ONE!

Today is our daughter's first birthday!

She woke up bright and early this morning. Not the best gift for her momma and sick daddy, but I sense she wanted to make the most of her 1st birthday. PLUS, her grandma flew into town last night and she needed to meet her. She peed through her first cute birthday outfit of the day ["Grandma's Love Bug" onesie and hot pink Hurley pants], maybe because she wanted a wardrobe change ["Best Gift Ever" onesie and ruffled-booty pants].

Right now my little drama queen, nothin' but joy, splish splashin', gibber gabbin', hand-holding walking daughter is asleep in her room. I cannot describe how much JOY she's brought to our life. She is living up to her name: a new life of flowers...spring. We love her so much.

To make this day even more supernatural, on the day Addise was born I wrote THIS POST on our blog. How fitting, how timely. Only God. Even the picture speaks to what I was feeling, aching for, groaning inwardly about.

Shake-my-head, smile-so-big, jump-for-joy, my babies are home! And today we celebrate Addise's first birthday!

[Birthday pictures to come on another post!]

Injera

Since we've been home, yummy meals been delivered most days of the week. Friends have dropped off bags of groceries - food we need and food they hope J&A will like, too. "Helpful" doesn't sum up how I feel about these meals and groceries. Without argument cannot imagine making food for our family right now. It feels like too much just to brush my teeth more than once a day, much less make 3 meals a day for 4 people.

On Sunday our friends, the Baran's, brought us Ethiopian food from a local Ethiopian owned restaurant. We thought that especially Judah might really need a taste from home after nearly 3 weeks of not having any familiar food. A couple necessary Target bags in stow, the Baran family showed up with Doro Wat, Beef Tibs, and Injera for our family dinner.

What happened next surprised this exhausted and overwhelmed momma to tears [my first tears since getting J&A]...



The entire time Judah was consumed with his food. He couldn't take his eyes off it. He ate more than we'd ever seen. He literally tasted home that night for the first time in a long time. My heart exploded when I became emotionally connection [again!] to how much transition this little 2 1/2 year old has been through in the past month. New language. New caregivers. New food. New bed to sleep in. New clothes to wear. New environment to explore. New boundaries. New weather. NEW NAME! New, New, New! So much to grieve and learn.

People say kids are resilient. And they are. But grieving is still necessary. Saying "goodbye" to everything that you knew is still hard. Learning a completely new way of life is still enormously challenging, especially when communicating is so difficult.

Parenting Judah these past few weeks has been extraordinarily difficult. Parenting an infant like Addise is a piece of cake compared to a toddler. But their are moments like eating injera and taking baths that solidify that we are supposed to be Judah's parents.

Post-Adoption Update

Until I find more words to explain where we are on our post-adoption journey, I'm stealing/sharing the words from fellow adoptive families. This excerpt is from my friend, Lauren's, blog. It echos the dull ache in the back of my heart when I think of our kids' whole stories. While Judah and Addise will never "remember" what happened to them before they became Diaz's, in the words of adoption and attachment expert, Karyn Purvis, "Every kid has cognitive recall of their history." Consider that as you read Lauren's blog post:

"...and i especially hate thinking about my toddler-aged child (though i have never seen his/her face or heard his/her story) sitting in an orphanage quietly mourning the mother he/she has lost and wondering if there will ever be another mother to hold him/her again. i think that he/she must be old enough to remember what his/her mother's face looked like, how her hands felt, how her voice sounded, how she smelled...and also old enough to remember how suddenly she was gone...when all the sights, sounds, and smells just disappeared.

"but, in adoption, there is hope for redemption.

"tonight, i claim for my children and all those who need families words of scripture, promises from God...he sets the lonely in families...he defends the cause of the fatherless... he is close to the brokenhearted...he knows our sitting down and rising up...he never leaves us or forsakes us.

"i will not leave you as orphans, i am coming to you. -- john 14:18
"in him the orphan finds mercy. -- hosea 14:3"