The pictures tell it all....
Today my family came over for dinner and to celebrate Christmas. We had dinner and Mia entertained us with her giggles and yelling to be sure that everyone was paying all their attention to her . Then we opened up the presents. It was a good time had by all.
Ok am cheating a bit. I am back dating my posts, because I really want to share these pictures and story. So please forgive me.
I was making homemade noodles for Christmas Eve with Jenny's family. It takes a long time and because there are 9 people to feed for dinner I had to make A LOT of noodles. While I was making the noodles Mia was entertaining herself by stirring some make believe soup. She sat there stirring her imaginary soup for at least an hour. It was so cute. Then I gave her a strainer and she put it on her head and crawled around with it on her head! She is such a doll.
My baby girl is officially 15 months old! I keep telling Jenny that my baby is a toddler now. It is hard to let go of baby hood, but I know we have a lot of fun ahead of us. We had our first post placement visit with our social worker. It went really well and I think we passed. Jenny and I kept joking around and saying, "well she can't take her away from us." I suppose she could if something were really bad, but she seem to think Mia is attaching very well to us. On the 30th of this month Mia will be home with us for 6 moths. It is really hard to believe . It sometimes seems like she has always been here and other times it seems like she just came home.
We couldn't have asked for a more perfect little girl. She has such a silly sense of humor. She will imitate us if we cough and then we will all laugh. She laughs when she (or us) passes gas. I know , I know, but it is SO funny. I can't even express how much this little angel has changes our lives. She exhausts me at times, frustrates me at times, and even sometimes reduces me to tears, but I would not change a thing.
This time of the year I think of two people who I am most thankful for. First, Aura, Mia's birth mother. The pain this courageous woman must endure everyday not knowing how her baby girl is doing is something that I am sure is at times too much for her to bear. I hope one day we get to meet her and tell her that Mia is loved and the sunshine of our lives. I don't think the words thank you come close to describing the gratitude we have towards Aura, but thank you is the only word I can think of so thank you Aura for the opportunity to have this wonderful little girl in our lives.
Second is Maria, Mia's foster mother. She took such good care of Mia during the first 9 months of her life. We never had to worry about the care that she was receiving and not all families can say that. Not only did Maria take good care of Mia she loves Mia SO much. I don't think our adjustment would have went to smoothly if Maria didn't love Mia so much. We keep in touch with Maria and we hope to go see her next year, if I can talk Jenny into it.
Now onto some Mia cuteness...
We have had a busy weekend. We had our friends over for dinner on Friday and had a great time with them and their 2 Guatemalan darlings. Then Saturday we went to lunch with Grandpa and Sunday we had my nephews birthday party! Happy Birthday to Jimmy!
Mia was hanging onto something the other day standing up and let go for a second! She has also been great walking while assisted, I think she will be walking before we know it!
Now onto some Mia cuteness!
So we went the mall to play at the play land inside, because it is cold outside and Mia loves to play and watch the kids. Mia crawls all around and loves to go through the tunnels and especially sliding down the slide. Mama gets tired of lifting Mia up so the time on the slide is short lived. So we were minding our own business and having a good time. The play area started getting busy so we were going to get ready to go. Before we could leave a grandma comes in with 2 boys and a baby in a stroller. One of the little boys sits next to me and on Mia's coat. Then the grandma sits next to him. She then said to her grandson, "No. This kid ain't got it's shoes off. You can leave your shoes on." Referring to Mia. My oh My, some people are STUPID! First of all Mia is not an IT and she had Robeez on, which are soft soled shoes for babies, all the other kids had their shoes off!
So Mia has this stick that she loves. I swear the girl will play with anything that can poke her out. So we wrapped the stick in duck tape and she has been playing with it ever since. Then one day the stick broke, but because it was in duck tape it just bent a little. It is now known as Mia's sickle, you know that thing the grim reaper carries with him to touch people with, of course when you are touched with the sickle you die. I guess that is the whole point of the grim reaper is death. Sometimes it is called her whip, because she will whip the cats with it! We tell her to be nice, but she thinks she is playing with them.
Mia was taking a bath. She loves to take baths and she would stay in the tub all day if we would let her. We were trying a new bedtime routine so we starting giving her a bath before bed, which turned out to be a very bad idea! I guess instead of the bath relaxing her it gets her going and makes her hyper. I guess the pictures say it all!
So we attempted to take some Christmas photos. We had 3 changes of clothes for Mia, not us. She was a good sport, but towards the end she was not really wanting to participate in our photo shoot. She also wasn't crazy about the bows in her hair because they had little bells in them. As some of you may know if Mia knows her bows are in in her hair then she tries to take them out so we were also dealing with her yanking on them. All in all we got some really cute shots of her.
So we will be sending out our Christmas cards this weekend, all 16 of them!
So I have decided to start blogging. I don't know why, but I guess it seems like the thing to do. I read other peoples blogs, but I am not sure why anyone would want to to read mine. If I include enough pictures of Mia then someone will read it besides me.
Anyway onto the important stuff, Mia! I got her this shirt that says Mama's Little Sidekick and it is true. She is like my little sidekick she goes with me everywhere and keeps me company. So I took some pictures of her in her cute new shirt and while I was trying to get a cute picture I was burning the rice for dinner. You may ask how do you burn rice (Jenny did) well I was suppose to be browning the vernecilli and instead I was burning it. Oh well, it turned out ok, I suppose.
