Love At First Sight

We arrived safely and uneventfully into Guatemala City about 3pm (5pm EST). Leaving the airport there were hordes of people in Mayan dress massively crowding the outside of the airport. I am embarrassed to say that even though I’ve been to such places before, I immediately went into a bit of culture shock. The people come from the countryside and come in crowds from the villages in flat bed trucks, chicken trucks, whatever they can all squeeze into to greet an arriving family member. It was quite wonderful actually just not what I expected and I was definitely not in Kansas (I mean Florida) anymore! Our shuttle was not there so we had about 15 minutes to immerse ourselves into this crowd and adjust. Everyone is so friendly here. I was getting antsy though. It was 4pm and were to meet the babies at 5pm. Even though I knew they’d be late, that is customary. And, they were late. We got the room all set up and went down to the lobby at 5pm.

Sometime closer to 6pm, in walked the woman that I’ve seen only in pictures over the last few months, Lily’s foster mom. She was a sight for sore eyes! I was thrilled to see her and I new under that bundled up blanket was my baby girl! Thankfully (and unexpectedly) our agency had arranged for a translator to be here who took pictures and interviewed the foster mother for us. He is a 4th year law student, a Christian, works with the youth at his Church and seems to be quite a nice young man. It was nice to be able to talk so openly about the Lord. We’ve only adopted in China thus far where you cannot mention anything about God or any religion.

So, what you really are reading this for is Lily! Oh my!!!!!!! You know how big we thought she was from her pictures?! Wrong! She is so small. She is a peanut and is very, very precious. Just big ole’ cheeks. And, I have to honestly say she is a million times more beautiful than her pictures allow for. She is just gorgeous. I have not been allowing myself to bond to her photos for fear of losing her. But that all faded away with first look. She became instantly etched in my heart forever. As I held her for the first time all my nerves from the past 2hrs faded away and a huge sigh of relief came over me. We spent about 1hr (or so) with the foster mother, chatting, and getting information. Aaron was still not here (we did get him a bit later though). We were getting nervous though and the big girls were tired, hungry and bored. They did warm up to Lily right away. Kya was instant little mommy and Lily smiled every time Kya came near her.



Lily is a beautifully behaved baby. She smiles a lot, moves a lot. She slept from about 9:30 to about 7:45 (or something like that). She woke up one time in the middle of the night (3am) for her middle of the night feeding (just like the FM told us). Dale and I both woke many times to check on both babies. Dale did not sleep well but I slept beautifully with all my babies surrounding me (and the hotel has wonderful beds and pillows).