Adjusting to Our New Life

I've included some pictures from day two in the states and a couple more pictures from our short stay in Liberia with Gabriella. Josiah is warming up to the kids more and played pretty well with all of them. Of course everything is all new and so the kids are all doing pretty well together. We are still in the "honeymoon" phase, so I'm sure that will wear off in due time and they'll be fighting with each other like "normal" brothers and sisters. Josiah had about 5 episodes today where he just hits a wall and for about 15 to 30 seconds will not respond to anything around him. And then he starts crying and wailing and hitting. It's very difficult for the rest of our children to see this, especially when they see him hitting us, but we just hold him tight and rock him or bounce him and sing to him, and eventually he calms down. It's just all part of the attachment process and grieving the losses he's experienced over the past couple days, and the year being in the orphanage. It's so sad to see. Your heart breaks for him, but we don't for a second regret our decision to adopt. It's all worth it and we certainly feel Josiah deserves all the love we can give him.

The news out of Liberia is encouraging. No moratorium has been handed done, and so the Tormey's and Joyce's have been working through their weeks as planned and so far so good. We've been living out the week we missed through them. We continue to pray and trust.

With everything going on, we don't want to forget about Gabriella and the rest of the work we need God to accomplish on our behalf. We are trusting the DNA results will come back and confirm that indeed who we think is Gabriella's mother is. We'll cross any of those other bridges once we get there. But trusting we won't have to go there, we originally thought we would have Gabriella escorted back, because neither of us was too eager to hop back on a plane. But Looks like escorting her would delay so much because of all the re-filing we would need to do to make that happen. So it looks like just one of us will travel, and for Josiah's benefit, that would most likely be me. I would go get a power of attorney for Kim and travel alone. We found out first hand how much bonding takes place on the flight home, and we don't want to miss that opportunity with Gabriella. So we pray on.