Ein halbes Wartejahr ist 'rum. Die Stimmung schwankt, aber meistens ist sie gut. Warum auch nicht, denn dass wir über den Berg sind , ist sicher.
Gestern Abend (äh, heute Nacht:-)) hab ich mir endlich mal die Zeit genommen, Charlottes Referall-Call-Geschichte für meine DTC-July05-Yahoo-Group aufzuschreiben, und ich dachte, irgendwie passt sie auch gut zum heutigen blog-Thema. Schließlich warten wir ja wieder auf genau
so einen Anruf!
Einzig... mir fehlt die Lust alles nun wieder zurückzuübersetzen! Aber das dürfte wohl kaum ein Problem sein, oder?!
Okay, hier also die Chronik eines Tages der richtig sch**sse begann und zu einem der besten Tage überhaupt wurde! Lest und genießt!
FINALLY our referral-call story, a bit late, but better late than never, n’est-ce pas?
(As a sidenote: As you read this, please keep in mind, that I’m not a native English-speaker… so it took me ages to write down our story, and it’s probably full of mistakes anyway;-))
We were dtc in march of 2002 and in december 2002 we had bought ourselves a house, our own house… for the first time. It was a very old lady, built in 1896, very beautiful but there was lots and lots of work ahead of us. First we were pretty relaxed about the renovation and referral time, for the wait was then said to be at least 14 months. That would have put us to a referral in may or maybe even june 2003 being lid march 28. Lots of time to finish the house, move into it, get it babyproof and prepare for the trip to china. But after a few weeks we realized, how much work it REALLY was, instead of improving everything got worse and still worse. It only looked like a “house” from the outside, inside there was nothing but sand, dirt, bricks, raw wood, no floors, open ceilings/walls with electricity cables hanging around everywhere. No kitchen. No bathroom. No heating. A leaking roof.
And in the middle of all this mess we got the news, that referrals were speeding up. A referral in late february suddenly seemed possible. My dtc-yahoo-group was enthousiastic, I was just panicking. The idea of getting our referral in the middle of this chaos… we were living among paper boxes in the old house, the new house was a nightmare, we were both completely exhausted from renovating PLUS working PLUS worrying 24/24h PLUS constantly sick from all the dust and dirt… And then having to go to China before being able to finish renovating, bringing the baby home to… where? Old paper-box home? New nightmare-home with no kitchen? Great times.
I don’t know how, but we survived… still a married couple ;-) We moved houses on the first day of spring. The house wasn’t ready, but it looked like a house, even from the inside. Still no referral by the way.
After moving in, we managed to calm down a bit. We “finished” the nursery and made the house a home. We had a kitchen, a bathroom, the heating worked, the roof was okay, and there were no more cables hanging oround. What we didn’t have yet was internet acces, and that made it quite difficult to stay connected to all the referral news… I could only check my e-mail once a day at work. And I only worked 3 days per week.
On the first of april referrals came in for most of my fellow dtc’ers in the US. Still no call for us.
Two weeks later, on april 15 I had a day off because our cats had an appointment at the vet. I went shopping to Ikea, couldn’t find what I was looking for, and had a hotdog there for lunch. After having finished eating I realized, that I spilled ketchup all over my favourite white shirt. I went home, decided not to change, for I always get dirty getting the cats to the vet and why should I bother about the ketchup-stains then, managed to put the cats in their transport-containers getting only 123 scratches, and made it to the vet in time. The cats had their shots and while trying to put them back in the containers I got scratched again and Theo ripped two holes in that nice formerly white and now ketchuppy shirt of mine.
I got soooo pissed. All I wanted was go home, sit down, read the newspaper and have a nice cup of coffee. But before the coffee and relax part I wanted to look after my shirt and try to fix the two holes. So I went home and immediately started the sewing job, finished it… and realized, that I had repaired the shirt inside/out, so that the “nice side” was actually the inside part and the side with all the visible stiches and threads was to be worn outside… visible.
Enough! Gimme my coffee.
I made myself a Cappuccino, took the newspaper and sat down in the garden for my well deserved break.
Just a few minutes later, at exactly 3.15h the phone rang and made that super-crappy day one of the nicest days ever.
REFERRAL!
Her name was Hong Guo, she was in Guiyang (Guizhou province), 11 months old, healthy, beautiful and… and she was OUR daughter!
And this is the photo, we received a couple of days later
Mir wird gerad' ganz sentimental zu Mute... ;-)
Bis die Tage,
Steffi
