About 5 months after we started our paperwork, when our dossier was finally sent to China, I started a journal that was meant to be shared with Willow once she was old enough to understand. The original intention was to let her know what we were thinking about and feeling while we were waiting for her.
Unfortunately because the wait kept getting longer and longer, I did not keep up the journal. To be completely honest, I kind of forgot about it. Our feelings, dreams and anticipation about the adoption never changed...over time the situation has just become more desperate! I'm not sure that is something I could keep journaling about!
Maybe at this point I will just make it into something from the beginning of our wait and then again a story about the end of our wait, journaling briefly about the torturous long wait, telling of the stories of specific preparations that were made and then about our thoughts and feelings of when we first saw Willows face and about our dreams for our future as a family.
Anyway, I thought I would share the beginning of the original journal. This is not the journal in its entirety, just the first few paragraphs, it goes on to tell the story of Tom and my early years of marriage, our decision to adopt and our choice of China.
I believe all waiting families will appreciate the irony of my comment on the wait being "unbearable"...when we were just waiting for our LID! HA..the innocence....the naivety, I had at the time....Oh if I had only known the wait we had in front of us!
AND THEN THERE WERE THREE
THE STORY OF WILLOW MAKING US A FAMILY
02/19/2006: As I write this we are waiting for our LID from the CCAA. This is the next step in the process to bring you home. We are still many months away from going to China to get you, but you already feel like such a part of our family. There have been so many preparations and so much planning for your arrival, the anticipation is making the wait nearly unbearable!
I have so many questions……are you born yet? If you are, where are you? How long did you stay with your birth parents? Are you at an orphanage or in foster care? Are you okay? Are you happy? Are you scared? Do you know there are people half way around the world who already love you? Do you know that you are already considered part of these peoples family? What do you look like? How big are you? How much hair do you have? How do you look when you smile? What kind of personality do you have? My sweet baby, the list goes on and on! But for now we can only imagine the answers to all of these questions. What a wonderful day it is going to be when we finally get to meet you and get some of the answers. And what a joy it is going to be for us to discover the answers over the years.
I thought I would keep this journal for you so you could see the process of how we came together and let you know how we were feeling and what we were thinking during the process.
