loves to do EVERYTHING exactly the way her big brother does it - she is his little shadow. She is totally thrilled with her new baby brother as well, and constantly runs up pat his arm or cheek softly saying "I be soft! I be soft!" and "My baby!" in a funny little girly high pitched chant.
On February 18th 2017 the California courts FINALLY finished processing her paperwork, and we were were able to be sealed as a family in the St. Louis LDS Temple. For those of you not of our faith, in the LDS church there is a ceremony where we dress all in white and kneel at an altar as a family, just as a couple who is giving their wedding vows does, and there we vow as a family that we will love that little one as if they are flesh of our flesh, and bone of our bone. That there is NO DIFFERENCE than as if they had been born to us in the normal way. That we accept and love them completely, that they are ours and we are theirs. And when we say we are forming a 'forever family' - we don't just mean - for the rest of our lives on this earth. We mean forever, beyond the grave, and down through our children's children's children, we will all be linked as one.
No comments:
Post a Comment