Landslide

Today was kind of anti climatic. I went down to the "court" to sign the Sentencia while Hilary stayed at the Halifax to watch Mariana. See the picture above of the woman stamping it all official like. I put my monkey suit back on and was out the door by 7:15am. It was a lot of running around making copies getting stamps -a bunch of procedural bullshit. I was nervous but could barely stay awake at the same time. In the end we're on schedule to be done by friday thanks to Helena's dogged determination. We love her. Tomorrow we go get her Colombian passport and see the US embassy Doctor at 11am. fingers crossed for this section of red tape...

As we start to look towards home we are thinking about how best to ease our little girls entry. We're going to try to make everyone come to us for a while because Mariana doesn't like to eat enough or sleep enough when her schedule gets changed. Not good. Therefore long car rides in a car seat (another first) will be on a case by case basis. The poor thing will go through enough emotionally just coming to the US with us and learning a whole new environment. Also the adoption literature we've read says we should refrain from letting many people hold her for the first 6 weeks so she starts the attachment process with us, her forever parents. Well we've been here for almost 5 weeks and she's been exclusively with us so I think we're in pretty good shape there.

During the craziness today we went for a tour of CRAN, the place where Mariana's birth parents went to place her for adoption. We took a tour of the facilities. They do an amazing job. They don't just do adoptions. There are many children under the age of 6 living there and being cared for. They run a school, and provide day care for kids who are in need nutritionally or emotionally. We sat with the Director Ximena and she asked us if we had any questions - this was the time to do it. They had something for Mariana from her birth parents. I thought we might get a photo and/or a letter. I was so curious to see what they looked like. What they gave us was an entire book filled with photos, letters, writing about their lives, their graduation pictures, pictures of friends, relatives, the works. It was an emotional landslide. I'm kind of numb from it. It's all in Spanish so I can only pick my way through it but someday Mariana will have a fantastic/horrible time reading it. I picture her asking "If they loved me so much as this book clearly shows, why did they give me away?" Do I have an answer for that question? No, but I better have one. We have such an enormous responsibility ahead. Not only can't we let her down but we have an entire second family of people not to let down too?! Obviously it's entirely up to her to seek them out if she wants to some day. We'll send pictures and letters to CRAN over the years but her birth parents won't be able to see anything until she's 18! 18 anxious years of wondering what happened to the daughter who they cared so much about they gave her to someone for the hope of a better life. Our hearts ache for these 2 beautiful people who created our beautiful daughter.

On a lighter note check out Mariana's stomach before and after her morning bottle.