Finally a vacation! We stay in Disney at the Wildlife Lodge. We have a room that overlooks the area where the animals roam free. Zebras and giraffes graze the grass outside our balcony. Pretty cool. We have a four day hopper pass for the parks, so we plot our itienary for the week. We watch the families with children through different eyes now. That will be us soon. We try to savor our last childless vacation.
Tuesday we spend the day at the Wildlife Park. We bought two baby onsies (size 12months) and Baby's First Disney Bear. Tuesday night we head to Downtown Disney to shop and have a late dinner. During dinner, husband checks his cell phone and finds someone left a message from a 732 area code. It could be a message from the adoption agency. We panic. He calls his voicemail and gets a message from Karen, our agency rep, to call her back. My mind zipped through twenty emotions in just a few moments: Panic, excitement, joy, nervous, terror and some I didn't even recognize. We finished our dinner and tried to absorb the fact that there may be a baby out there waiting for us. We knew once the call was made, our lives will change.
We finished dinner, paid the bill and tried to calm our nerves. It was after 9pm by now and we debated whether it would be rude to call this late. We decided to call but the office was closed. We left a voicemail. We spent the night wondering what tomorrow will bring.
The following morning we had planned to go to Magic Kingdom. We arrived there early and headed straight for Magic Mountain for some screams. Next, we get in line for another ride that goes high above the park for a killer view, it had a long line but we were game. Moments before we board, Husband checked his cell phone and discovers we missed Karen's call again. Damn Magic Mountain! We took our spin on the ride then rushed to find a quiet spot with a good signal. We call the agency and get a voicemail. We call back again and get no answer. We call again and Karen answers. She tells me she wants to tell us about a baby boy. His name is Angel. My heart begins to melt. Husband has a pen and starts writing down everything I am repeating to him. Name, birthdate, length, weight. We congratulate each other and hug! We are shocked, we were told to expect at least a one month wait. But here we are a short week after our documents were submitted and there is a baby waiting for us.
Karen has pictures to email to us! Can we get to the internet? We knew we had an internet phone back at the hotel but we weren't going to wait that long. It was still morning at Magic Kingdom and we had the whole day ahead of us. We check our park map you get upon entering and in the key they show several internet phones placed all over the park. We seek out the closest one, and it was missing. We check another, that one was torn from the wall. So for the next hour or two we hit every location across the park in search for the internet phone. They were all gone. We questioned several Disney employees and one finally told us they just ripped them all out this week and the maps have not been changed.
We are exhausted and disappointed. What do we do? Try to enjoy the park for the rest of the day and wait until we return to our hotel. Do we just leave now? We sat for a few minutes and sulked. Then we remembered the tram that connects the park to several hotel resorts in Disney. We jump on the tram and jump off at the first resort. We seek out their phone banks and finally found an internet phone. It was out of order. Imagine the obsenities flying out of my mouth. We go to another floor and finally there is a internet phone and it works. There is a God. We login to our email account and there is no email. Another round of obsenities are screamed. We try to call Karen at the agency but only get voicemail. We think we are going to die. Finally, we decide to call Karen's partner Joann just to see if she can get in touch with Karen. Joann answers the phone and tells us she has the pictures too and will email them right now. A few moments later our inbox shows one new email. We open the email to find 2 pictures of tiny red faced baby boy screaming his head off. We stare quietly at his face. The battle of Heart and Mind commence. In adoption, it is drilled into your mind that so many things must happen before you can take your child home. Things go wrong. Birthmothers change their minds. Family members decide to take the baby. Legal red tape can not be cut. There are endless lists of what could go wrong. You know that going into to this - its part of the deal and you have to accept that. You tell yourself to be cautiously optimistic but prepared for the worst. Reading how devastating it can be when you lose a referral, you must attempt to create the distance you need to soldier on in case that dare happens. You tell yourself its just a picture of a baby, surely you can create the emotional distance needed to maintain sanity.
The battle of Heart and Mind did not last long. The Mind barely tries to gently remind the Heart 'Don't get attached, its only a pictures'. The Mind is weak. The Heart glares at the Mind. Battle Over. The Heart is victorious. The Heart falls helplessly in love with the red faced baby screaming in the picture.
We pose for our first family picture with our honeymoon baby. The 'referral' we often dreamed about was now an actual baby boy with a name and a face. Everything changes. The stakes are high.
For the rest of the week, we transformed into parents-to-be. Everything seems to change form, shape and meaning. It was a wonderful week! We called family and friends to spread the shocking 'honeymoon baby' news.
Throughout the week we frequently went back to gaze at those pictures.
The week was filled with talk of completing the nursery and our favorite baby names. We certainly were blessed!
