I love anniversaries. The happy ones, the sad ones, the ones I wouldn’t remember if it weren’t for Facebook’s “On This Day” feature. Anniversaries provide an opportunity to stop, reflect and celebrate. I try to appreciate what I have, where I’ve been, and spend a few minutes dreaming about what’s to come.

Every year as our daughter’s birthday approaches I take time to remember the events that unfolded in the month before she was born. We had waited over a year for our family to be chosen by a birthmother, and by the time our daughter’s birthparents were introduced to us, we only had a few weeks to prepare.

I think about the morning I decided to click through my junk folder instead of automatically deleting everything. If I’d followed my normal routine I never would have seen the adoption agency email about a couple expecting a baby girl. I think about how we sat at a table in a 24-hour restaurant a week later trying to get to know the people who would make us parents. And I think about the Saturday I let our four year old help me paint the nursery. (It turned out he and I made quite an efficient painting crew.)

And I remember struggling to put her crib together, on what turned out to be the night before her birthmother went in to labor. I wanted our daughter’s nursery to be ready and waiting for her when we brought her home.

So now every year as the days lengthen and the weather warms I celebrate the anniversary of those four short weeks before we finally met our daughter. And every year these events are a reminder of the thousands of decisions that had to align for the baby girl with big blue eyes to become our daughter.