A teaser - followed by a real post

День Счастливой Матери! Это был замечательный день, и мы добрались, чтобы разделить это, мы планируем принять от.... Россия!

or...using another online translation service:

Счастливое День матери! Было чудесным днем и мы объявили наши планы для принятия от… России!

More later! (3-ish p.m.)

And now it's later! (9-ish p.m.)

The above, in some way, shape or form, is meant to impart a couple of messages. The first: Happy Mother's Day. The second: We're excited to announce that we plan to adopt a baby from Russia!

I've always enjoyed Mother's Day; we spend it with my parents at an annual brunch I started years ago. The last two, especially, though, have been somewhat bittersweet. When would we be able to move me from the list of would-be mom to actual mom? When would there be a baby to turn me into a mother?

But this Mother's Day? While we don't know the exact answer to the question of when, we do know the where! We excitedly told my parents today of our plan to adopt from Russia.

To call the last week exciting and monumental doesn't seem to do it justice - after all we "formally" decided on adoption, then on international, then on Russia, then on an adoption agency - and the cherry on the sundae was being able to tell my parents today.

Like all potential grandparents, they, too, are excited. They're also entirely supportive, and that means the world. Suddenly, for us all, this big, wide world somehow seems a little smaller. We're all now connected to a place, to a people, that now seem so important, so special, so part of our family.

My Mom has shared special presents with me on Mother's Day over the years - things that represent family and my grandparents. Today, she gave me the perfect charm for the perfect bracelet she gave me at Christmas, before the in vitro began. She also gave me a CD with songs that seem to have been written with us in mind.

Right after I shared with her some of my favorite quotes from a book about adoption, quotes that resonate with me to my core, she happened to stumble across, quite by accident, an artist named Catie Curtis who recorded an album called Long Night Moon, with songs on it that speak to her experience with international adoption - one while waiting for her daughter to come to her forever home and one about her delight in watching her two daughters grow.

"Throughout the atmosphere God knows I want you here," she sings. "I've got a place for you Under the long night moon And I'll dream you're looking up too Goodnight, goodnight goodnight long night moon."

So to my Mom on this Mother's Day, your gift today will be with me every single night when I look up to the moon; I will be comforted by the knowledge that our baby waits, under the same moon. Someday Brian and I will see that moon hanging in the Russian sky and I'll feel like we're connected to home. Someday we'll all sit together, with you holding your grandbaby in your arms, and gaze at the moon from our little spot in this universe and know that this was how it was meant to be all along.