Nick and I had now been married for almost three years. I bought a little house in West Springfield the January before we got married. We named in the "Frog House". It's a long story as to why, so just use your imagination. We did a lot of work on it; the floors, painting and wallpapering, redoing lighting, etc. We did extreme amounts of yard work, including the blueberry and strawberry patch, the vegetable garden and my flower garden. We had some funky shindigs there, especially the St. Patty's Day dinner that was really home-made pizza's, and the Toga Party which freaked out the delivery guy; have your brother that is 6 feet 5 inches jump out of a bush wearing a bright blue toga and ask the guy "Were you followed?" There are lots of great memories in that little house.
I again had the seizures under control, but I was now on three anti-convulsants. I still was not able to drive, but was still working full-time at BRL. Nick and I talked about starting a family. We both really wanted to have children, but we felt the odds were a bit against us. Nick had Type I diabetes that he was diagnosed with in elementary school, and I had my epilepsy. We spoke with my OB/GYN and neurologist about it, and I was also seen by a neurologist at Yale and by one in Boston. One major option for me was to undergo a series of tests to see if I could be an eligable candidate to have the area of my brain removed that was causing the seizures. The thought of having them cut open my head and remove a chunk of my brain scared the crap out of me. Nick and I did talk about the pros and cons of it, but neither of us felt certain about it. But we were certain that we wanted to have a family.
I'll never forget the night that we decided what we wanted to do. It was late. We were both getting ready to go to bed. I remember standing at the foot of the stairs crying about it again. Nick came up to me and put his arms around me. He looked me in the face and said, "We can have a family. Let's adopt." I asked him if he was serious. He said "Yes, I'm serious. Your aunt and uncle have adopted children, and my aunt and uncle were foster parents for tons of kids and then adopted Anna. We can do this!"
The next day the calls were made and we were signed up for a M.A.P.P. class. We took the classes, wrote the needed essays about ourselves, had the house inspected and were approved to be a foster/pre-adoptive family. We knew that we wanted to get a toddler if not a baby. Three or four months of waiting went by. Then Nick got the call.
One of the DCF case-workers, Annette called Nick at work one day. She had a little three year old named Kianni who really needed a stable home enviornment. She brought Kianni's file over to Nick and then he brought it down to me. It was convienent that we worked in the same complex but for different health care organizations. He was excited! Her picture was beautiful; she had huge brown eyes, curly black hair, little pierced ears and what a smile! She was a little bit of everything; African-American, Mexican, and American Indian. They even said that there was a bit of Portugese in her. We both felt a strong calling to her and told Annette that we would take her. When we got home from work that night we called our best friends to fill them in. That night we all went out to dinner to celebrate, and then ravaged through Toys'R'Us to pick up stuff for a three year old!
Kianni Alize came to live with us the third Thursday in March, 2001. I had put in for a FMLA and was planning on taking two months off from work. While Annette was there helping Kianni get settled in the house she told us that Kianni had a younger sister named Naissa who was living with a different foster family. Kianni had not been with her for a few months. She asked us if we would be interested in taking Naissa in as well so that she could be with her sister. We didn't even think about it. "Sure!" we both said. Shortly there after Naissa started to come for afternoon visits, then overnight visits, then weekend visits and then moved in with us permanatley on Apirl 26th, 2001. On April 28th we loaded the girls, us and my parents on a plane to fly to Florida for my brothers graduation with his Master's Degree. Remembering the looks on the girls faces as we took off was astounding!
The girls were wonderful. Yes, they came with some emotional baggage, but we were in therapy together and just took it one day at a time. We were now a happy family of four. Little did we know that in two and a half months it would become a family of five.
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