This may be a term that you are unfamiliar with unless you are involved with the adoption world. In our house, Gotcha Day refers to the day we received our children and traveled home with them. It is a term with some controversy as to some it conjures up images of mosquitoes! Whatever it is called, be it Homecoming Day, Airplane Day, Family Day, or Gotcha Day, it is a day to be celebrated! They were in essence “born” to us that day and to our family.
 
So, here I sit thinking of not one, but TWO upcoming Gotcha Days. What are the odds my 2 children would have Gotcha Days 3 years and 3 days apart! My daughter’s 4th Gotcha is on February 5th and my son’s 1st Gotcha is on February 8th. My mind is a flood of feelings and emotions and remembering! How to celebrate these two amazing children who came into our lives and with Valentine’s Day a few days after! It’s not like they need more stuff, but the whole point of celebrating Gotcha Day is about what we mean to each other as a family. Our daughter is now getting old enough to have a say and opinion about what she wants to do for her day! She has already told me what she wants to eat and what kind of cake!

What I really hope to convey to my children as they grow is how loved and wanted they have always been. Their Gotcha Day is the day we “got” them and they “got” us…forever…after years, months, and days of planning, longing, and hoping and months of holding a tiny photo of a little baby half a world away….we were there holding them in person and looking into their eyes like no one else was in the room and finally….we had each other…we were got….