The first time we saw Michael's face

It was an ordinary day--except that we were hoping it would turn out to be extraordinary.

A year ago today I took the day off of work to spend it with Louis, my brother Ricky, and his two sons who were visiting from out of town. We had a wonderful day, but I was never far from my cell phone--which is normally turned off and sitting in the car. I am not a fan of cell phones.

That day, however, I was hoping for a call. We knew the latest shared list of children who were ready for adoption was being released from China that day, and after being passed over for the February list, we were ready to be matched with our child.

Since we were open to a boy or a girl, we were pretty sure we'd be matched with a boy. (And that is a longer blog for another day.) What else did we know? We knew that he would be younger than Louis and living in China. Otherwise, we had no idea who our child would be.

Anyway, as the day went on and the phone didn't ring, I got increasingly frustrated. I am not a patient person, and the recent shared lists had been small. John and I were feeling a bit discouraged.

After spending the day at my parents' house, Louis and I got ready to head home. As I was buckling Louis into his car seat, my cell phone rang. It was our social worker. She had a referral. I unbuckled Louis, rushed back to my parents' house, placed him in my mother's arms, and ran to the phone.

The call itself is a blur. I learned our son's name, birthdate, and where he lived. He was a Guangdong boy, born while we were in China adopting Louis--which I had guessed, along with many guesses, some of which were right and more that were way off. I hung up, called John, and then we waited, sitting at computers 20 miles away from each other, waiting for an email with information about the child who would become our son.

Then the email arrived. And there he was.

He was serious. He was focused. He was cute, cute, cute.

We--especially Louis--loved that he had a toy in his hands.

And we were thrilled to see his laughing face.

Looking at these photos today gives me chills. We still have some of them framed at home and at work. They will always be special, this first glimpse we had of our Michael.

By the time we traveled to meet him six months later, he had grown so much. In the six months we have known him, he has changed our world.

He slipped naturally into his life as our son.

And he got the brother thing immediately. He adores his big brother "Ooo-ooo" except when they both want the same toy. Just don't ask me how often that is.

He's opinionated, one of the most determined children I've met, adventurous (as long as it's not animal-related)...



...and he takes his food very, very seriously.

He loves vehicles--especially trucks and fire engines--and listening to a somewhat souped-up version of "This Little Light of Mine" his Baba introduced him to. He is a dancer and astonished me by picking up some Irish dancing steps at a ceili we went to a few weeks ago. Oh, and he says "ceili" and "bubbles" and lots of other words, though he doesn't often string them together yet. That will come next.

But please don't tell him how much he's grown and learned. He thinks it's time Mama took a back seat on some things--especially in the van.

He has just a few years to wait on that one.

It's unbelievable that he hasn't been part of our family for longer. One year ago we saw his face. Six months ago we first held our baby boy in our arms.

Look at those two. How did we get so lucky?