"Ready! Set! Go!" only without the "Ready! Set!"

It's pretty crazy how life can turn around:

• 3 weeks ago, I had given up on anything happening this year, so much so that I decided I could try out for a show in Versailles (The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee) without worrying about schedule conflicts. I didn't get the part.


• 2 weeks ago, I took a spontaneous, last-minute roadtrip to Chicago with a good friend and fraternity brother. We saw a GREAT concert with Kid Rock and Bon Jovi at Soldier Field on Saturday night, then grabbed a deep dish Chicago-style pizza at Gino's East before heading back to Kentucky. While we were waiting for our pie, the conversation turned to adoption. I told Mike that I had pretty much given up on anything happening this year, even though there was still almost half a year left. He and I had a long philosophical discussion about the legality and ethics of Chinese adoptions, ate our pizza, and hit the road.


• 1 week ago I was on the road to Harrisburg PA, site of this year's Phi Sigma Pi convention, when the phone rang and everything changed.

Kelli, our social worker with American Adoptions, called and explained that there was a situation in Florida. A birthmother outside of Orlando was already matched with another family, but that family was not going to be able to travel for the birth. I feel really sorry for the other family's loss, but Kelli asked if they could show our profile in order to salvage the situation and assure the birthmother that she was making a good decision. To make matters more stressful, they were meeting with the birthmother in less than 30 minutes, so we needed to make a quick decision. Carrie surprised me less than an hour later when she called me and told me to pull over to the side of the road because we were now in a match and she didn't want me to wreck! Ten minutes later, we were on the phone with the birthmother and her social worker.

I'm going to respect the "belly mom's" privacy (her term, not ours) and not use her name, but I can say that Carrie and I couldn't have asked for a nicer, more open person to go into this situation with. She's communicated with us by phone and e-mail ever since Thursday, offering advice on where to find a crib and what rewards clubs to sign up for, telling us that she really feels like she's made the right decision in helping us become a family, and assuring us that the baby in her belly is our daughter Riley Beth! She seems like the kind of person that we both would love to maintain contact with as our daughter grows up so that she can know the complete story.

A lot can still go wrong, which is why Carrie and I haven't made a bunch of public announcements or said anything to most of our friends. But as I write this on August 11th, we've finished a 13-hour drive from Kentucky, Carrie is sleeping and I'm getting ready to crawl into a third hotel bed in as many weeks. We're preparing to meet our birthmother tomorrow morning in Orlando, and if all goes well, we'll be parents by the weekend.

Look out world, here she comes! Zero-to-60 in a week's time...