Friday, April 18, 2008

A year?


Hard to believe it's been 366 days—one full leap-year—since we saw this beautiful mug for the first time. I still vividly remember the sheer joy and excitement I felt when our agency rep called with the good news, and the gut-wrenchingly anxious wait between the phone call and the email that contained all his information (and of course his photo!). When I saw his picture for the first time, I remember thinking, "Of course. That's our son!" I can't explain the immediate and strong connection I felt to his photo. And after reading about his history, his first family, and his life up until that point, I was overcome with a sobering sense of responsibility for this little person.

While I was processing all this, Greg was stuck in a meeting and hadn't even had a chance to learn anything about his new son. All he knew was that we had a referral—he gathered that much from my screeching phone call (cut short by the start of his meeting) in which, he later told me, he at first thought I was shouting, "We have a squirrel! We have a squirrel!"

The 10 weeks we spent waiting to travel gave us an opportunity to wrap our minds around the idea of becoming parents. Our baby was no longer an abstract idea, but an actual living, breathing human being with a name and a story of his own. It suddenly was no longer all about us and our adoption journey, but about him. (Of course, it wasn't until we actually met him in July that we learned what "all about him" really meant.) It was the sweetest blessing of our lives.

Here's that sweet little blessing, then and now.


And here's Big Sidamo admiring Baby Sidamo. Who could blame him?


6 comments:

Julie said...

Okay- I am officially requesting the weekly Sidamo video blog post. He is too cute!
Congrats on one year!

Mark and Sarah said...

What a heartbreaker!
Hey, I noticed on your profile that one of your favorite books is Interpreter of Maladies...mine too! FYI: Lahiri just wrote a new book called Unaccustomed Earth that is a series of short stories in the same vein as IM...I am just about done with it and LOVE it too.

whatever_heather said...

I remember when you got your referral! Sidamo has grown so much and is so perfect in your family. I love his little voice! Congrats on one year. I am excited to watch him grow!
Love you guys!

Maia said...

I love hearing people's referral stories. Yours is a beautiful and powerful one.

Alicia said...

I didn't realize we had gotten our referrals on the same day!

LOVE the picture of him and "little him" - he has the sweetest smile!

Arielle said...

Congratulations! Hard to believe it has been a year already.