Our Adoption Adventure
On November 09, 2006 I received an urgent email from my partner, Stan. "The agency just called. How would you like to be the father of a little girl?"
That marked the beginning of the end of our adoption adventure and the beginning of the beginning of our parenthood! I call it an adoption “adventure” but in reality our experience adopting a child was probably about as mainstream and uneventful as possible.
Stan and I had been together for six years before we really got serious about being parents. We deliberated and investigated the adoption possibilities for about a year and finally decided on a domestic adoption agency and submitted our application in Sep 2005. We spent the next eight months filling out the paperwork and compiling our family portfolio. We officially entered the “family waiting pool” the day after Memorial Day 2006. We wanted at least one more three-day weekend at the beach. We waded in that pool for five months until a very brave woman chose us to be the parents of her new born and we got the call from the adoption agency!
Two days after Stan's email, we met our three-week-old daughter-to-be at a foster family’s home. Our anxiety at the time was compounded by the “hiccups” in the process. We had just passed the one-year expiration for some of our adoption paperwork and that had to be renewed before we could become parents.
We were also anxious about the fact that we were getting a daughter. The agency told us that statistically we were likely to get a boy, which we were prepared for. We are both boys, the dog is a boy…its easier to add another boy to the family, right? Then, oh-boy it’s a GIRL.
That was just about one year ago that we brought this little girl home. In that year, the anxiety has faded as the love has grown and as our little girl has made herself the light in the length of our days.
Jeff Allen
Boulder, Col.
Nov. 16, 2007