The Story of Shiloh

"We'll see what happens."

When you're a married Asian couple, you learn to develop a conditioned response for whenever your parents or family members or friends or complete strangers ask you when you're going to start a family.  We handled the first round with relative ease, but lo and behold, the questions don't stop after the first child.  So those five syllables were our defense mechanism to inquiries regarding baby #2.

If you know me and Ophelia, you know it was only a matter of time.  We love kids.  She would argue that I am still a kid.  In fact, one of her most repeated phrases during our first 6+ years of marriage is "I married a child."  (Which is actually kind of a weird thing to say, given her job.)

Where we differed a bit was in terms of the timing of our family planning.  I thought the ideal age gap between Thing 1 and Thing 2 was two years.  Ophelia's timeline was a bit lengthier, which can be attributed to the fact that she's a decade older than her sister.

Long story short, with Levi being a wild handful at 16 months old, we hadn't really talked seriously about bringing another pooping human into the equation just yet.

So it was the Thursday before Thanksgiving, and we were hosting our small group for a feast of food and feelings.  There was, as always, much to be thankful for, and then in the middle of dinner, Ophelia pulls me aside and says "we need to talk."

From my experience in both real life and pop culture, those four words are rarely followed by good news, so I followed her to the kitchen expecting the worst.  I'm normally pretty talented at reading people, especially my spouse, but I had this one pegged all wrong -- the look of shock on her face was not one of tragedy, but one of... well, shock.

She told me that Denise, our adoption case worker, had just called her.

Okay, I thought.  So far, so good. 

Levi's birthmother...

Uh huh... 

...had just given birth to another baby...

Woah... 

...and it's a baby girl...

Slow down... 

...and Denise wants us to pray it over and let her know what we think.

What.

We rejoined our small group at the dining room table and were able to give off the impression that our lives had not just potentially experienced a dramatic change.  But a short time later, we broke the news to them and asked for prayer.

Everyone else soon scurried home, and Ophelia and I prayed some more.  It was tough ignoring all of the outside factors.  Timing wise, it was a busy time of the year for both of our jobs, especially with me not yet hitting the one-month mark at the new gig.  But in my opinion, there's never a perfect time for any monumental life changes.  I mean, it's change -- and we're creatures of habit.  But you just have your faith and each other and you make it work.

We called Denise back and said yes.

Then we phoned our parents and siblings to pass the surprise along.  I was feeling a whole lot of deja vu from July 2016... except they all knew we were expecting to adopt a newborn baby back then, and this time nobody knew, not even us.

We spent the next day trying in vain to prepare a babbling toddler to be a big brother, but what can you say, really?  (Even now, not yet a month later, we'll read "big brother" books to him that don't make much sense.  "I'm a big brother.  My little sister has to wear diapers, but I can... wear big kid underpants!"  Wait, no you can't...)

On Saturday, after 40 hours or so of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual preparation for a second child, we walked through the AIM Adoptions door with a full backpack, an empty hand-me-down car seat that had been stashed in our garage, a crazy toddler, and open hearts ready to explode.

And three-day-old Shiloh Yan-Shun Mok did not disappoint.  I will never be able to say no to her.

PC Sharon Ku

Time to buy a shotgun.  (Only half joking.)

I've said it before, and I'll say it a million times more: God is so good.  Thank you everyone (again) for all the love in every form imaginable.  I'm getting questions (again) about dropping off food (Erica has set up a care calendar for us) or checking out our registry (we don't have one) or donating toward's Shiloh's adoption (guess I'll piggyback off of the one created last year), and I can't stress enough how blessed we feel in the midst of the chaos of being parents to 2 kids under 2 (2 under 17 months, but who's counting).

This is us.  We'll see what happens.

PC Sharon Ku