2 years ago today...

It is seared in my mind forever, the moment our precious girl walked into the room. Wearing a light flowery purple and white dress, white tights, tiny purple jelly-type sandals and a white purse over her right forearm. Her eyes showed wisdom beyond what her tiny stature showed to be possible. The first sign of her strong will was when she stepped away from her nanny as her nanny gently pushed her towards us, as if to say, "I'll do this on my own time". We offered water which she took in quickly from daddy and grasped the lollipop that I gave her as if to never let it go. Once it was time to move to the next step of leaving her nanny, her cries began as I'm sure must have been a terrifying experience being taken from all she knew, not knowing she was actually coming home.

We held our most precious gift from Jesus tightly as we left the building into the night of heavy rain, surrounded by loud traffic, foreign foods hanging from skewers, the smell of sewer, and people jam packed. Lauren was quiet once outside and wide-eyed, took in all that was going on around her. We made our way through the traffic, dodging cars and pedestrians, to our hotel. Once inside, Lauren's tiny body started to shiver from being wet and having the cooler air inside. We had planned to leave her dressed longer to give her time to slowly leave behind what was familiar. However, decided to give her a bath since she was wet and cold. Once her clothes were removed it was evident just how tiny she really was. We put her in the bathtub and she looked around as to say, "what is this?" We had placed 2 square plastic blocks and a plastic beaded ring (pictured above) in the bathtub. I could see her eyes assess the toys and in the next second I could see she had learned to be resourceful. She picked up the beaded ring, swung one end between her teeth so it was hanging from her mouth, and then picked up a block in each hand.

After the bath, we swaddled her into her fresh new pajamas that I'm sure we had bought for her before she was born, and I rocked her for the first time. Standing up, one arm cradling her head and her tiny legs over my other arm, I sang "Jesus loves me" to her for the first time until she finally fell asleep.

Two years later, she is sleeping in our bed right now and I have often found her rocking her babies and signing "Jesus loves me " to them and she has even sang this to me a few times.

Thank you Jesus for our gift of precious, beautiful Lauren....