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April has been and will be a month of many celebrations in our household. It was on this last day of April in 2004 that I received the referral for my beautiful Noelle. It is a day that competes for top place in my life with her, Nicky, and Carlo’s gotcha days.

My excitement had been ramping up week by week in the Spring of 2004 until I was wound tight enough to be strummed. I was more and more excited and less and less nervous. I simply did not have enough energy to support both (back then, I devoted my time to preparing for my new baby — I baby proofed the house for Noelle for 18 months and baby proofed the house for Carlo for 2 hours ). My online friend, Anne from Denmark, had wonderfully blessed those of us waiting with the info that the referrals were definitely on the way and rumors were flying. I’d had to turn my Mom away several weeks early. She was emailing me once or twice a day, asking if referrals had come and I simply didn’t have the ability to manage her excitement and my own.

On Thursday, April 29th 2004, the rumors all seemed to coincide on the statement that referrals would come on Friday, April 30th (back in the day the CCAA was sending out a whole month’s worth of referrals at a time). I went to work on Friday, but it was a complete facade. I certainly wasn’t working. As soon as the hour was decent, I emailed my agency coordinator to find out if she had heard rumors about referrals coming. She emailed right back and said that China typically sent referrals to arrive early in the week, so maybe the next week or week after. (I had emailed her at the beginning of the week with all my contact phone numbers).

At 10:30:44 am, the first referral was announced to the DimSummer list (a group of my online friends whose paperwork had all gone to China in September and were therefore expecting all their referrals at about the same time).

I frantically looked down my AIM list for a friend. Steven was on-line, so I IMed him to tell him. I followed with a comment that mine may not come today, and he said that was true and suggested I keep breathing. He was very sweet and kept me chatting. I knew that Nancy, my agency coordinator, usually received referrals in the morning as the previous month, Nancy emailed me at 3:30 pm to say that I had not gotten a referral in the package that had come from China.

By 10:43:47 am, at least 2 agencies were saying that they had received September referrals.

By 10:54:27, there were at least 3 postings. I was IMing poor Steven with each announcement to the list. In an attempt to keep me sane, he asked how many people were on the list. I guessed 200, and he explained that we were at 1.5%. At 10:56:31, there was another referral, and he typed, now at 2%.

I told him, “I’m just going to cry my way through the day.”

Sweet Steven kept chatting with me all morning as I IMed to him at each posting. Oh, this one is young, and that one was small, this one was a bit older. Etc. He kept a tally going on what percentage of the list had posted of referrals.

At 11:19:38 am, while we were chatting about how he was going to give Noelle a piece of fabric from his lucky tie for her quilt (the tie he wore when he got his last 2 jobs), my phone rang. The area code was right for it to be Nancy.

I took a deep breath and with my hand trembling, picked up the phone.

It was Nancy, she said, “It’s a fact of life, that if I say referrals will not come, they come.”

I had a list of questions to ask next to me, hah! All I could say was, oh Nancy. Over, and over, and over.

She gave me the stats and I IMed them over to Steven, who did the kilo to pound translation for me — she was quite a healthy weight even then at 18.5 lbs. Nancy told me that the office staff had told her that Noelle was beautiful (and then she added, they don’t always say that). Steven took care of telling all my other Princeton friends. Nancy ended the conversation by saying, go drive up to Teaneck and get her (a ride I duplicated last week only to return home with an actual babe and not just a packet of paperwork and pictures).

So, I did. I did a circuit of the office, telling everyone my glorious news. Some of the development staff were hanging out on the back stairs as I sped by with a grin on my face and glint in my eyes. Andrew yelled after me, don’t drive too fast, are you going to be OK? I said, I’ll be careful! Steven, too, had admonished me to drive carefully.

I drove up to Teaneck, an hour up the Turnpike from me. I had flashes throughout the trip. Flashes of birthday parties, graduation, weddings, etc. It all felt more real, but still not “real”. The woman behind the counter at the adoption agency had Noelle’s info right there on her desk. I took a look at her beautiful photo and info, chatted with the two ladies and then took her home. I was in the office for 10 minutes, top.

From the car, I called my best friend, my Dad, and my Mom. She was just beautiful.

I drove back to Princeton and went to the local copy center. I had them make color copies to send to my grandparents (who don’t do the digital world well) and had them scan the photos and burn them to CD. The fellow explained that CD was expensive, was I sure. Hah! Of course, I was sure.

Then it was back to the office. My first stop was my boss at the time, who was Chinese! She did an informal translation of the paperwork for me. Enough for me to learn that my daughter was quite the firecracker who got mad if you took her bottle away before she was done and whose entire body shook when she laughed and how true have those descriptions rung throughout her life — she is still my firecracker. Then, I had to show the photos off to all of my coworkers.

Then, it was home to talk on the phone with family and friends and get the photos posted on-line the pressure was on from family and friends to get that photo up. I topped the day off with a trip to an ice cream parlor for a celebratory sundae with some friends.

Oddly enough, it still didn’t feel real. It felt more real than before, because for so long, she had simply been paperwork and a dream and now, at least, there was a photo and a personality. I’m not sure what I expected. Every day of my life it feels more and more real and I must admit that my life as a mother now feels very real. Wonderfully real. As a good acquaintance and single Mom of four says, the best things in life are not things.

Noelle is one of the biggest joys of my life - and I truly cannot remember how I filled my time before she came home. She is still a firecracker and full of emotion and laughter. She is a beautifully strong person. She is such a huge part of my heart and my soul — she has always fit well into my life and life style. The referral information that I finally posted on-line late in the evening on April 30th 2004, is still available.

What a wonderful anniversary and beginning. April 30th 2004 is one of the best days of my life, second only to the day my guide placed Noelle in my arms in a hot, crowded, little adoption office in Nanchang, China and the day I met my scared little boy in a tiny office in chilly Urumqi and the day I received my sad little baby boy in a heart wrenching hour in that gray office in Teaneck, NJ.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 30th, 2007 at 9:01 pm and is filed under Family, Noelle, My Valley Of Love and Delight, Me. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.