Life with Lotus Maria and Lucian Stone

After the whirlwind of Lotus's arrival we all retired to our hotel room. We walked in, put her down and we all stared at each other. We fed her and changed her. Took off the ridiculous tights and shoes and plopped her down on a blanket in the middle of the room and just marveled at her. She still didn't fuss and almost seemed to understand who we were and that all was going to be okay. That was until I decided to try and take out the elaborate hairstyle. Miriam Janet had styled Lotus' hair as if she was going to the prom. Each ponytail was gelled and secured with a real elastic band, not a fabric covered one like we adults use. Think rubber band wrapped around newspaper, but much smaller. The first one came off with relative ease, but after that each one was a battle. Lotus Maria cried and screamed and I started to cry and then gave up. But not for long. My own child hood flash back of my mother trying to contain my kinky curly hair with elastic bands flooded into memory and I just had to free her hair. I ordered Nate down to the reception desk to get a pair of scissors. His looked at me in horror, but I reassured him it wasn't for her hair but to cut out the rubber bands. He returned scissors in hand and 30 minutes later, a lot of tears (both mine and hers) and her hair was free from it's elastic bonds. It still stuck straight up, but that was okay.

More photos of our first day with Lotus Maria.

Nate waiting for Lotus Maria to arrive

We have returned from Guatemala! And what and amazing trip we had. We arrived in Guatemala City Thursday evening, January 19th. It was a relatively uneventful trip, the only adrenal pumping moment was a last minute scramble to the SF airport because of a ride snafu, but we survived and made our flight with very few minutes to spare.

It was night when we flew into Guatemala City, and I watched out the window at the huge sprawling metropolis coming closer as the plane touched down. Lights and neighborhoods spread out for miles.

Our hotel could have been any hotel any where in the world. It was very nice with that fake sort of grecco architecture, shiny floors and faux impressionist oil painting that create an atmosphere that makes foreign travelers feel secure. Most importantly it was a large facility with many restaurants and areas to walk around. We couldn't leave the grounds once Lotus Maria arrived so I was happy to see that there was enough to do that we all would go stir crazy.

Nate and I checked in and got settled and amazingly enough actually feel asleep. The next morning we both leapt out of bed and scurried around trying to get the room ready, which was ridiculous since the hotel had pretty much supplied all we needed. Lotus Maria and her foster mom were going to arrive at 10am, but I was ready at about 7.

We went downstairs and got breakfast and met a woman from Texas named Stacey and her beautiful 7 month old son. This was her third and final visit. She had found out she was out of PGN (which is a term I had never heard 6 months ago, but now it rolls off my tongue with ease. Basically it means the adoption is final, but the baby can't leave the country yet.) and she had decided to come down and just stay with him at the hotel until they could leave and come home. This could take a week or 4 weeks. She didn't seem to mind the unknown and was just thrilled to have her son.

At 9:30 Nate and I camped out in the lobby, just in case they showed up early. The Foster Mother, Miriam Janet, and Lotus would be accompanied by our lawyer who we had never met. As we waited about a half dozen women with children, mostly babies, but some older children as well, entered the lobby and waited for the new parents to arrive. The hotel we stayed at is the place that almost all of the people adopting from Guatemala meet their children for the first time. I had a really hard time seeing all these children that needed homes. I assumed that our experience would be some what unique and solitary, so it was difficult to realize it was a shared experience. It was surreal to have this very personal moment in this very sterile, yet opulent lobby of a hotel which by nature is an impersonal environment, and to be surrounded by families from all over also having this personal moment.

As each woman entered I scanned the faces of the foster mothers and babies terrified we wouldn't be able to recognize our child even though I had studied her face in photographs thousands of times. Stacey from Texas joined us at our watch spot in the lobby. Her son was nodding off in her arms. "Did you expect to see so many children?" She asked. I said no. "Neither did I. It's a little weird isn't it." The doors slid open yet again and a solitary well dressed woman entered. "Is that your lawyer?" Stacey asked us. "I don't know what our lawyer looks like." I replied sullenly, realizing that would have been a really good question to ask the agency before we left the country. The doors would open again and a woman with a child would enter. 'Is that your baby?" Stacey would ask. "No, I don't know, I don't think so..." She was being nice, but she was driving me crazy.

After a few more moments of Nate and I pacing the lobby and trying not to jump out of our skin we spied the bobbing head of a held child weaving through the front parking area and I knew immediately that was our girl. She was in the arms of her foster mother, Miriam Janet, who I recognized from the photos we had received. Lotus Maria's hair was in about 10 tiny ponytails on top of her head which stuck out like little antenna. She was dressed in a little denim dress we had sent down and lacy tights which we definitely did not send down. Miriam Janet rushed over to us and was terribly apologetic that she was a few minutes late and said she recognized us from the photo album we had sent to Lotus before Christmas. She only spoke Spanish and I was doing me best to translate to to Nate and respond while not taking my eyes off our little girl. "Everyday we look to the pictures that you sent and I tell her this is your mommy and this is your daddy." I have no idea if this is true or if the baby could comprehend the photos and their meaning but she didn't scream when she was placed in my arms.

Our lawyer,Sandra, rushed over from the other side of the lobby. She got us all seated and Nate sat down with our questions while I wandered the lobby with this antenned child, our child. Shockingly Lotus Maria wasn't upset, but her body was stiff, maybe because of the strange woman holding her, or the stimuli of all the people in the lobby or just the awareness that in her little life there would be more change.

Miriam Janet was fantastic. She had written the baby's schedule out for us, but in Spanish. I barely know the word for bottle or diaper in English much less Spanish so I was very grateful that Nate was there and calm enough to get clarification and ask questions. She brought us formula, clothes, diapers. So most of what we brought with us we never needed. It was obvious that our child was well cared for. Her chubby rosy cheeks are made for kissing and her arms and legs are round rolls of soft delicious baby fat. She is a big girl and was already giving my arms a workout. Her hair, though ridiculous styled which would prove problematic later, is a dark and shiny. Lotus's eyes matche her hair in deep dark color and are encircled by long lashes that dusted the tops of her cheeks her she blinked. In a nutshell she is perfect and all we had to do was keep her alive for the next four days.

Then just as quickly as Miriam Janet and Sandra swooped in they were gone and there we were with our precious little girl, in the lobby of a hotel in a country we had never been before, with a language we barely spoke hoping for the best.

We just got these new pictures today. The woman in the photo is Lotus Maria's foster mom. We leave for Guatemala tomorrow morning and Lotus Maria will be brought to our hotel on Friday morning and not picked up until Monday. We can't wait and I'm sure we will have tons of photos and stories to tell once we get back.

Today we finally heard that we were pre-approved by the US Embassy, so now our case can move on. In lovely bureaucratic fashion they claimed that they had informed us of our pre-approval in December. Which, of course, they had not. Never the less we have made it through one more stage, and we are that much closer to being able to bring her home. In even better news it means I don't run the risk of being arrested in Guatemala, since I was planning on going to the embassy next week when we were down there to see who I could talk to about the situation. And I wasn't imagining that would go well.

This will make our visit down to Guatemala so much more enjoyable, and so much more tangible that she is our daughter and soon will be home. We leave on Thursday morning and she is brought to the hotel Friday morning. We are so excited and incredibly nervous. I have so much baby stuff in my luggage that there is almost no room for a change of clothes.

I will post photos as so as we get back.