Holy Crap I'm 31!!!

Miss Dior & girls at the annual Blu Martini Birthday Bash

My birthday was last Friday and I had a truly lovely day with my girlfriends, but I think I was still in shock over meeting our birth parents and thinking about our future child to absorb it all. As I was driving in my car yesterday, I was thinking, "wow, I'm going to be a mom at 30. No, wait, I just turned 31. Holy Crap I'm 31!!! I'm going to be a mom at 31!!" And you know what, it just felt right. That I should carry this amazing title of mother at this point in my life and not any other.

It's only with distance and perspective that we can see why our lives go the direction they do. I remember last year being so excited for my 30th birthday. We could finally fill out our application for China! Picard and I had waited from January 2005 (when we met the couple who inspired us to adopt) to May 2007 for me to be old enough to submit our paperwork.

Miss Dior (with truly vibrant hair and about 15 lbs. heavier) carrying gifts for
our future wee one from a combined adoption seminar and zoo trip in July 2005.

And then there was the downward spiral.....Our paperwork was logged in August 14, 2007 and by October I realized something was terribly wrong. Families who submitted paperwork in 2005 had yet to be matched with their children and each month the match batches were getting smaller and smaller. And so, my mind spiraled into a depression. And the fake smile became my favorite fashion accessory. I wrote in my journal on February 20, 2008 "Wanting to be a Mom and not being one is an expansive feeling of emptiness, incompleteness."

A Classic Miss Dior Fake Smile

And then, I went to see a psychic (for the second time if we're being completely honest here) and she told me for the second time that we wouldn't be getting a baby from China. We would get a child from right here in Indiana. And that it would be "sudden and unexpected." Her words exactly. I had already sent an e-mail to our adoption agency "just to ask a few questions." On March 5 we went to our first domestic adoption meeting, the decision was made to officially switch and we moved full steam ahead.

And now, I know with absolute confidence that this is the way our lives were meant to go. And I knew it when the psychic told me. It wasn't that she gave me some mysterious prophecy, she opened my heart to what I already knew was true. The good Lord knows that I am an impatient woman and that I wanted to be a mother. China was my placeholder to give me something to dream and think about until the time was right for us to meet the child we were meant to raise. I now believe that child has entered our lives and for the first time in a long time I have a real smile on my face.

On my birthday showing off one of my gifts from the girly friends...specially embroidered panties with my real nickname (No one but me calls me Miss Dior)

And I know deep in my heart and with every ounce of my being that....

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference