Time

The Bean has been home with us since May 23 in 2005. According to Leslie that is 4 years 6 months and 10 days. That is roughly 1,650 days. In case any of you out there is pondering the whole attatchment/bonding thing. Let me tell you this. It has taken every single second of those 1,650 days to help my daughter turn the corner as far as trust and intimacy. Every second.

Then, you know what? It sort of happened without me noticing it. I just realized yesterday that I am getting brighter and more open smiles, she is starting to accept the choices that I lay out for her instead of divising one of her own, she is hugging us more and allowing us to hug and kiss her more. She is more easy. That's all that I can say.

Easy like Sunday morning now.

More confident.

If you don't know her as well as we do, you probably would not even notice. Heck, it took me awhile! It's just that well, it's hard to put into words...... I can sense with my mother's heart that so many of the things that I have been hoping and praying would happen for Ev have happened.

It seems that these days she is luminescent. She is more free.

It has not been all me. Or all Les. It has been Grandma and Grandpa Aunt Lissa and her Dillon Aunts. It has been having Brevin in her life. It has been watching us struggle to get the baby home and hearing every day that this is what we did for her-reaffirming that she was wanted and loved form the very beginning.

It has been HER.

This tiny girl who was followed home by the pain and betrayals of her beginnings. This baby that was left outside at just a day old. This child who survived hospitalizations and an orphanage-alone- this one little being who determined somewhere in her mind that she would live. I have learned so much from her. I have to respect her shell- it is part of why she survived. I have to make room in my life for her inner warriors for they kept her strong. I am almost bowed over every day that I see her smile and feel her arms around me and hear her say "Mama I LOVE you." Because there is no real and solid reason that she should have lived, that she should have healed, that she has found a way to finally crack that shell and send those warriors off for a lunch break. What I have on my hands is a miracle.

I know that.

Leslie knows that.

I am not saying that our work is over. I know that there will be questions later. Hard questions with answers that one can only soften so much. I know that those teen years are out there- looming.

It's just that this Christmas more than any of our other 4....This Christmas is something super duper. Something great. Something important. I want it to last forever and I want to bask in every minute.

So I will.