Toothless Grin

I do love to come home, open my email and find new pictures of Judah!!  It was however very strange because I opened the first email and opened the pictures and thought “WHOA, he has changed a ton!!”  It actually started to make me sad that I didn’t even recognize my own son.  Then, I opened the second email and read “oops, disregard the other email I sent you pictures of someone else’s kid.”  Phew, I thought I was going a little crazy or that those people who have been passing the rumors that Ethiopian adoptions are all a scam were actually coming true!

So I actually got to see his face today.  I feel like every step of this process has two complete opposite emotions at the same time.  I was soooo very  excited to see his face and see that he is doing well and happy but at the same time it is devastating to see how much bigger he has gotten in these few short months and I’m missing all of it.  He had these tiny little perfect teeth in our last pictures and now it looks like he has lost 2 or 3 teeth in the front and it just makes him look so grown up.  I’m missing it.  I’m missing seeing the shock in his little face when the tooth finally comes out.  I’m missing his love for stories and begging for one more.  I’m missing watching him play soccer (yes I even miss that!) and run around with his friends.  I guess I had the realization today that this little face in all of our picture frames in our house is not the boy who will be coming in the fall.  He will be another year older.  I guess my head knew that but my heart is grieving it today.  These are days and months I will never get with him.  I know this is God’s plan but man it hurts today.

I’ve been reading through the papers that we have on birth parent meetings.  They are currently unavailable at this time but we’re hoping that they will open back up so we can meet her when we are there.  Anyway, when I’m reading the questions we should ask it is so crazy to me.  You’d think I’d have all this under control since we already have one adopted child but since she’s here and we have a medical file the size of kingdom come on her I don’t think about all the unknowns with her.  With Judah if we don’t get to meet his mother then I’ll never know the story behind the day he was born or how big he was.  The only thing I’ll ever know is that he was born whining because that’s why she named him Ashenafi which meet whiner.  That’s not the greatest detail to have.  We do have a lot more information on him that most people do because his own mother voluntarily brought him in to give up so I have actual papers with her answers on them (someone else wrote them bc they are in English) about family history and things but still I want more.  I really desperately want to meet her and be able to tell him about her some day.  As much as it might hurt, I want it.  I want to be able to tell her the dream that he would get the medical attention he needs and that he would be educated are going to come true.  I want to have a picture taken with her that I believe will be a precious thing for him to have some day.  Pray about that with me will you?  I think as much as I’m missing him today and we’ve never met I bet she and he are missing each other even more and I want to be able to let him share that sorrow with me and help him turn it into joy someday.