Gotcha Day!

Tomorrow my husband and I will celebrate the children's gotcha day. Gotcha day for those of you who haven't adopted is the day you finalized the child's adoption and you officially "got" them. But for my husband and I, it is the day we "found" our children.
Three years ago we were living in an apartment in Kiev waiting to go back to the Adoption Center and look at all of the books of orphans. Ukraine had the policy that you do not preselect a child to adopt, you find them when in the country.
A date is set and you go with your translator to the Government Adoption Center and meet with a psychologist and look at photos and books from orphanages to select a child to see. You then travel usually by train to the city where the orphanage is and visit the child. You then decide if you would like to adopt the child. If not, back to the Adoption Center in Kiev and back to the books.
We had been in Kiev and selected a 2 year old boy to see. We traveled all night on the train and met with the director of the orphanage to arrange to see the child. I was so excited, scared, eager but when we went to his room we found a very sick, disabled and weak boy. I held him and cried. I was open to adopting a child with many disabilities but this child was not for us. This child needed 24 hour care for the rest of his life and I couldn't do it. I knew this was not to be my son. I still think about this little boy and pray he is cared for and loved.
After returning to Kiev and meeting again with the Adoption Center we were shown a photo of another little boy who had just turned 3. The photo was him in a crib with the saddest look I had ever seen on a child. We said we would see him. Since we had hoped to adopt 2 children, I told them to show me the girls available. Even though it is difficult to find a girl, I knew I wanted to complete out family with a girl and I wanted my husband to have a girl to love and to adore him. We searched but I didn't get any feelings of wanting to see any child until the back of the book one of the last pages was a photo of an infant girl. She was 20 months old now but sick, blind and probably retarded. She was most likely a child of fetal German measles. They encouraged us to skip her but my heart went out to her.
The next day we left by train. The Sunny Orphanage had 300 children 0-3 years old and from what we saw they were very poor. I have traveled a lot in my life but Ukraine was poor.
We met with little Vladdy first, shy with big brown eyes. Small and non -verbal. This sad little boy came to us and I knew that he was meant to be our son.
Later we went to another building to see Masha. They brought her out to the waiting room and I started to weep. A blond pale child with scabs and sores all over her face and body (allergies and exzema) a blind small right eye and low vision left eye and it was evident that this little child couldn't see. But, I knew she was my daughter. Even when my husband said are you sure and the translators said we can find you a better one I knew that she was meant to be ours.
There is so much more I could say, the whole trip and month spent in Ukraine is a book waiting to be written. But tomorrow is the day-Halloween, when we found our children and to me it will always be their Gotcha Day.