Our fourth day in Guate was somewhat emotional... our good friends, the Melvins, were headed back to Indiana and had to give their daughter Lyza back to her foster mom Gloria. They asked Moses to translate, so we were with them when their foster mom showed up and after they handed over Lyza. It was heart-wrenching. And, while I was trying to be supportive of them, I was also fighting back my own tears at the thought of having to leave Lili in a couple of days. Madisyn (10 year old big sis), Misty (mommy) and Chris (daddy) did pretty well considering how tough it was to watch their baby leaving. Madisyn was pretty upset, but Misty was a great mom and was able to hold back her own emotion so that she could support Madisyn. After we said our goodbyes to the Melvins, we headed back to our room to spend some quality time with Lili.
The rest of the day was spent quietly in our room as a family. I caught myself several times thinking about how tough it was going to be to leave Lili. But, I was doing my best to focus on enjoying the time we had left, instead of dreading the day we would have to give her back. We had fun in the afternoon making family t-shirts... Lili's was painted with a flower (the petals were made from our fingerprints). Max's shirt had Lili's footprint and said "I am the BIG brother". Mine had Lili's footprints over my heart and said "Liliana Rose Marie - Close to my heart". Moe's had Lili's footprint on the chest and Max's footprint on the back. Underneath each footprint was the kid's name and their year of birth (Est. 2002 or Est. 2006). They turned out really cute and were not only a great activity to keep us occupied, but will also provide us with a great memento of our first visit together.
The fifth day of our trip was also spent rather quietly at the hotel. We wanted to go for a swim with the kids, but the pool heater was not working. They did turn down the heat on one of the hot tubs, so we were able to let Max splash around and got some great pictures of Lili in her stylish swimsuit from Auntie Rebecca!! I also got a great idea from Misty... Lyza's hair was so long that Misty used her nailclippers to snip a little of it to keep. I didn't think Lili would appreciate me cutting her head, so I took her to the beauty shop at the hotel and asked them to cut me a little bit of her hair... priceless treasure!!!!!
We also chose to do a fashion shoot with Lili in all of her cute little outfits... she was a real trooper and humored us for the majority of the "shoot". We got some amazing pictures of her! And Max was so cute.... after her pictures were done, he told us that we needed to take some pictures of him holding his baby! He's so in love with her!!!
The rest of these two days we strolled briefly through the mall, but otherwise just hung out in the hotel. After we watched our friends' grief and sorrow at leaving their baby, I think we were preparing ourselves for Friday when we had to leave our beautiful Lili.
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