Forever Family ~ Two Years!

Two years ago today, two beautiful tiny brown feet touched American soil for the first time. After our adoption process of roughly one year, we were all together as a family in our own home. We'd spent three visits in Guatemala bonding as a family in hotel rooms, on car rides, walking around town and venturing about the country. All time we spent was wonderful, but coming "home" was long awaited.

(above left, Ceiba at 4 days old ~ above right, Ceiba at 1 month old)

I could post a thousand pictures and a million words in efforts to express our journey and the way we feel for Ceiba. They'd all fall short. She became our world the moment we dreamt her.

(ABOVE: visit #1 in Guatemala City)

(BELOW: visit #2 in Guatemala City and Lake Atitlan)

 

I'm eternally thankful to her birthmother and our wonderful foster family in Guatemala, though I no longer think of them every day. Because I don't look at Ceiba and think that she isn't our daughter. She is - though not born from our bodies, she was born in our hearts. And while she may not have our hair or our smiles, she certainly has Chris's inquisitiveness or my temper or our love of nature.

The days of waiting are over. The crying in hotel rooms when we had to leave her have passed. I'll never hold her again as a baby while we ascend over the cloud covered mountains of Guatemala with tears streaming down my face. We don't have to answer "have you heard anything" from loved ones who waited to hold her. The email doesn't get stalked every hour, and I'm not afraid to lay the phone down.

She's here... she's ours... and she's so worth the wait.