Saturday we met our daughter Hayley for the first time.

Our meeting was wonderful and Hayley is an amazing child, she was so adorable and smart. She’s talkative, funny, headstrong and competitive – hmm, sounds like me! And they weren’t kidding about her energy level being high! But that was fun too – she was up for trying anything. I just can’t tell you how great it was. She started a bit nervous but that lasted less than five minutes.

Eventually she started calling me Mom and Jeff Dad but she called him Jeff more, mostly because I called him Jeff. And she really loved playing with him. That was most of what I was worried about, how she would respond to him. They got along wonderfully!

She colored some drawings, wrote her name in print and script, and could even spell Jeff’s name with some help – she’s definitely not delayed. When I showed her photos of her room, she saw the door sign with her name and exclaimed with great joy it was spelled right. She loves the dogs already and is excited to meet them.

We brought the soccer ball just for fun, she was happy to see it and wanted to play. I want to put her in spring soccer but didn’t know if she had the skills and oh she does. She was kicking really well and even dribbled some. She’s a competitive little spitfire!

Hearing her call me Mom really was very emotional. After she left, I had a few tears and Jeff & I shared an emotional moment, probably more of a tension release. You go through this horrible infertility journey and it doesn’t work out, so you grieve, gear up and start down this adoption path. You just follow along it on faith and hope … and then yesterday, the path ended at Hayley. You just can’t believe it is real and that the universe is giving you a human to love and raise.

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