Happy Birthday Ana!

Updates

Thank you all for your prayers.  We had our first meeting with a doctor today, and he and we will be developing a path forward for Ana.  We were very thankful for the time and evident care he had for Ana, and the nurses were wonderful, as well.  Our marching orders were to keep Ana going on good food and drink (though not aggressively, letting her pace it and keeping an eye on her throughput) and to apply for our state's long-term disability coverage and begin that process.

Having once been rather Libertarian (and now, I hope, a better Christian than that), this was (and may continue to be) hard to swallow.  But, help comes where God gives it, and if the state is going to offer such services, we will investigate them. 

Our church family has been very kind in providing some meals, and we had an excellent Sunday morning - Ana made it through Sunday school (with Papa, teaching the high-school kids) and service (with Papa, mostly in the cry room or walking around outside the doors so Papa could hear most of the sermon).  We will not be attending evening service for some time, to ease the stress on her (and us), especially since our church is a 50-mile round trip from our house.  This makes me sad, since our evening service is poorly attended, and I love to open and close the Lord's day in the Lord's house, but I think it would be driving the kids too hard.

Papa is back at work some, though officially on leave. There are things that do not wait for families - and I am developing a distaste for them...  but I am thankful that God uses my job to provide for my family at this time.  I am also thankful for the kindness that I occasionally find in the whitewashed tomb of academia, from students who ask after Ana to a co-worker who seemed nearly to cry when I told her we were home and well.  God is good, and His common grace is poured out all around us - this, I think, is the rightful burden of Hopkins' As Kingfishers Catch Fire:

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;

Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —

Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces. 

 

Will you please pray that God will speedily accomplish the sale of our condo?  We had a buyer lead us along for perhaps six weeks, just before the pickup trip, and then walk away while Papa was in Bulgaria getting Ana.  We had been counting on that to settle some adoption expenses, like the trip, and now we will wait and see what God will do.  There are many things that I could gripe about, but instead I should give thanks to the God who accomplishes all things well, large and small; and we know that being stretched is how you grow.  And I am thankful to you all, our larger family in Christ's holy and catholic church, for your support in prayer.

It is a good reminder, may God let all our goings graces be, as Christ, reflecting God the One in Three.

In Christ,
Papa

What's it like to be "mama na Ana"?

That's what I always say; "Ana, I am your mama! Mama na Ana (Ana's mama)!"

So, three sleeps in, here we are! 

Ana is doing incredibly. She LOVES snuggling on my lap, sometimes for as long as half an hour at a time! She just really likes to be near me, which is awesome, even if it prevents me from doing anything else. We just had a big cuddle session with singing and shoulder rubs and now she is a little tired, I think. Intense one on one interaction wears her out, but in a good way. After crowds, she acts very stressed, and after snuggling she just acts sleepy.

Having an Ana is a lot like having a newborn. She loves to be close to me, she cries at night, she can't roll off the couch (yet). I talk to her just like I talked to my other babies; telling her silly things, singing, asking her questions. She responds in a very rewarding fashion, with smiles and snuggles.

In some ways, Ana is unlike my other newborns. She has way more hair than my babies (curse that Northern European blood :-), and giggles more than any newborn. I can't nurse her, and I can't wear her in a baby carrier. I have to keep track of her long skinny legs more than I did with my other babies. 

I will do my best to update now and then, but for now I am just going to live a little.

Thanks for your prayers!

Love,

Mama

America...

I thought about comparing Denver airport to Jersey, but it has always happened that I meet at least a few nice people in Jersey... But I suppose the Saturday night shift is the short straw, and they, too, would rather be home. And we may actually get to our home first.

We are thankful to report that Ana is a US person! Hooray! She still has a maroon passport, but we should get stuff from USCIS before too long.

Papa and Ana are both showing some wear after going full-steam for a full 24 hours now. But God is faithful and we met some God-fearing Guatemalans in the special customs room who blessed Ana and (using language with which I am much more careful) declared that God had sent our family an angel. This conversation ensued because I had spoken to Ana in a mixture of English, Bulgarian, and Spanish.

Time to turn off der handi.

In Christ on our way home,
Papa and Ana

North of the terminator

Over Greenland, where it is twilight, we can see a sunrise parked on the horizon for the winter. The plane tangos with the terminator when you fly a great circle starting at daybreak. It's beautiful.

Ana has been burning down the diapers. We are down to four, with about twelve hours to home. Maybe we can buy some in Denver. I packed enough and to spare for regular-gut Ana, betting that travel-gut Ana would get slowed down (my reaction), but she seems to experience the converse.

POSTSCRIPT: In a delightful twist, Ana was having loose stools in preparation for dealing with some serious constipation. This would explain her discomfort last night and why she has been off-and-on fussy while sitting up in seats all day. So now she is happy and smiling again, we're down to three diapers, and I am hoping she can sleep some. We are currently in polar night, and given our 0400 wakeup call and that it is 1920 in that time zone, she may.

En route

Waiting for the 747 to prep, and Frankfurt has free wifi (tut-tut, Istanbul).

Thank you for your prayers!
Papa and Ana

Open your mouth wide and I will fill it

We are in the air en route to Frankfurt via Lufthansa. The Germans are so kind yet officious.

Ana has eaten a bit of baby food (2/3 of a jar, 80kcal) and some fruit goop and Humana Folgemilch (probaby 30-40kcal). We have been up since 4am after a late night of two big diapers and what I thinl was attention-seeking crying.

But I am thinking about how Ana eats. She makes hungry tooth and tongue noises to tell you (she is still making them after our recent snack - sorry girl, there are some realities of air travel to contend with - only one Squish Delish pouch on a short haul). And she loves to eat. She has affectionate smiles for Papa and Mama, but she has this great big dopamine-dump smile while eating. She likes to let food sit in her mouth and on her lips. I believe she would be thrilled to wallow in a tub of sweet goopy food.  There are reasons for this, to be sure. Being deliberately kept near starvation for ten years and then for two more years just fed orphanage food on the orphanage schedule (in July I was told I was "spoiling her" by taking so much time over lunch - forty minutes, perhaps?) is bound to warp your view of food. And as a grown man who is mostly functional (check with Mama to be sure) it is easy to look at that simple food idolatry and be somewhat repulsed. I mean, eww. It's baby food smeared all over, girl, nothing to bliss out over.

But then I thought of that verse: "Open your mouth wide and I will fill it". God delights in giving simple blessings to his children, presenting the very image of a father feeding his small children and telling them to "open up!" (or as Ana knows, zoom-zoom-zoom-knock-knock).

And then what are we to do? What pleases our Father?

We swallow. We thank God for his blessings and then use them as he wants us to use them. If we bliss out over the blessings, if we focus on them and not the God who gives them to be used, we make an idol. And God will frown and wipe that idol out and encourage us again to take what he gives the way he gives it and be thankful.

And how gross must I look when I smear job or house or hobbies or even family and church work all over my face and grin. Let us use the gift and thank the Giver.

In Christ from 10km up,
Papa and Ana