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For our family December and January are one long list of special days, holidays, birthdays and celebrations. When our children are a little older we may end up taking the whole month of January on a family vacation–hopefully to Hawaii! For the four of us all of our birthdays take place between January 5th and February 2nd. We literally party from Thanksgiving to Ground Hog day every single year and we have no choice about the matter.
To top it all off our Adoption Day is in December and our Gotcha Day is wedged between two of the four birthdays we have in less then thirty days. For our family Gotcha Day is a very quiet and simple day in time. We do not exactly have the time to make it a significant event but we have developed some quiet traditions to make the time in history.
We were selected by an Oregon State committee to become the adoptive parents of Makala and Jeremiah a week before Christmas 2002. It was one of the longest most anxious holiday seasons I have ever endured. But, it was understood and agreed the children should remain in their foster family until the holidays were over. We would have to wake up one more Christmas morning without little ones to make it all fun. We would have to wait until after the first of the year to make a transition plan and move our children home with us.
The only good part about our delayed transition was the fact we had friends and family in a festive mood and all the day after Christmas Sales to buy things we did not have. After all we did not have anything to take care of our soon to be children! By the time we were able to get in our car and drive to the hotel 300 miles away we were ready at home and had enjoyed a wonderful holiday season. The children were given our Family Book on January 2, 2003 and the transition plan was made with the foster family and caseworker.
Our transition was supposed to take two weeks but, it was very difficult on the foster family. We were taking the baby they had placed at the age of two months old. Our children had lived with this foster family for about ten months. It was difficult for me because I could understand and feel the pain of the foster mother. Our transition plan was accelerated and we came home forever about five days sooner then we originally expected.
Daddy had celebrated his birthday during the transition and just a few days after our homecoming we had Jeremiah’s First Birthday party. Then my birthday. And then Makala turned 5 years old all within twenty days after we came home.
We just celebrated our 3rd Gotcha Day. Our family considers this a very special and quiet moment in time. We celebrate by eating Mexican food, because it is not ham or turkey or birthday cake. We talk about what happened and how our family fell in love and was made that day. This is the time we talk about our family and what we mean to each other and how wonderful it was that all the ‘Kid Helpers’ (caseworkers) and God were able to bring us together.
Adopted children do have a few extra special days in life to remember. The way our families honor some of these important days will both teach our children the truth about adoption and the fact we love them as our own. During the years our children grow we can mark these dates with both traditions and new surprises. As parents we can make these important dates a place in time where we help them have positive feelings about who they are, where they came from and what they mean to us.
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For more information about parenting special needs children you might want to visit the Families.com Special Needs Blog and the Mental Health Blog. Or visit my personal website.