Anna's Story Part IV

Anna's caregiver (not the same woman who had taken care of her first) brought her to me and we chatted for about 30 minutes while Anna sat on her lap staring at me. I tried to interact with Anna but she was not impressed with me. At that point the caregiver said that she would let us get to know each other and she just walked out of the room! For some strange reason I thought we would have a nice slow transition but it was not to be.

Anna immediately started screaming at the top of her lungs and so I started to walk towards her. Anna turned around and started running away from me screaming. I had no idea what to do and I had an audience. There were about 5 other people present all watching to see what I would do and of course I didn't know. I finally just ran after her and scooped her up in my arms and tried to comfort her. I knew she was scared but there didn't seem to be anything I could do about it at that time. Finally she calmed down enough but then she seemed to transfer the anxious attachment she had with the caregiver to me. After that she would scream if anyone tried to take her away from me. This went on for a good 7 months after we got home too. We worked very hard on getting a healthy attachment with Anna and it has paid off!

Anna's adoption was tricky because her adoption wasn't actually done yet when I went to Liberia. I had appointments at the US embassy, a paper that needed to be signed by the Ministry of Health, an interview by someone sent from the embassy to see me and then another appointment at the embassy. It took an entire week but the adoption was complete in time for me to fly home one week after I had gotten there.

Both of these pictures were taken the day we left Liberia, we were all dressed up ready to go to church.