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Milai and Mike Ashenfelder knew they wanted kids, and not long after getting married, they found themselves joyously expecting their first child.
But after an amniocentesis in Milai's 16th week of pregnancy, she miscarried.
The couple tried to get pregnant again. But nature didn't cooperate, and Milai, in her early 40s, worried she might never be able to give birth.
Adoption seemed the perfect alternative. Milai and Ashenfelder felt pulled to China, a country thousands of Americans adopt children from each year.
Milai, then teaching music in a San Francisco suburb, remembers a student showing her a picture of an adopted Asian cousin.
"I looked at that picture and I said, 'That's it, that's my child,'" Milai said. "It was really an intense feeling."
In November of 1999, Milai and Ashenfelder started filling out adoption paperwork.
What they didn't know then was how richly their desire to be parents would soon be satisfied.
A few months after starting the process, Milai found out she was pregnant.
She gave birth to Lulu Colleen in November 2000.
At about the same time, a 1-month-old girl was found abandoned in a market in China's Hunan province. She was brought to an orphanage, where, several months later, she was matched with an American couple wanting to adopt. Their names: Kim Milai and Mike Ashenfelder.
Lulu, then 9 months old, was utterly unaware a virtual twin would soon enter her life. While Lulu and Ashenfelder stayed home, Milai and her sister ventured to China to scoop up Audrey Faye, then 10 months old.
"It was an amazing experience, to come all the way across the sea to hold her," Milai said.
Back home, Audrey and Lulu--born six weeks and about 6,000 miles apart--couldn't take their eyes off each other.
"Lulu would look at Audrey, and she'd just keep looking at her," Milai recalled.
A month older, Audrey was behind Lulu a few months developmentally at first. But trying to keep up with her sister, she quickly caught up, Milai and Ashenfelder said.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, both girls danced around their Fredericksburg home, stopping occasionally to scramble into the laps of their doting parents.
"That's kind of the best part of the week," Ashenfelder said, "when the four of us are together and the kids are crawling all over us and there's no TV, no books, no agenda, just us."
The challenges of twoMilai, a musician and schoolteacher who once played drums in rock bands, stays home with the girls now while Ashenfelder commutes to his job at the Library of Congress.
It's the kind of life the couple could only dream of four years ago--after the miscarriage, the grieving and a futile trip to a fertility specialist.
"I am really valuing and appreciating this time," Milai said.
For months after Milai found out she was pregnant, she and Ashenfelder kept quiet. They feared telling anyone on the chance that she might miscarry again.
But five months into her pregnancy, the couple started sharing the good news.
"They were going bonkers," Milai said of relatives. "They were more than ecstatic, especially my mom because she knows how much I wanted to have kids."
But would the couple continue with the adoption? That's what everyone wanted to know.
Milai said she couldn't imagine backing out, and Ashenfelder agreed. They already felt connected to their Chinese daughter, she said. Milai even wondered whether the peace their soon-to-be adopted daughter brought her helped her get pregnant.
"I considered [stopping the adoption] only in an intellectual way," Milai said. "I knew emotionally, in my heart, that there was no way."
Plus, the couple wanted two kids. They weren't sure how old Audrey would be when they adopted her--they were told their daughter could be between six and 24 months. They thought it would be fun to have twins.
"And it is great," Milai said. "But there are challenges you don't think about."
Milai talks of being able to pick up both girls at once--for a while. "But then they got heavier," she said.
Ashenfelder remembers when both girls were infants whose best form of communication was crying. Sleep was a luxury.
"There were many nights when one would go to sleep and the other wouldn't, or one would set the other off," Ashenfelder said.
Tracy Milai, who traveled with her sister to China, said she's in awe of how the couple manages to keep up with two 3-year-olds.
"I have to take naps when I come to visit because they wear me out," said Milai, of Pittsburgh. "When one wants one thing and the other wants something else, what do you do? My sister and brother-in-law, I don't think they've slept much in a couple years now."
'Meant to be sisters'The girls share a room, with toddler beds a few feet apart. Audrey sleeps deeply, while Lulu sometimes fights naps.
The girls share so much--parents, a home, developmental milestones, a love of music and Nemo. But their individual personalities shine through. Audrey seems to be in perpetual motion, while Lulu--her aunt Tracy says--could be a bit of a couch potato if allowed.
"Audrey seems to have an interest in the guitar," Tracy Milai said. "Lulu, she likes banging things and she loves to sing."
Their squabbles are typical of siblings--one wants to watch ''Scooby Doo'' while the other doesn't. One wants to play upstairs while the other prefers downstairs. One wants to fall right asleep at night while the other is restless.
Sharing a bedroom, Milai said, helps them work through their differences.
"They're learning to negotiate in the same room," Milai said. "They're learning to share, and they're giving each other company."
That's something their parents hope will always be the case.
"My hope is that they will always look out for each other," Milai said.
Milai and Ashenfelder worry at times whether people will treat Audrey differently, or less decently, because she is Asian. She's a minority in the Fredericksburg region, where Asian residents make up less than 2 percent of the population, according to 2002 population estimates.
"People are getting more tolerant, but sometimes, you'll get a look, people staring," Milai said. "And they stare at Audrey. They don't stare at Lulu."
The family is involved with Families with Children from China, a national organization with a local chapter in Fredericksburg. When Audrey and Lulu are older, the couple plans to take the girls to China.
But while Milai and Ashenfelder can control how they raise the girls, they can't control how others treat them, and they can't control whether the girls will someday feel resentful--Audrey, perhaps, about being adopted, or Lulu for having to share her parents.
"We have to ask ourselves, 'How are they going to fit into society, and how can we give them the tools they need?'" Milai said.
Milai and Ashenfelder are thoughtful, well-educated people--both have master's degrees in music--and they are trying, like most parents, to do everything right for their children.
They limit the girls' time in front of the television. They expose them to music, art and dance, and they are careful not to overschedule the girls' time.
"We both want them to have these big holes of time where they can just go out and play," Ashenfelder said.
In so many ways, the girls are like every other set of young siblings--they can make each other cry one minute and hug and play the next.
"After a while, you don't see it," Tracy Milai said of their differences. "You just see the person. And you start to get philosophical about it, that they were meant to be sisters."
To reach JANET MARSHALL: 540/374-5527 jmarshall@freelancestar.com