My family clung to her. Tyler was the first to pull her out and snuggle her and she stayed in his arms while they filled us in on what little they knew of her. That night we learned her name, we call her "Vaya", and that she was only a few weeks old. That was it. They told us they would get back to us with more information as soon as the three day trial period was up.
A few days passed and we learned a little more about this tiny bundle of girl. We learned that she seriously didn't like to be wet...or messy. She was a little temper mental on how she wanted to be held for sleeping and that she really liked to soil your clothes moments after a feeding.
We learned a few days into things that we would be holding onto her for a while. They're guess was 90 days, but they told us to prepare for a year. And that's exactly what I did. I went from the mentality of "babysitting over the weekend" to raising this child. I knew that I wasn't meant to raise her in just my ways, but the ways of her family (immediate and distant), but non the less I was going to be there for this girl for her first laugh, her first time rolling over, her first crawl, word, walk and many other firsts. That's when it really sunk in the extreme heart break. All the things I got to experience in this little girls life was all the things her mom would be missing out on. I wanted so badly to be Vaya's everything, to have all the love she could give me, but I knew that I needed her to love her mom just as much.
So when the first week went FLYING by and we crept up on the first visitation with Mom and Dad, I was nervous. Not because I was new to this whole experience and didn't really know how I was supposed to present myself or what I was supposed to supply in the diaper bag...but because I honestly didn't trust the parents not to hurt her...not yet anyways. But we made it through it. Yeah Roran had more tears in his eyes than I did, and he really was not okay with her being gone (Bless his little heart, we only had her a week and I think his attachment to her was more profound than any of ours) but we made it through the two hour visit.
The next few weeks we had more chances to learn how the interaction with social services and frustrate the living crap out of you, more chances for Vaya to meet her mom, and many more chances to build the puzzle pieces of Vaya's love that would ultimately fit into our family puzzle.
It was about three weeks into Vaya's placement with us that our oldest, Angela and I were discussing the reasons that she was in our care. It's hard to imagine talking to your 5 year old about the different kinds of drugs (yes cigarettes are a drug but you won't get your child taken away from you for smoking them, yes alcohol is a drug too and sometimes if you use it too much your child can be taken from you...) but none the less we vowed we would always be honest with our children. SO, here I am talking to her about the ramifications of Vaya's parent's actions in the best way possibly for her little mind to comprehend.
She sat quietly for a moment and when I asked what she was thinking she said. "We learned at school that all of us are God's children. So that means we are all family." It was then that I told her that Vaya will always be our family because we will forever be here for her and even though her parents were sick and needed help, that we would do our best to be family to them too. And in her sweetest, most generous way she replied..."Growing your heart sure is hard."
