My New Baby

Internet is down at my house, so I'm not able to upload pictures, but I wish I could so you could all see my beautiful new baby Mariana! She is a year and a half old and arrived at the home Wednesday afternoon. It's been a couple of interesting days for her, that's for sure. My heart breaks for her, as she spends a fair amount of crying, staring and pointing at the gate, longing to go home, I'm sure. However, in her moments of distractedness she brings me much joy- her smile and laugh are so incredibly adorable!! I can never understand how on earth these parents can just give their kids away. She is slowly adjusting to life at the home. My other little girl, Abigail, loves having another little girl to play with. She's getting used to the schedule and is getting to know each of us workers little by little, but it's still easy to tell it's all a little (or very, really) foreign to her. I'm trying to imagine the thought process a child like that goes through being taken from a family setting, no matter how awful, and being thrown into a completely new environment where she nothing and no one is familiar to him/her. But it does make me happy to know that she is now in a place where she will have people taking good care of her and loving her and playing with her like a little girl her age needs. She is such a sweetheart. We need to take her to the doctor to find out how her health is, but as far as we can tell she doesn't have any outstanding health issues, but is just in need of a home and a little love. I'll have to get a picture up of her soon- she's such a little princess. Please pray for her and us through the adjusting process. It's different for every child, of course, but it reminds me a little bit of Diego's first week, and I know it was pretty rough- some moments were happy, some sad, some screaming wanting to leave, and just hard over all. It's hard to watch a child have to go through.