Celebrating Cole

It has finally sunk in and feels soooo great to know about Cole, to be praying for him, to think about what he is doing in this moment.

Here is the long story of when we first found out about him over a month ago...

Friday, Nov. 7th: we had been keeping a friend’s two kiddos while she & her husband were out of town. Another friend of hers was going to come get them at 2 pm. The phone rings at 1:50 pm – I don’t recognize the number but thought maybe it was this friend needing directions. I am not in the habit of answering unrecognizable numbers especially since we had been getting 5-6 phone calls a day about the election.
It was not the friend but instead, Tami, the director from Dillon. I did not think in any way she was calling about a referral. 1) we were #11 on the list and 2) we did not have our I-800A approved yet (although this came shortly after). Sure enough, we talk about a couple of other things and then she says, “There is a baby boy I’d like to talk to you about….”
Keep in mind the time. It’s now 1:55 pm or so. I have two extra kids at my house and they are supposed to leave in 5 minutes to go to the next house.

The worst thing imaginable happens as the doorbell rings while Tami is sharing this little boy’s information with me and I have to ask her to stop, if she can call back in 10 minutes. Torture! The kids get on their way and while I’m waiting for her to call back, I quickly call Mark at work and blurt out what little I know.
Now, for those of you who do not know my husband, let me fill you in on something. He is a planner, very detail oriented, a task master. So you can imagine his shock & unrest when I rapidly tell him I’m waiting for Tami to call back and give me the rest of the information on this baby.

She does call back and gives me more information. It was a very confusing time for us because of challenges he'd endured. I always thought the referral day would be joyful and happy and full of YES! But it wasn’t. We were torn between staring at his sweet face, praying for God’s will and trying to determine if his challenges were things that would fit into our family. We contacted our pediatrician & Mark’s dad (who is an oral surgeon). We had to wait to hear back for days. It was excruciating. All the while we are trying to talk about “If this happens, we need to do this…” but not trying to get ahead of ourselves either. The name issue was another area of confusion. We had talked names before but now there was this balance of “we need a name now” and “if this is not our child, we don’t need a name yet”.

We finally were advised to have one more test done and that process about ruined me. I am usually a patient person and was for the most of this wait but towards the end, I succombed to my feelings and allowed them to take over my life! It was not pretty.

In the end, I learned a lot about waiting and trusting (which I'm sure I'll learn again in the coming months) and am so, so happy it is a good ending. Now I almost panic when I think I have to be ready for another child in 6 months. There is so much to do!

One thing I am so very excited about is how close Nate & Cole are in age (12 months, 19 days) and they are also summer babies so hopefully Cole will eventually fit into all of Nate's hand me down clothes. I was very sad that Lucy and Nate were so far apart in age (3.5 years) but of course now I can see God's plan in that - Lucy is so independent and such a great helper. But she & Nate are just now starting to play and interact with each other. That won't be the case for Nate & Cole and I can't wait to watch their friendship unfold!

To celebrate, we went out to dinner on Sunday (Cole's 6 month birthday)! A long time ago, we had talked about going to the local Indian restaurant whenever we accepted a referral but no, we found ourselves at Red Robin! (It helped that we had a gift certificate for a free kid's meal.) I'm not adventurous at all with food and really have very simple taste and so it's going to be interesting for me whenever we travel. :)

Here are Nate & Lucy with their balloons from the restaurant.