Crying in Public Places

I remember the moment when I realized that Chicken Little was really going to be ours. We had waited 6 days and 7 long nights for the adoption agency to decide who got the chance to be the parents to the little girl who had just gone up on the waiting list. We had emailed late on a Thursday night requesting her information, and they told us on Friday to hang tight, because 3 other families had emailed that same night. I remember the night before they called us, as the longest night of my life! AMP was at a basketball game down at the U, and it was Valentine's night of 2007. I sat by myself in the relative darkness of my house for hours, ate a carton of Ben & Jerry's and sobbed because the social worker had told us that day that she was going home to sleep on it (???) and would let us know in the morning which family she had picked. That next morning, I drove the hour into work and decided to stop by the Starbucks, and pick up a coffee for myself and my coworkers. I got in line and placed my order for the 4 different coffees and I was waiting in line to pay semi-patiently, when my phone rang. I picked it up and heard AMP say "Are you sitting down? She's ours, and I am looking at her picture right now - and she is beautiful." Seven people on either side of me in line turned to stare as I began sobbing violently out loud. The woman at the cash register looked at me in confusion and said "What did you order?" I paused for a moment and through my tears said, "I have no idea!" I shoved my credit card at her, paid for god-knows what, grabbed my coffees and some napkins, and fled the scene.

I never thought that Chicken Nugget would ever make her appearance and join our family. She seemed quite comfortable in there, and despite almost 3 weeks of "fake" labor (which felt uncomfortably real to me), I found myself on my due date at Friendly's. I tried to drown the sorrow of being just sent home from the hospital for the 2nd time in a plate brownies and icecream - this to be exact.

Sorrow was drowning swimmingly and the tears of hospital rejection were beginning to dry, when the waitress asked "When are you due?"
"Today and it is never going to happen."
"Well, I was in labor in the hospital for 5 Days and after ......(courtesy edit for the male audience), my child was finally born by ceasarean."
What are the words that you never say to a women on the due date of her first pregnancy? 5 Days of Labor. If AMP thought I was hysterical mess before Friendly's....

So, after 8 months of filling out paperwork and after refiling the immigration forms because 3 teeny, tiny words were missing from one teeny, tiny sentence in our homestudy (insert additional $380 fee here) and after waiting 3 more weeks for the same FBI office in WV to re-verify our fingerprints, not one month after they had done it the first time, and after AMP made a poor woman in one of our nation's governmental offices cry, we received a piece of paper today in the mail. I had made a rather uneventful flight home this afternoon, and was checking our email on my phone while I waited for my carry on. You know how quiet is while you stand on the jetway and wait for your bags? Well, imagine one fuzzy haired blonde woman gasping out loud and then, of course, she starts sobbing hysterically and clutching her phone. Yes, I made yet another scene. But that awesome email said that a nice woman in a government office in Missouri (a different woman to be exact) had sent us a form in the mail today, that said, Pollo is approved to enter the country. Moral of the story, Big Public Scene # 3, but my little boy gets to meet his crazy family in about 2 weeks from now. Big Hugs to a woman in Missouri, and we are almost on our way to Colombia!