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HouseOfSmooches
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Name: Sarah
Gender: Female
Interests: Loving Jesus, Spending time with my sweet husband Stephen, Being a mommy, Adoption, Scrapbooking, Home Schooling, Reading, Watching NCIS and Cooking (ok they did not have a spot for "Addictions" so I'm adding my own category: Addictions -- totally addicted to Adoption!)
Expertise: Cleaning up messes!!
Occupation: Stay at home Mommy
Message: message me
Member Since:
8/5/2006
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Last week in school we were reading our history read-a-loud book Castle Diary The Journal of Tobias Burgess, and the young page Tobias was observing that “many servants came in to aid” the Lady of the manor. After a minute or two of reading Carlos stopped me and said, “wait mommy, I thought they were eating the Lady of the manor?” It took me a minute to figure out that he heard, “the servants came in to ate the lady….” Thankfully I did not bust out laughing because it was so funny, but I did explain that aid meant to help someone, not eat them!!
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On Monday, Carlos remembered us! And his Special Mother said that every time he heard foot-steps coming down the stairs he would ask if that was “Esteven” coming back to see him! Carlos even offered me one of his cookies, though he asked for it back after I ate it!!! Carlos was very taken with Stephen……he always seemed to migrate to Stephen. We noticed that Carlos was very observant of his surroundings and what was happening. When Stephen stood up from playing on the floor some coins jangled in his pocket. Immediately Carlos asked Stephen for money and said (through the translation of the Special Mom) he wanted to use the money to buy eggs. We were able to spend about 45 minutes with Carlos. I wished it could have been longer, but our flight was leaving soon and we could barely spare the 45 minutes we did stay.
First Family picture with Carlos
Before leaving Hannah’s Hope we signed the paperwork for Carlos’ adoption. The director told us that we should take about a week or so to pray and get council before making a decision. We knew that our boys should remain together in the same family, we just weren’t sure if our family was the right family.
I cried most of our flight home. I loved Jeremiah so much and the thought of giving him up was excruciating. But I was terrified, how I could I be a parent to a 4 year-old AND a baby. Stephen and I had read quite a bit about adoption, about adopting older children, about RAD (reactive attachment disorder) and what we read was very scary. We knew almost nothing about Carlos’ birthfamily and his living situation. We didn’t know how to be parents. We had no idea where the additional finances would come from. But we did know a few things. We knew that God provides. We knew that God is in control. We knew that God had given us a huge heart of love for one tiny baby boy and He could do the same for a little 4-year-old boy.
That first week home was soooooo difficult. Stephen and I decided that we needed to seek council from two or three people and pray. So we told no one else about Carlos. It was so hard! I felt like I could not rejoice and be happy because I was not sure if Carlos and Jeremiah were going to be our sons. Our emotions were so high.
I had just started doing a Bible study with a group of girls from my church. That week we were studying Genesis 24. In this passage Abraham’s servant goes to find a wife for Isaac. As I was reading this scripture the last verses of this chapter were so powerful to me (v. 50-51):
Then Laban and Bethuel answered and said, "The thing has come from the LORD; we cannot speak to you bad or good. Behold, Rebekah is before you; take her and go, and let her be the wife of your master’s son, as the LORD has spoken."
Reading this verse I felt just like Laban and Bethuel. This “thing” (the situation) our son Carlos was from the LORD. Carlos was here before us and we should take him and go (bring him home and make him our son). Stephen and I had many conversations about the circumstances surrounding our trip to Guatemala.
1. We were approved to adopt two children
2. We held out on other possible referrals to accept Jeremiah’s referral
3. Adoptive families usually traveled to Guatemala Thursday/Friday and left on Saturday/Sunday. We found a flight for $350.00 each, but the return flight was on Monday. We decided the extra day was well worth the savings. And because we were in Guatemala on Monday we were able to sign the legal paperwork.
4. Our boys birthmom waited more than a month before making an adoption plan for Carlos. If she had placed them together at the same time we never would have received the referral since we were on the waiting list for one child and many families were waiting for sibling groups.
Stephen and I prayed, separately and together, we received Godly council, we talked and talked. And in the end I could not shake that God was saying, “Carlos is before you, take him and go.” And although God did not use this same verse with Stephen, he too came to the same conclusion. I love what Stephen wrote: “We know that this path will be hard and at times feel nearly impossible, but our God is a great God who holds the universe in His hand and knows the number of hairs on our heads. This idea of adopting two at one time was not our idea (trust us on that one!!), but His and He will guide our footsteps as we venture (or should I say dive) into parenthood.”
