can express this experience. I promise to try and capture it when we return but for today I will leave you with photos.

FTC Christmas Babies…Sabrina looks like a sack of potatoes in all of them. Hehe.

Sig brought us all tiaras to wear.

Daddy and Sabrina

Mommy and Sabrina

Me, Angie, Sig, Vicki (I look like an Amazon – I don’t think of myself as that tall.)

Miss Diva

Mommy and Sabrina at the pool.

Bath time.

This has been dubbed a “daddy smile” despite the fact that she was looking at mommy.

Like I’ve learned he is a total baby hog.  He would feed her, change her, comfort her, and talk to her 24/7 with no help from me if I let him.  (No, I’m not complaining – I know how lucky we are to have him – I’m just saying give mommy a chance!)  We had to have a little talk about it yesterday – I was starting to feel like a third wheel.  He graciously apologized and stopped bogarting our daughter.  We are now sharing well.

Sabrina is a joy.  She smiles and laughs and coos at us.  Just in the few days we’ve had her she’s learned a few new things – her head seems a bit more stable and she’s figured out that moving her hand makes the toys on the bouncy seat rattle.  She’s partial to the orange giraffe – he makes her laugh.

At this very moment, we are sitting pool side.  Sabrina is napping in the stroller (although she really likes to nap in her sling the best).  Steve is sipping a beer and we are both enjoying this time more than we ever imagined.  Total denial about Monday approaching.  Okay, okay, I know you all really just want the photos so here goes:  (Sabrina’s chef boyardee hat cracks me up – and no we didn’t take her out in public that way)

She is a bad influence. Although I did get a good price the shaw since we bought 3 between us.

No words can describe how wonderful this is – spending time with my daughter. Watching my husband become an amazing dad right before my eyes. I am completely and totally in love with them both. I am at peace – this is where I belong: with my family no matter what country we all happen to be in at the moment. I promise to try and capture this all a little better in words when we return but for now I just want to check in and then go spend more time with Sabrina. She loves her sling and looked darling in her silly little Christmas dress for the Christmas FTC babies photos in the lobby last night. Here are a few photos:

Greetings from Guatemala! The fabulous Miss Sabrina was placed in our arms around 4:30 yesterday. I cried, of course. Her foster mother was lovely and obviously adores the little princess as she calls her. She has been showing her photos of us daily telling her we are mama and papa.

We had dinner with Sig and Vicki last night. They are both wonderful ladies with beautiful little girls. Miss Sabrina has been great. It took us a little bit to get the hang of getting her down for bed last night but once we succeeded she slept from 10:15 until 5:30am. She had a bottle and then slept from 6am until 9am and we had to wake her so we could go down for breakfast. She loves to be in constant motion. She would prefer that we never sit and constantly walk and rock her. She gets quite indignant when we try to sit and rock her – guess she thinks we are slackers when we try to do that. She also loves her sling – she loves to snuggle up in it and fall asleep. Steve has been the official diaper changer so I guess mommy will have to jump in soon. I have so much I want to type but we are paying for internet by the minute and it took us 40 minutes to figure out how to upload photos – we are quite sure you all care less about what we have to say than seeing the fabulous Miss Sabrina.

More tomorrow. Adios from Guatemala.

In case you haven’t heard, we are outta here to go see this face:

Several of you have asked if I will check in while we are gone.  My answer is yes I will most certainly check in.  The only unknown is whether or not I’ll be able to upload photos.  I know all of you out there in blog land are waiting to hear about our visit but real life family and friends will also be checking in to see how we are faring…so updates are promised.

Tomorrow’s (actually today’s) check-in from Guatemala will likely be incoherent.  I can not sleep.  That means cat naps on the plane between begging for water and nuts from the flight attendants will be the only thing keeping me upright. That and my excitement…so I think I will manage.  Let’s hope she is a sleeper because this mommy will crash eventually.

