Finally!

After 6 months, 1 week, and 4 days of waiting, we finally have our referral!!! First I'll tell the story of how we got the call, and then I'll give a few details about our children.

I was not supposed to work today, but I was called in anyway. I also recently got a new cell phone and am still learning how it works. So, I'm in the classroom and I feel my phone vibrating. The number wasn't either adoption agency, so I figured I'd just check the message when I had my break, and thought nothing more of it. So I'm walking down the street when I remember that there's a message. I pull out my phone and see that I've missed another call from a Minnesota area code. I had told both our homestudy and placement agency to call Jon with our referral since he’s typically much easier to reach than I am, so I definitely did not expect to be the one to hear about our children first.

Anyway, Lindsay left me a message saying that she had tried Jon and hadn’t gotten through to him, so she was trying me, and could I please call her back as soon as possible. At this point I’m literally jumping up and down with excitement. It took me about 5 minutes to stop shaking and gather a piece of paper, pen, and box of Kleenex so that I could call Lindsay back.

Of course Jon and I couldn’t get ahold of one another for a couple of hours after that, and we each spoke with Lindsay separately before we had the chance to talk to each other. We decided that we wouldn’t look at their pictures or referral information until we were together. It was a very long 4 hours…

So, onto our children:

They are twins, a girl named Tsege and a boy named Geremu.
They were born about May 2nd 2006 (Birthdates in Ethiopia are often only estimated)
They are from a small farming town southwest of Addis Ababa (the Ethiopian capital)
Their ethnicity is Tembaro (which we haven’t found a whole lot of information about…)
Their last name, which is their father’s first name, is Desalegn, and means “I am happy”
Our daughter Tsege’s name means “Rose”
Our son Geremu’s name means “He is amazed”
We are amazed…

Jon and I both believe that the details of our childrens’ story belong to them, and we plan to keep the vast majority of that information private until they are old enough to determine what pieces of their story they want to share with others. However, we will say that they have family in Ethiopia, and these children have been absolutely adored since the day that they were born. Their father’s wish for Tsege and Geremu is that they will be educated and that they will one day become professors.

We're still debating names and will probably take a while to determine what we will actually call them. I sort of feel like dropping any part of their Ethiopian names is akin to deleting a piece of their history, and I'm very hesitant to do that. We're leaning toward giving them new first names, keeping their given first names as middle names, and giving our daughter their mother's name as a second middle name while our son will retain their father's name as a second middle name. I know that's a lot of names for two little children, but I feel like it pays tribute to their roots as well as giving them something from us.

I am so overwhelmed with emotion right now. I’m just amazed that these two tiny beings are now a part of our lives. I am humbled and honoured and astonished at the depth of the love that I feel for these children. Let the preparations begin!