Well we have been home for a little over 6 weeks and I can hardly believe that it has been that long. It seems like Mia has always been here. Ok I suppose I will start from the begining....
our flight was uneventful and everything went really smoothly we had a lot less anxiety because we knew what to expect. We got to our hotel by 3 pm Guatemala time and we went up to our room, which was HUGE! We asked if it was a suite it was SO big, but no it was just a big room. Giovanni showed us around the room and then the phone rang, it was Maria! Her and Mia were waiting in the lobby for us, and we were very suprised because we didn't think that she was coming until the next day. So we went down to the lobby to greet them and we saw Mia again! She was beautiful and Maria looked very sad. I can't tell you how good it was to finally see her and know that we didn't have to give her back. Little did we know we would give her back. Mia was a crying mess and she was so scared. Maria and her daughter stayed with us for almost 4 hours. It was nearly 4 hours of Mia crying. Finally Maria could tell that we were tired and she offered to take Mia home and bring her back the next day. At first we said no then we decided that it would be better, because we would get some sleep and be more prepared. Some people might think, how could we do that? It wasn't easy, but we knew that Maria was taking good care of her and we would see her the next day. We slept went and picked up our bags and then called Maria to bring her back to the hotel. This time Maria dropped her off and only stayed for an hour. We invited Maria to come back in 2 days to go to lunch with us and Benjamin was to translate for us. Maria left and Mia cried, cried, and cried. She cried for nearly 2 days straight and would NOT eat a thing. We actually had to spoon feed her formula! It was a nightmare, but we knew that she was scared and greiving for Maria. When she would cry she would say mamamamama she was calling for Maria. It was very hard on all of us.
Then Maria and her 2 grandchildren came for lunch. Mia was so happy to see her and her face just lite up when she saw her. We had a great lunch and learned a lot about Maria. We learned that she was funny, intelligent, was a nurse, and really cared about the children that she took care of. It was a wonderful oppurtunity. We also got to know Benjamin, who translated for us. He is an expentional man and I even got to meet his wife and 2 adorable sons.
Fast forward to our embassy appointment. For those of you that don't know we had to go to the US embassy and make it official. We had to leave the hotel at 6 am and Mia was NOT happy about being woke up. We had to go have her photo taken for her visa and then head to the embassy. We drove with Mia on our lap, yes on our lap, they don't use car seats. If you know how they drive then you would understand the terror we had with her on our lap! We made it to the embassy and sat outside with all the Guatemalan people dressed in their best trying to get Visa's to the US, all of which would probably be denied. Don't even get me started on the whole stupid immigration thing... Anyway, the embassy opened and we were escorted in a special room just for us adopting people. We sat and waited as American families with Guatemalan children filled the room. There must have been 40 families in this room. Then we waited some more. Then the fun began, because being tired and grumpy Mia starts crying, but we can't go outside because we know our name is going to be called and we don't want to miss that. So in a room of 40+ babies we had the screaming baby! After 45 minutes or so of her screaming Jenny got her to sleep. Then we were called. We had to go into a room and they asked a bunch of questions and then we were sent back out into the big room again to wait. So we waited. We waited for her name to be called again. Finally it was they give you a recipet and tell you to come back tomorrow after 3:30 to pick up Mia's visa.
Day to pick up Visa. We called Maria to see if she would watch Mia while we went back to the embassy and to go shopping. It isn't safe to take the children out of the hotel, because there are many people who are not pro-adoption so we felt like it was best to leave Mia with Maria. She was excited and came to watch Mia. We had our favorite cab driver, Fernando, take us around and wait for us while we went shopping. We went to the artisian market and bought some traditional Guatemalan things. During the drive we got to talk to Fernando about Guatemala. He said that if we weren't adopting Mia she would likely end up being a domestic or begging on the streets. He was a wonderful man who truly touched our hearts, he works 15 hours a day 7 days a week to put his boys through school. Not college, but K-12, yes they have to pay for K-12 school and it is very expensive for the Guatemalan people to pay for so most kids never go to school. Anyway back to the story...we went back to the embassy to pick up Mia's visa. Jenny had to hold her hand up and swear to take care of Mia and then we were off.
Mia was adjusting better everyday and getting less and less scared of us.
Maria came back one more time to see Mia and it was very hard for her to say goodbye to Mia. It was bitter sweet, because we were happy to be going home, and Maria was sad because we were leaving.
Our plane rides home were also very unventful. Mia slept almost the entire time on the plane and didn't cry at all.
Since we have been home everyday gets a little better. She is sleeping mostly through the night and she seem to be bonding to us. She really won't go to anyone else, but us and that is a good thing.
We couldn't have asked for a more perfect little girl and we are so happy!
to Guatemala!!!! We leave on the 23rd and come home on the 30th! We are so excited and nervous. I keep telling Jenny this time next week we are going to be moms FOREVER!!! How scary is that?
Dude, we're thinking of you. (((HUGS)))
hotel room and call the kennel because Guatemala here we come!!!
We got the call today our embassy appointment in the 27th and we will arrive home on the 30th!
We leave on the 23rd and can hardly wait!!!
Today!!!! This means that we will hopefully have our appointment by next week. We are thinking that our appointment will be the last week on June. We are very excited and we can't wait to have our daughter in arms forever!
Well our update from our agency this week was good news! We have the new birth certificate and her new passport too!!! We are in translation and we should be submitted to the embassy next week, which means that we will have a travel date in a few weeks, and should be in Guatemala by the end of the month!!!! We are so excited to have Mia home and be a family!
