Looking back

Lately I have been thinking a lot about where we have been and where we are now with regards to adoption. There are quite a few families that are either travelling very soon or are in Ethiopia right now picking up their children. I have found a few blogs of folks in the waiting stage. I talked to a few parents in the homestudy stage on Friday. This morning I was giving Ayana her bottle before her morning nap and she was wrapping her tiny hand around my fingers, something she does all of the time, or she'll reach up and stick a tiny finger in my mouth. She usually will gaze right into my eyes. She really has georgous eyes. I thought about all the months we waited for her. I thought about the first time we met her. I thought about those first extraordinarily difficult first weeks home with her. I thought about how much I totally love her, and cannot imagine our lives without her in it. Even as I sit here now I picture her beautiful smile when she looks at me sometimes and just has the big mouth smile, we call it. All her teeth showing. She is trying hard to say some words, she repeats after me now, which is a relief, and very cute. She is pointing to a lot more things. She has the cutest chubbiest little legs, belly and bottom. I love staring at her when she is in the tub playing, toddling around pouring water from one cup to another, or stirring with her little barbie brush some imaginary dinner she is making, to which I usually have a "taste" and she just grins from ear to ear. She takes this huge foam sword of Ellies and taps us gently on the legs or arms, to which we of course have to dramatically wail, and she laughs like crazy. I love hearing the sounds of her little barefeet padding about on our floor. I love finding her little treasures like her ziploc bag with various "toys" in it, old reciepts, elastic bands, a plastic lid. I love watching her back into her fuzzy Elmo chair to watch In the Night Garden. I love watching her bounce and dance to the Wiggles. Somedays I am tired, for whatever reason, and I don't really do much with either girls, but I watch them play and I just revel in how much they love eachother.. when they are not trying to pummel eachother. I love how Ayana now will shake her head "no" when Daddy is home and it's time for her to go to bed, all the while clinging to his leg. And when I take her from him, she wails like she will never see him again. He loves that too. The latest thing is her "boxer run", we call it, she runs around and does this boxing motion with her arms and hands. It is the cutest thing. When Ellie and I are home with her, we just point out all of these things to eachother and marvel at how cute, funny, amazing, smart she is. We are so very very blessed to have her. We are forever grateful to her birthmother to have loved her so very much to take her to the orphanage. We are so grateful to Imagine Adoption for bringing her into our family. As a mother I am complete. Totally and utterly. I want for nothing else. As a wife too. I am so blissfully content with my life right now. My family is wonderful, and I am so lucky to be able to stay home and raise my girls. May God continue to bless us, and all adoptive families.