Elisabeth's Journey 2

Our families were a bit unsure about our decision to expand our family yet again. Not that they didn't love our children; I think it is more that people have grown used to the 1.5 children in a family and we were definately exceeding that! However, my mom teared up when we revealed that if we had a girl we wanted to name her Elisabeth Ann. Although spelled a bit differently, her first name is my mom's middle name and Ann is Kirsty's mom's middle name. KC honors the grandpa's with his names, it would be a little girls turn to honor the grandmas. If we were blessed with a 4th son we wanted to name him Thomas Paul.

Our homestudy update finished quickly, we did up our family introduction books, sent off our paperwork and settled in to wait. Waiting is never easy but I have noticed that it is much easier to put the wait out of my mind when I am busy with other children. The wait for Chet was interminable. The wait for each subsequent child has been shorter. Probably also shorter in actual time, but also just because we were busy being parents, not spending every free second dreaming about the privilege of becoming a parent.

Kirsty checked in with Adoption Link each month to see how things were progressing and I believe it was in December that she was told that the list was progressing slowly and we could easily wait till spring before being matched with a birth mom. We were okay with that and planned our finances with that in mind. Shortly after that call, I saw a listing for special needs twins on the MARE list and we placed an inquiry about them. We were seriously interested, (my philosophy is you can never have enough babies!) and although a bit scared by the idea of feeding tubes (even ones supposed to be temporary) we decided to begin talking with the social worker regarding the little boy and girl. No sooner had we done this than the phone rang and it was Noreen in Chicago letting us know we had a baby girl! We needed to go to Chicago asap and meet our daughter!

I remember trying to focus on work while my mind whirled about in a frenzy of excitement. A daughter! Another blessed baby! I had to finish closing the books for the year so I kept trying to put the excitment out of my mind. But every few minutes I would stop what I was doing and grin foolishly at my co worker Colby and say "I have a baby girl!"

On the home front, it was left to Kirsty to organize flight plans for us all--we had decided that it was safer not to leave Chet home alone--dog care for our Irish setter--pack clothes and toys and arrange our finances. Somehow, she got this all done and to this day, I am not sure how. But we were winging our way to Chicago before we knew it, renting a car, and holding baby Lissa for the very first time.

I remember how BIG she seemed to me! Of course she wasn't big, though she is definately more inclined to be tall than her brother KC ever will. It was just that KC was such a truly petite package that she seemed big by comparison. She had the most quizzical look on her face and such a head of hair. Unfortunately our bliss at holding her made us not carefully look at the paperwork our agency had generated. They are lovely people but not careful about dotting i's and crossing t's when it comes to typing their paperwork. Days later, we would find that this would slow our return to MA as the interstate compact would not go through. For the nonce though we were thrilled and we returned to our hotel suite a larger family, filled with love and excitement.