What do I say?

We found out today that while we are in Taiwan we are going to meet Claire's maternal grandfather. Her birth mother does not wish to meet us and has had some fairly serious legal problems. In fact, as of right now the social workers do not even know where she is. I was very surprised in light of that to find out that the grandfather has requested to meet with us and that meeting will happen in our hotel on Saturday, February 6th.

Claire has two half sisters and this man has custody of one of them. We do not know if he will bring her with him to the meeting but we are hopeful.

I've been thinking today of what it is we should say to this man to set his mind at ease. I imagine he wants to meet us to have a chance to say goodbye to his grand-daughter who he will most likely never see again. What a moment that will be... I cannot imagine. I feel the need to have some idea of what I want to say to him before we meet... something that will put his mind at ease... something that will give him comfort that little Hsiang-Ting (Claire) is going to be alright in her new life. Something to let him know that we are kind and loving and that we are going to do everything in our power to give this little girl a wonderful life. I hope he will believe us and go away from our meeting with at least a little bit of peace.

We know next to nothing about this man. We know that Claire's birth mother asked him to take Claire and he told her he could not afford to take one more child. Putting Claire up for international adoption was his idea and Claire's birth mother agreed to it. We owe this man an incredible debt of gratitude. He probably does not speak English and even though I can say "Thank You" in Mandarin (thanks to Ni Hao Kai-Lan) somehow I know that won't even begin to be enough.

Even though I will probably be anxious about this meeting right up until the moment it happens, I am so grateful we are going to have this opportunity.

I think of Connor's early life... In my iPhoto library on my laptop I have over 3000 pictures from just his first 3 years alone. We have pictures of Connor with all of his family, including some who have since passed away. Every picture is a treasure. Those of you with children understand this. With Claire though, it's different. We have 20 pictures from a day in October when a social worker took her to a playground. We have about 10 pictures from a day in April where she played in a park for a little while. We have about 20 pictures taken at random times during her 2nd year of life while she was living in the orphanage... and that's it. No pictures of her birth mother, grandparents, siblings, or friends. Not one. This might be our only chance to have a picture of her with her birth family. What a treasure that will be for her someday.

We Got the Call!!!

After months of waiting we finally received the call that we've been waiting for this afternoon. We can travel to Taiwan and pick up our daughter the 2nd week of February! We will most likely leave from Knoxville on Wednesday, February 3rd and we will finally hold our daughter in our arms for the first time on Monday morning, February 8th. We're hoping to be home the following weekend... hopefully on Saturday morning.

We are absolutely overjoyed! It's been more than 2 years since we began this journey and now it's finally coming to an end. I'll be honest... I'm ready for this journey to be over so a new one can begin! The best is most certainly yet to come.

We'll have more updates later but for now we have a to-do list a mile long... so much to do before we leave! Plane tickets to buy, hotel rooms to book, a very pink room to put the finishing touches on, and a whole bunch of paperwork to get in order!

Thank you to everyone who has commented on this blog... all of the encouraging words have meant a lot to us. It's been really comforting to know that we haven't been waiting alone.