Has our dive into parenthood been easy…..No WAY! Would I trade our beautiful Guatemalan born sons……NEVER! Has God been faithful to our family……ALWAYS!
First Family Picture with Jeremiah
A family united!
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We arrived at Hannah's Hope about 8:00 a.m. I was felling very nervous! What was this meeting going to be like?!?!?! We walked over to house #6 and into the downstairs part, around the corner to the right and into the small bedroom. A little boy in a red shirt and baseball cap was sitting at a small table eating breakfast. I just wanted to stare at this cute little boy, but we introduced ourselves to him and Carlos gave us a shy smile. He was not all that interested in his breakfast so his special mom took it away. Both Stephen and I felt pretty odd at first. We were not sure what to do or say and with our limited Spanish the saying part was really hard. But thankfully kids play the same in any language and soon enough we were on the floor playing blocks and cars with Carlos.
From time to time we would overwhelm him or perhaps the newness of the situation I’m not sure, but he would stop playing and scoot over to his Special Mom. She would encourage him and we would engage him again. Carlos really loved this big pink Barbie car. He talked away about “grande carro”. I’m sure he said other things too, we just were not sure what he was saying! His Special Mom said that he was doing really well and was a very smart little boy. She said he was very interested in figuring out how all the toys worked even though he probably never played with toys before and definitely never this many options. That first day we spent with Carlos, he was a little shy and uncertain, but that was quite expected as he had not yet been at Hannah’s Hope for even a full day. I cannot imagine the confusion he must have been feeling. Why was he here? Where was his birthfamily? Who were these white people?
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Friday morning I woke and immediately asked Stephen “what time is it?” (the clock was on his side of the bed), only 5:30!! Big bummer. I had almost 5 more hours to wait until our driver was scheduled to come pick us up. And we had to go back to the orphanage Hannah’s Hope and sign some paperwork before we could go back to the hospital and visit our baby boy. Time felt like it was dragging!
Jeremiah’s doctor, told us that he was doing much better today and we got to hold him almost the entire afternoon!! Our little guy got pneumonia and then had an allergic reaction to the medicine that caused his tummy troubles which caused him to become anemic.
But the real surprise was just about to happen!
About 5 PM our driver came to take us back to the hotel. When he came into the hospital room he was grinning from ear to ear and said, “family at hospital, I have big surprise for you. Good news.” We asked him what the surprise was, but he would not tell us. He just kept saying it was good! We said goodnight to Jeremiah and went to wait for the elevator to take us to the bottom floor. As we were getting into the elevator our driver says, “Good news! Jeremiah has a brother Carlos and he will be coming to Hannah’s Hope.” We could not believe it! We knew that Jeremiah had a brother and had asked if it would be possible for us to get a picture of him, but were told probably not. We were very excited and quite overwhelmed. It was not until after, at dinner that we actually understood the entire situation.
During dinner the director of Hannah’s Hope told us that Carlos was not at Hannah’s Hope for a visit, but his birth mom had relinquished her rights for Carlos and had made an adoption plan for him. Wow, talk about amazing! And talk about feeling shocked and overwhelmed!
The plan was that on Saturday before we went to the hospital to say goodbye (for now) to Jeremiah we would go and meet Carlos and spend some time getting to know him. The director was so helpful and caring. She said that this was a big shock for us and that we should take a lot of time to think about what God would have us to do and pray much about adopting Carlos.
We could not believe that Jeremiah’s birthmom brought Carlos to Hannah’s Hope the same weekend that we came to visit! Amazing!
After dinner we went back to the hotel and met in the lounge area with the two other families that were visiting their children. We spent several hours talking about all the awesome things that God had done for each of our families in our adoptions. It was getting late so we all held hands and prayed for each other and all of our children. It was such a sweet time. Both of these families are so special to us and God used them to encourage us. And the remarkable thing is that God gave all three families two beautiful Guatemalan blessings!
Lots of thoughts were going through my head that night… what is Carlos like? Will he like us? Can we adopt him? Why did his birthmom place him for adoption? And why now? What does Carlos look like? So many thoughts!
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