Thursday, August 5, 1999

Adoption pursuit pays off on 'gotcha day' marking anniversary for Perrons

It is 9 a.m. Wednesday and April Perron is full speed ahead on mommy patrol.
   "Mommy, Mommy, boo-boo on my face," says her 3-year-old daughter, Dominique Elizabeth, pointing to a small, itchy red spot underneath her left eye.
   "Oh my, we'll have to take a look at that, won't we?" 37-year-old April reassures her, as she pulls out two juice-filled sip cups from the fridge, one for Dominique, the other for her 3 .-year-old brother, John Charles.
   The children want to see "The Lion King," show no interest in the cereal offered them, and when one abruptly announces needing help going to the potty, the other races toward Gilbert the family cat, startling him from a comfortable snooze atop the living room couch.
   "It's like we won the Lotto," says April of her children, her husband, Jeff, nodding in agreement.
   Which is why every April 15, they put all on hold to celebrate "gotcha day," marking the day in 1997 that the Perrons adopted their children from a Russian orphanage.
   It seems like just yesterday that April turned 27 and life seemed to have dealt her the cruelest of blows. Severe endometriosis resulted in a hysterectomy and because he wanted children, her fianc‚ ended their relationship.
   But then she met Jeff, who made her believe that someday, somehow, she would be a mother.
   "When I met her we'd stay up till four o'clock in the morning talking," recalls Jeff. "I could never do hat with anyone. I knew then there was something there that we both didn't want to give up on."
   Two years later, they married, bought a fixer-upper home with children in mind, pursued adoption and went to work on the nursery. April painted clouds on the walls, sewed the curtains herself and furnished it with a rocker that her own mother used when she was an infant. Everything, says April, was covered in plastic to keep it clean for the baby.
   For 3 years the nursery, located across the hall from the couple's bedroom, sat empty, a bitter reminder that time was ticking and that once they hit their 40s adoption would be a much tougher hill to climb. "There were nights," April admits, "that I'd sit on the floor and cry. I couldn't bear it, so I kept the nursery door closed at all times."
   Five and a half months after pursuing an international adoption through a New Mexico agency, the Perrons were en route to Moscow, an adoption that cost them $30,000 in fees. Before taking that 18-hour flight, the Perrons were instructed to finalize their will, delegate power of attorney, say goodbye to family and friends in case something happened, and instructed to pack for the worst camping trip ever, says Jeff, manager of Academy Sports and Outdoors. "We had to bring food for the children, thermal underwear, coats and shoes. We didn't know what size they wore so we packed six pairs of different size shoes."
   When the children saw him for the first time, Jeff recalls, they greeted him with screams. In the orphanage, they had never seen a man before. Today, it's jumps and shouts he gets at the front door as the children clamor to be the first to greet him after a day's work.
   The plastic finally came off the furniture and who got whom that "gotcha" day seems happily debatable.
   "We love these two so much it hurts," says April.
  
  
  
 

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  © 1999 Corpus Christi Caller Times, a Scripps Howard newspaper. All rights reserved.