A baby...via email!

What an odd thing -- to get an email and know it contains an attachment with a picture and information about a baby 8,892 miles away who will become your child! And what a long, strange road to get to that moment! That moment came for me, at long, long last, on March 5, 2007. The first picture I saw of my almost 11 month old son.

The whole experience was surreal -- I had only been on the waiting list two days and had just been told the day before it would likely be 1-3 months before I got my referral. When I got the message that Katie from Dillon International had called, I was convinced there was some error in my paperwork, or some new bureaucratic loophole I needed to jump through. I didn't dare dream that this was "the" call all prospective adoptive parents long for. I was completely off balance for the whole call -- I was also thrown by the fact that he was 10 months old already -- I had been expecting a younger baby. I didn't know what to ask or what to say, other than that I wanted to see a picture.

An email quickly followed and I opened it with a shaking hand, scrolling quickly past his birth certificate and other legal documents looking for the picture. It wasn't there, but a second email quickly followed and there he was. The minute I looked at his beautiful, solemn little face staring right into the camera, he was mine.