The Wait Begins

Thank you so much for all your prayers. Despite taking off in a blizzard in Moscow, we made it home safely! It's wonderful being home with Colvin and Georgia again. The hard part is that now it feels like someone is missing - Ella. We put up our Christmas tree tonight, and I wish she was here to share it with us. We knew this second wait would be harder since we would know her and miss her. And it is hard.

On our last day with Ella, I had our interpreter sit next to us and tell her, "Mommy and Daddy will have to go away soon, and it will seem like we're gone for a very long time. But we promise we'll be back. And the next time, you'll get to come home with us and meet your brother and sister. So don't worry. We'll be back. We love you, and we'll be thinking about you every day." It's hard to know how much of that a just-turned-two-year-old can understand, but I hope she understood a little. My biggest fear is that she thinks we didn't want her.

Ugh, it's gonna be a long few months.

Also, you may have noticed I'm calling her Ella. All this time I was calling her by what I thought was her alias, Elvira. We thought her real name was Ella. Well, turns out Elvira (El-veer-a in Russian) is her real name, and Ella is her nickname! So since her real name was already out there, I figured there was no point maintaining the charade. We are naming her Ella, which won't even seem like a change to her since that's what she is already called. Ella means light, and her middle name will be Rebecca, which means 'to bind'. Rebecca was the name of Ryan's mom's Russian grandma, so that makes it even more perfect. So the cat's out of the bag - Ella Rebecca it is!