Home

Well, I've been home since Friday evening, and it feels so good to be here. 2 weeks is a long time to be gone. I am so happy I went though. I miss my babies though......

So, I thought I would "dote" a little on each of the babies. Gideon first. Like I posted before, he was so happy go lucky. He has the biggest smile and he smiles easily. Developmental-wise, he was doing great, pretty age appropriate. He'd sit up and eventually fall down because he wanted to go. So he'd roll from front to back and than to front again. He'd scoot backwards a little and then eventually fuss because he was tired. I some ways he was high maintenance just because of his age. He wanted to be moving all the time. He loved to bounce and he'd do it in the carrier or on your lap. You had to really watch him close or he'd bounce right off whatever he was sitting on. His foster mother said he slept from 10:00 ish to 5:00 t0 6:00 and liked to take naps. Well, he slept fine the first night, but the second night he was up from about 2:00 to 4:00. Poor guy though, he was totally out of his element. I hesitate to clump either of the kids into any particular description because they may be totally different when they are settled into life.

Annie was sad from the first time I saw her. She wasn't always crying, just looked so lethargic. Up until Tuesday night, I had never seen her smile (and I have pictures and videos). She would cry if I sat her down. So, Annie spent a lot of her time either in the carrier or on my lap. Toward Wednesday evening and into Tuesday, she started to loosen up and was actually crawling around. We were told that she was cruising furniture and she was. She also took two steps on two different occasions, one of which we got on camera. Not bad at all for 10 months. I'd like to think those were her first steps. I have got to say, Annie's first smile was one of the sweetest things I have ever seen. She was lying on my chest Tuesday evening and all of the sudden she just looked up at me and gave me a half smile. I almost cried. She has just been so solemn up to that point. That smile was followed by many more that evening.

I need to metion Maddie here also. She was such a trooper and I was so proud of her. Maddie is very much our baby and just a little spoiled. The first day she was a little whiney and wanted mommy, but after that she was such a trooper. She was really quite cute. She would try and give them their bottles and toys. She actually turned into a little bit of a ham. They are going to be quite the three-some.

We never really left our hotel, but the hotel was amazing and we did not need to. Our days were spent either in our room or walking the mall. It was almost easier to walk with the kids than to sit in the hotel. Usually Chrissy (my sister) would wear Gideon in a carrier and I would wear Annie and then Maddie would ride in a stroller. You should have seen the looks we got from people in the mall. Everyone was really nice though and we had more than one person ask if they could have one of our beautiful babies, since we had three. Oh, and back to the hotel...the staff was excellant and they all spoke english. They were overly helpful and they made our stay so much easier.

Let me add a note of "thanks" here. I just wanted to thank my sister Chrissy for traveling with me. She took time away from her family and work to be there to help me and she was wonderful. She did everything I asked her too and she was so helpful with all three of the kids. Thanks Chris for being so great!

Leaving the kids was very, very hard. I feel like a little piece of my heart is there. We had to drop Annie off at the hogar first. I was really worried about that. She clutched to me like crazy and I was so afraid to leave her bawling. But, she went right to her caregiver and even flashed her a little smile. That made me feel so much better. Gideon had no trouble going back to his foster mom, as it should be. I had a much harder time leaving him than him leaving me.
Right after Gideon left, Chrissy, Maddie and I went down to one of the hotel resteraunts to eat dinner. I guess we went for my birthday, but it was good distraction for me. I really did not just want to sit and dwell on things. So we had a delicious dinner followed up by a yummy piece of three milk birthday cake.

A couple final things I would like to add is that our coordinator in Guatemala was amazing. She's been working in adoptions for 20 years and has a heart of gold. I intend to bring her something very nice back when we do our pick up!

Finally, I want to add that I am feeling a little better about the state of adoptions in Guatemala. I am still nervous, but I asked Lilly (our coordinator) what she thought of the state of adoptions right now. She told me that we have great attorney's and legal paperwork, we shoud be fine. She also went into the whole Mary Bonn fiasco and explained what really happened there. All that was well and good but I was particularly worried about the "protocol." So I asked her about that and she said that the protocol has many mistakes that will have to be fixed and then sent through legislation. I told her that here in the states, people were concerned that it would not go through legislation and would just be enacted. She gave me a funny look and said "it has to go through legislation, it's the law."

So, I found it interesting that when asked, her main concern about adoptions was the legality of paperwork and the Mary Bonn thing. She only commented on the protocol thing when prompted. She said that our case should not be affected by the protocol. It would be a while before it is enacted. Since the protocol has been my main concern, it was a bit of relief to hear her say it wouldn't affect us. Now, Lilly obviously does not have a crystal ball, but she has been doing this for 20 years, I think she knows a thing or two.

So, I left our two babies with high hopes to see them again soon. I am still worried, to some extent even more so because I've met them and seen how wonderful they are. I just pray they come home soon.

Here are some more pictures from our trip.

Our Hotel Lobby

Our Hotel Pool

Chrissy's favorite snack. I think it was called a churro?? Fried dough with sugar and filled with chocolate. Oh my it looked yummy!

Dinner Time!

Cuddle Time

Trying to feed both babies at once!

Annie was happy to be nakie!

Gideon Jazzing it up!

My three babies.

I love this picture of Gideon!

Annie would always blink at Chrissy's red out flash, so lots of pictures turned out like this. Look at those eyelashes though!

Annie's sharing her snack!

Lovely hair, eh?

One of Gideon's many big smiles!