the call (aka holy %##@!!!)

So I'm sitting at the dining room having some chips and salsa with my friend and now ex-colleague when the phone rings. I'm used to telemarketers calling 15 times a day so I check the caller ID and recognize the number, but I thought it was my husband's work. I pass the phone to him, and I can hear the person on the line ask for me or Mr. P. He hands the phone back to me and its our (beloved) social worker. She has called because a mother has expressed a lot of interest in us.

O. M. G.

I am immediately shaking. She told me as many details as she had about the mom and the baby. I won't share the details here, but I will say that she is a baby girl born one week ago.

O. M. G.

So I am taking notes while Mr. P looks on. I am attempting to write some notes in Spanish so he can read them as I also try to absorb these details. After going through the details, my social worker asked when a good time would be to call back tomorrow to see what we thought of the situation (if we want to proceed). I offered to call her back in 20 minutes, but I know that the policy is to have a night to sleep on it and talk it over. Good policy. However - YES! We are very much willing to move forward!!

The call came around 6:00 p.m. It's now 11:15 p.m. This feels like it is happening to someone else. There is a part of me that really feared that this would never happen.

Mr. P and I went for a walk, came back home, chatted with a neighbor, called my mom (she is so excited) and then went out for dinner. We are so incredibly excited, although of course we are still not even close to sure that this will happen. Over dinner we talked about the utter bizarre-ness that there is a little tiny girl living in the city right now and either she will be our daughter or we will never meet her.

We are totally unprepared in terms of having anything in the house for a baby. Not a bottle. No crib. No rattle. No formula. Not a diaper in sight. I think there is a onesie (is that the spelling??) floating around somewhere that my parents sent me from a vacation they took (and which I immediately hid away). Holy crap. Could this actually be happening?

The mom's story is not mine to share, but I will say that we feel that, if all works out, we will be extremely lucky to have a role to play in this story.

So now it's time for me to attempt sleep, wait for that call in the morning and then see what awaits us after that....