I wasn’t able to get on the net in DC – my conference had a jam packed schedule and all I had time to do was go to meetings and sleep.  Speaking of sleep, oh my, the Heavenly Bed at the Westin?  Oh so heavenly!  I slept like  a baby!  It was awsome (love the down comforter and all of the pillows)!  Tell me they have the same bed in Guatemala at the Westin? The Heavenly shower with the dual shower head was also quite nice.  I could have holed up in my room for days – it was so comfy.  Lots of room.  I didn’t get any photos of DC (thought that trying to take a photo of the Washington Monument as I sped by on the highway might have been a bad idea) so here are my only photos:

And here is what a $30 room service breakfast looks like at the Westin (holy crap those must have been golden chickens and pigs):

Know what I’ll be doing tomorrow?  Holding Miss Sabrina!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  We are incredibly excited and will update as soon as we can from Guatemala.  Our flight leaves at 6:30 AM so I better finish packing!  Adios! (I spent part of my drive listening to Learn Spanish CDs…I question their choice of vocabulary lessons for travelers but it nudged my memory a bit from my 1 year of high school Spanish.  I kept answering the questions in French on accident because I studied that for 4 years – don’t think the Guatemalans would care for my French!)

We sent out the blog pals a few minutes ago.  I matched everyone randomly – based on the order your email were received.  So the first person is the pal for the second and the second person is buying for the third and so on.  (It was hard!  So many I people I thought it would be fun to send gifts to and receive gifts from…but I kept it random.)  If you signed up and didn’t receive an email, please let me know – your spam filter may not like the yahoo address or something.  I can resend it.  Or if you can’t open the attachment (which is the email that your pal sent to sign up) let me know that as well and I can copy and paste it.

Just a note to my pal (you don’t know who you are…but I’ll say it anyway), I will be out of town until 12/13 so I won’t get anything out to you until I’ve returned from Guatemala.  But I’m already thinking about it…

I’ve been thinking about what kind of gift we might take for the foster mom when we visit for months now. I’ve read many suggestions but never had a moment where I thought “Aha! That’s the ticket!” Some of the suggestions are wonderful…but seem more appropriate for pick up than the first time we meet her. Others just feel a little too generic or impersonal. It’s a strange situation – this woman is a complete stranger but she is caring for our daughter 24/7 for the first 6 months of her life. Gifts are not mandatory but are a nice gesture to show your appreciation.

I have recently embarked on (yet another) crafty hobby. I’ve tried knitting and crocheting but don’t seem to have the patience (or skill) for either beyond the 1st half of a project. In the past I’ve tried scrapbooking (yawn), painting (no skill), photography (which I enjoy and still do), thought about pottery (would love it but an expensive hobby to have), and thought about sewing (ugly flashbacks to 7th grade home ec ensued). I just have a need for some sort of creative outlet. Blogging helps but I need a little something more.

Steve is thankfully patient of my wandering among various crafty endeavors. My newest one (I’ve been contemplating it for awhile and took the plunge this weekend) is jewelry making. I spent some time reading up and playing around with it this weekend. A trip to Michael’s resulted in some supplies and tools. And so our gift for Sabrina’s foster mom was born.

Sabrina’s foster mother always has dangling earrings on in the photo updates we receive so I thought perhaps she would appreciate these. I thought a gift we made might be more meaningful than chocolates or bath gel (not that there is anything wrong with either). I also plan on giving her a card with some cash in it because I’m sure that is much more useful than anything else I could bring her.

If you are interested in joining us for a secret blog pals group, this is your last chance to sign up for this round.  I will likely invite others to join in the next round so if you just don’t feel like you can do it this time, no worries.  If you want to sign up, check out this post  to find out how.  There are about 25 of us on the list.  People adopting from a variety of countries, people who don’t have a referral yet, people who have been home for awhile with their babies, and people who don’t have blogs but want to be part of the adopting community – so don’t be shy if you aren’t sure that you will fit in.  We will be sending out the secret pal matches tomorrow evening – so keep your eyes open for that.

Huh. A report was released on why my county has a model CYF (Children, Youth & Families) system in our country. I was skimming through the report and noticed that the county was praised for feeling that “Adoption is a failure” in a case. It felt like a punch in the stomach. I understand when a child is removed from his/her parent(s) the initial goal is always to reunify that family. I also understand that it is, on paper at least, always best for a child to be raise by his/her biological family. But I know that there are many instances when that isn’t even close to the best thing. The best thing is for the child to be in a stable family. When a child ends up in foster case waiting to be reunified, he/she is often moved from family to family with shelters in between. And often the parents just can’t get their acts together and after trying to go home a half dozen times the parental rights might be terminated. That’s never a cause to celebrate for the parents but it means that the child can now be adopted. And if that child is lucky enough to be adopted, a stable family can finally be formed. And really, the child is the one that we are the most concerned about, right?
Why can’t adoption simply be a different kind of success?

I would love to get into this topic further, but I like the paycheck I receive every 2 weeks. Feel free to discuss further in the comments section.