T Minus 9 Days Until Launch: Unexpected Blessings

It is hard to believe that 11 years ago tonight I was struggling to sleep and fighting off a migraine headache as I prepared to become a first time mom through international adoption. I remember waking up in the morning after getting like 2.5 hours of sleep, wondering "Is this what it will be like from now on? Sheer exhaustion? I'm not even officially a mom yet!" And then I went to court and became a mom.

When I was in Kazakhstan, I took many pictures of my son and other children in his group and I was able to share those with the waiting parents back home so they could see their little ones were healthy. I had the opportunity to get a photo or two of my son from parents who traveled before me and I wanted to do the same for others. So I sent photos to the waiting parents to help calm the stress of their own adoption processes.

Well, now as my son is ready to launch on his own and enter the Job Corps, I have spent much of the past week reflecting on our lives and how blessed I have been to have other wonderful adoptive parents to lean on. Unfortunately, we moved a number of times over the years and I lost touch with many of them, so I did a little online stalking investigating, and searched for those parents I had lost track of. It was really cool to find a couple of them and send out friend requests in an effort to reconnect. But what happened next was pretty amazing.

I received a friend request from a parent whom I had only met through our yahoo listserv and after I accepted it, I was able to see her photos. She had posted an album full of pictures that were taken at the Doestky Dom (orphanage) two years prior to my son's adoption. As I looked at the pictures, memories of my own trip came flooding back and then I saw him. My son! There were a handful of pictures that my son appeared in that I had never seen. They had been taken a 1-2 years before I even knew about him, but there he was in the middle of photos that she took of her kids as she prepared to bring her children home.

Tomorrow is our family day (gotcha day--I've never been a fan of that term). We have been a family for 11 years and what a blessing it is to look back on his life before we were a family. We will celebrate our Family Day next weekend with a traditional Kazakh feast as we usually do, but this year it is a little more special--not only because my son will be leaving home but because I got to see a glimpse of my son's life before we were a family. I sometimes forget that there are eight years of history missing from our lives. Eight years of missed birthdays, holidays, lost teeth...Seeing these pictures helped to fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle that is Marat's life. I am so thankful for the adoptive community, I never would have made it through the adoption process without the wisdom and insight of those who traveled before me. Even though our kids are growing up and leaving home, going to college and moving on, we share a bond through our children that can never be broken.

Marat is behind the boy who is looking at the camera. He seems to be paying attention to what ever is going on.

So kids loved jumping in front of the camera and it should be no surprise that my son would photo-bomb his buddy.

Here he is sitting on a "dad's" lap. I knew it was him as soon as I saw this picture. Marat used to suck his fingers and clearly, they were getting ready to go in his mouth. It was a habit that took him a good year or two to break after he came home.

I almost missed him in this picture--but I saw him the second time through on the pictures. He is on the very right of the photo. This was taken Christmas Day, 2001. I did not even begin considering adoption until October, 2002. 

Marat (James) is sitting on the lap next to his best friend. She got adopted 1 1/2 years before Marat but coincidentally lived only an hour from us in Oregon.