6 Days Left....

Which is less than a week! Oh my! I could NOT sleep last nite. I tossed and turned and thought about how my baby girl is 5,000+ miles across the world and how she was probably just waking up for the day as I tried my hardest to sleep. Then I thought about how in a week my Zoya girl would be 5,000+ miles away and waking up while I'm trying to sleep :( I'm gonna miss those hugs and snuggles from Zoya. Can't wait until all of us are together!

Now to answer some questions:
Question! So I know with Zoya you used part of her birth name, right? and with "Harlene" you plan to as well. Had you already known Laina's birth name that you had committed to that name already?
We kept Zoya's birth name, yes. The reason we felt strongly about keeping her birth name was because that was the ONLY THING she owned that she could take with her as a reminder of her beginning place. A lot of families like to start with a blank slate and give a new name, which is perfectly fine, but for us, we wanted Zoya to have something that she could take with her. Even though her beginning place was not happy, it was where her life began, and had it not, she would not be our daughter. It is likely that she was named by a nurse, not by her birth mother. But, Zoya's name means "life" and it just seemed perfect for her. With Laina, we did know her birth name, but even before we knew it we decided that we didn't feel a need to keep it because she would have so many other things to take with her. She would have pictures of her and her birth family, stories that I could share with her about how much they loved her, she would have contact with her birth family, she would grow up knowing where she came from with far less effort than Zoya's story....so we didn't really feel the need to keep her birth name. With this baby, we want to stay open to using her birth name, but if we don't use her birth name we will likely use a name from her culture. We feel a forever link to their country. It is the place our daughters began, so we would love to keep that alive in them in many ways, one being their names since they don't/probably won't have much information about their birth families.

Also, have you considered getting Zoya one of those recordable books like "guess how much I love you" with your and Shawn's voices on it? Thought of you while my kids were playing with theirs from their grandma today.
We are actually making videos for her because she loves watching videos so much! We have made some alreay, but plan to video tape ourselves talking to her so she can see and hear us. We are going to video tape me reading her favorite bedtime story to her because there is a specific way, of course, that each word has to be read and only mama knows how to do that ;) She anticipates certain parts of the story and certain tones of voices.

Off to enjoy one last weekend as a family of 3 :)