happy birthday girls!

 

 we got these pictures of the girls today on their 2nd birthday!  we couldn't be more excited to actually have pictures of them on their birthday!  when my boys have one of their birthdays, we always get pictures of them, and they love looking at them.  we don't have any pictures of the girls except for the few we've received since january.  we won't be able to show them what they looked like when they turned a year old, or when they were first born, or when they took their first steps.  these pictures will be highly treasured as we begin to record their life so we can share it with them.  what a special gift to have seen them on their special day as we celebrate without them. we can't wait to hold them, love on them, and embrace them as our own!!!

the wait is over...

so finally monday rolls around, we haven't heard by our case worker (ok, every minute seems like an eternity at this point), so i decide to make up an excuse to call her.  sure enough, the girls are healthy!!!!  "how long did she know," i am wondering,  "doesn't she realize we are already the irrational adoptive parents and shouldn't be kept waiting?!!" 

i must confess, i used to get so frustrated when adoptive parents would be so irritated when there was any kind of a delay in the process.  "you signed up for this, you knew it was going to take so long, what is your issue??" was always going through my head in response to them.  now i get it.  when you have been given such a gift as little people coming into your family, you will stop at nothing to get them here even one minute sooner.  we know what conditions they are living in, we know what we have waiting for them here, and we can't wait to have them physically and spiritually be a part of our family.  they are part of our family, but missing at the same time.  a very unexplainable feeling! 

but, saddle up wilkerson's, here we go!  "we have to move fast" case worker says.  we are now on a crazy paperwork adventure, and it must be done 'speed lightning style' (quoted from my boys)!  our adoption kind of went backwards (most things in our life do)!!  usually you have all of your paperwork completed, stuff done, ducks in a row, before you get a referral (kids assigned to you).  well, we weren't quite there yet, but thankfully after some not so gentle nudges, we were a lot closer than we would have been!  we spend a good month chasing down paperwork, getting doctors' letters, notary after notary after notary, oh, then state notaries (apparently the first ones aren't good enough for international stuff).  february was a whirlwind of a month, to say the least.  but we did it, we have all of our paperwork! 

we are moving into march at this point and we are waiting for our dossier (a fancy word for a packet of very expensive paperwork) to be translated into french, drc's national language.  the first weekend of march was hubby's birthday, his 35th to be exact, and we got the news that the dossier was getting prepared over that weekend.  it was sent off to the drc on monday, march 5!  what an awesome gift to my hubby.  i can see how prevalently God is working out every detail!  hubby is the one who always said we were going to have twin girls, hubby wouldn't have considered this if we were able to have more kids on our own, their birth date is half of my date (13x2 b/c of twins = 26th, my bday!!), we were getting pushed along the way to get our booty in gear on our paperwork or we couldn't have been ready to get them, and on his bday weekend their paperwork is sent down.  now some may say it's all a coincidence, i call it God's perfect will!  things have been perfectly orchestrated for waayyyy too long for this all to be a coincidence!  i rest knowing our God has our back.  it doesn't mean it's going to be peaches and roses, but He has our back!  he had already answered our prayers with these two little girls all those times i cried and prayed myself to sleep from another negative pregnancy test.  it may not look like what we thought it would, but thankfully He knows best.  how neat it is to see him working so clearly!  our God is an awesome God!

did we ask for girls, since we already have boys?

so from here out, things continue to progress and we take our sweet time getting things together.  we were adopting from haiti at this point, so see, there was no rush.  we had to wait until hubby turned 35 in march.  so, we thought we had all the time in the world to obtain doctor’s letters, reference letters, 14 hours of training to complete, etc.  i’ll spare you the details, but a few events occurred along the way that made us get our booty in gear!  i mention it only because we trust this was God’s little nudge for us to be prepared for these girls.  otherwise, as stated above, we were taking our time, and would not have been ready for what He had for us!

one thing lead to another and we were gearing up in january to get our final paperwork done and waiting for our home study to be completed. we were actually getting close to needing it for haiti's timeline.  as we work through this, rumors are flying all over about how haiti adoptions are getting unstable and moving at a snail’s pace (we can thank unicef for most of that).  so the week of january 16, 2012, there were some meetings down in haiti with the government regarding adoptions and how slow they were moving.  we happened to call our agency on thursday afternoon, the 19^th, to find out how the meetings went and what that means for us and our adoption.  “brenda, it’s not looking good!” case worker says.  ugh…she could sense my silence and disappointment on the other end and solemnly moved on to more of the nitty gritty we needed to get through.  She came to the “have you guys decided on a gender?” question.  sigh….we’ve been avoiding this!  see, God made it clear to us that we were to get siblings.  he didn’t make it clear to us what gender they were supposed to be.  we would love to have a girl (i’ve been surrounded by boys all my life…not that there’s anything wrong with them, i love what they’ve taught me, but it sure could be fun to have someone to craft with instead of ride motorcycles or atv’s with!!).  “we’re not shopping for a coat, our hands are wide open, we can’t put God in a box on this one” i tell her. 

so that day happened to be a day off for hubby.  there was some crazy freezing rain/snow/ice thing going on outside, so the whole city shut down for the most part.  so he’s home playing a game with the kids on the floor of the office overhearing me from the family room.  “ok, i’ve been debating this whole conversation to tell you about this, because i know you want haiti, and you shut me down on the drc before, but we just got info on twin girls last night.  do you think that would be something you would even consider….” case worker says.  i interrupt, “did you say twin girls??” 

hubby has said for years we would have twin girls in our family.  i argued vehemently that I was not carrying or birthing twins, period!  of course my not-so eaves dropping hubby (it was an important conversation…he wanted to hear too!!) comes flying out of the office pointing at me saying “i told you we were going to have twin girls” in triumph.  wait a minute, we haven’t even talked about this, i’m thinking.  how do you figure this is a done deal?! 

it was a done deal, we just didn’t know it yet!  case worker hasn’t even gotten the medicals on them, and wouldn’t until after the weekend.  so we tell her we’ll pray about it and wait and see what the medicals say.  i must confess, we both felt we weren’t prepared to deal with some major illnesses/impairments.  that is one thing that we feel we are not in any way equipped to deal with.  i feel like a huge jerk saying it, but it is the reality of our sinful selves.  so after brief prayer and discussion, we determine they are definitely an option.  i call her back and tell her to let us know as soon as she knows.  so the wait begins…one of the longest weekends of our life!  how have we already come to love them?