We have the most wonderful friends in the world, hands down. Thank you all for your kind and loving comments and for rejoicing with us. Even though we’ve been readying the nursery, finishing paperwork, building up phone minutes to Florida and generally preparing for these babies, this whole adventure feels entirely unreal. As though I will wake up one morning and it will all have been a dream. I hope not.

It is a very strange thing to be shopping and preparing for babies. For years – years! – I have avoided Babies R Us and Target’s baby section like the plague. Literally, going out of my way through other aisles just so I didn’t have to look at baby clothes or baby furniture. Just seeing it was too painful. Some of you dear girls who read this blog know exactly what I’m talking about.

That’s been my narrative for a very long time: all things baby equals pain, another cut in a beat up heart.

But now, all of a sudden, I’m supposed to do this – supposed to be able to navigate my way around Babies R Us without curling up in a little ball on the floor (is anyone capable of doing that?).

There is joy in this preparation, absolutely. Joy and fear and anxiety and awe. And also many reminders along the way that God is not building our family in the normal way. We tell the lady at the baby registry that we’re expecting twins in a month and there’s a quick glance at my tummy and raised eyebrows. We hear from a third party about the babies’ current condition in utero. We get ultrasound pictures mailed to us on a disc. Labor begins and instead of jumping in a car with a packed bag we’re looking for plane tickets. Adoption is not “normal.”

I have this gut feeling that these are only the first of many reminders that God has done otherwise with us. I’m glad He doesn’t do “Plan B.”

For now we’re outta here. Family time is in the books for our last vacation sans enfants. New Mexico and then Colorado. The plan is four weeks – all of Josh’s time off in one big lovely chunk. However, there’s always a chance the phone will ring and it will be a certain hospital in Florida.