Our Last Day in Guatemala

Hello to everyone,

Well it is our last day in Guatemala and it was the best so far. We went to Antigua today and had a blast. Noah slept most of the time except when we were in a place that he needed to be a little more quiet. We did have a lot of help with him from the local people. Everyone has been so kind and the people here are beautiful. We will miss them greatly and will never forget our experience in Noah's birth country.

We are looking forward to being home though not looking forward to such a long day. Noah is teething and has a cold so he gets fussy when we stop for very long. We do appreciate all the prayers and thank God for each of you. Your emails while we have been away have been so comforting. It has helped more than you will ever know.

Love the Milners

Our First Outting with Noah!

We have met our new son, met his foster mother, exchanged gifts with the foster mom {we got the better end of the deal -Noah}, finished signing paper work, taken pictures, and said our goodbyes to Grandma Alice.

Now it is time to enjoy our little guy and get to know him. What we have learned so far is that he really likes to smile. Unless of course you take his picture and then he is all serious. He is much smaller that we were expecting. Very healthy just not as big as he looked in the last set of pictures. This is okay with us just brought the wrong size clothes. We were expecting him to wear 9 -12 months clothes based on his weight. We thought that we were pushing it by bringing 6-12 month clothing (thought they may be too small). It turns out that 3-6 months is a good fit. We have those too just not as many. Pjs will just have to be big till we get home. Thankfully we brought a few pairs of smaller socks that will work until we get home. After holding him I think that the reason his weight had us thrown off was because he is solid and barrel chested.

After a very long emotional day we are going out for our first dinner together. We have decided on Apple Bee's because we can see it from our hotel room and it looks easy to find. Noah has been changed into his new out fit and he is sporting his new hat and his new snuggly. He seems to be pretty happy at this point.

Toes, Toes, Glorious Toes!

We waited so long to see these precious piggies! They are all there and accounted for. They are however much smaller than we expected them to be. He is 6 months old and wears a size newborn shoe. The socks that we brought are huge on him.

The Other Woman

I know that the title sounds a little odd but that is really how I have felt until today. For six months I only knew that our son was being cared for by his foster mom in Guatemala. We had no name or face to assign to to the woman who was holding and comforting our son, providing his every need. Questions and thoughts would arise such as...what does she look like, how old is she, why did she chose to foster, does she have children of her own, is there a father figure in the picture, if so how is there marriage, does she put sugar in his bottle (this was my biggest fear- crazy as it sounds), will she miss him when he's gone, and the biggest question of all does she know how much we already love him?

All of those questions and fears faded the moment I saw "Grandma Alice". She was beautiful, warm, and kind. Her smile spoke all the words that could not be communicated. We knew right away that the "other woman" loved our son and had given him a home, his first home and that we were blessed to have had such a wonderful foster mother for our little boy. We respectfully and lovingly refer to her as Grandma Alice. Noah has her picture next to his crib and we talk about her every day. She will always be very dear to our family and we will forever admire her for loving our child completely knowing that it was only for a short time.
Thank you Grandma Alice. Our words can never truly express our gratitude.

Meeting an Angel

Today we held our precious little boy for the first time. It has been six months and 6 days since the birth of our son. As each day passed our love for this little guy has grown far beyond anything we can describe. Each passing day our bodies ached to hold him and touch him and even to know his smell. So today we are so relived and feel like such a burden has been lifted from us. We just feel complete. We have prayed for such a day as this and have stepped out in faith anticipating it's arrival. He is every thing that we could have imagined and so much more. He is beautiful beyond words. His smile and eyes have captured our hearts. And holding him...well it just feels so good. We want time to stand still so that we can treasure this moment forever yet we can't seem to move forward fast enough.

We Have Noah!

We have NOAH! To say he is beautiful is an understatement. He is doing very well. The transition was easier than we thought but very emotional. Noah has laughed and smiled and kicked his little legs since we got him. He is a very happy ,healthy boy. He is not as big as we thought he would be. But he is huge in his chest. He loves to go out side. When we went to dinner he smiled all the way.

Okay well we could go on and on but the little guy is getting sleepy and we have a very early morning. We are ready for our Embassy appointment then we should have the rest of the day tomorrow.

His Daddy has not stoped smiling either. If we miss a flight on Wednesday it will be okay because we can just fly home on the rush that we have after holding him.

Thanks for the prayers. We love you all.

WE HAVE PINK!!! {translated} NOAH IS COMING HOME

Update: We met with Carol from our agency on Monday June 5th which was also the day that Noah turned 6 mo old. We were discussing what we should expect over the next couple of weeks, and we made our last payment "OUCH". We asked Carol if she had any information about Noah's paper work and she said that our lawyer had no new information. We left the meeting encouraged with a lot of information about what to expect next.

What we didn't expect was that Carol would call about 8pm that same evening to inform us that our lawyer called and we have an appointment with the US Embassy. Our Appointment is at 7:15 am Monday June 12th. We have to pick Noah up no later than the day before the Embassy appointment. While in shock we started looking at the calender. We would need to fly out on Saturday so that would only give us four days to make arrangements and fly out. We were expecting to have another week to get things done.

So.... We have booked a flight that leaves Saturday early afternoon and will arrive in Guatemala about 10pm. Our lawyer will bring Noah and his foster mom to our hotel on Sunday were we will have a chance to give the foster mom a gift and ask her questions about Noah and his routine. Noah will remain with us from that point on. We will go to the Embassy Monday morning, pick up his Visa packet Tuesday afternoon, and we will fly home on Wednesday arriving about 5pm.

Please continue to pray for our family to have safe travel with no problems going through customs or immigration. Pray for Noah's foster family as they prepare for the separation, and for Noah as he is leaving the only family he has ever known.

We will try to update the blog as soon as possible when we get home.

Love the Milners

May's Noah Pictures!