Christmas Comes Early!

Santa has not made his big appearance yet. There have been no gifts opened or stockings hung. The calendar says December 22nd. Yet, my joy is complete! Of course I am still looking forward to our Christmas Eve traditions and watching the excitement on the kids' faces as they open & exchange gifts. But today I received the absolute best gift, one that will not be topped on December 25th! Nervous anticipation and sadness preceded the exchange. What I thought might be a bitter-sweet afternoon turned out to be one of immeasurable joy!

I have a surprise for all of you. . .

We got to see Jamie!!!!

And he is HUGE!!! :)

We had bought him a couple things for Christmas and called his father to see if we could bring the gifts to him. We weren't sure what his response was going to be and we were prepared for him to say no, in which case we would have mailed the gifts or given them to Rainbow House. But his dad agreed to meet us at a McDonalds inside a Walmart in the closest town to where they live! We got to spend almost 2 hours with him and you could not have wiped the smile off of my face the entire time (once I got over the shock of how big he had gotten). I tried to prepare myself (and the kids) for the fact that he was going to look a lot different. Afterall, we hadn't seen him in almost 6 months (since July 2nd, the day he moved out of our home, when he was 8 months old). But I still wasn't prepared for what I saw. He's now 13 months. He wasn't even crawling when he left, and now he's almost walking. On July 2nd he had no baby teeth, now he has FIVE! He has so much more hair now and it is much darker. . . But overall, he is the same sweet boy that we fell in love with last year at this time. Seeing him seriously made my holiday! It was obvious that he didn't completely remember us right away. But about halfway through our time with him he seemed to be studying our faces and starting to recognize something familiar in all of us. At one point Bryndyn was holding him and every time Bryndyn would speak Jamie would turn around and look up at him and just stare at Bryn. He definitely recognized his voice and it was precious to watch the two of them interact. Tia was actually a little shy and didn't play with him as much as we thought she would. I think it threw her off that he had grown so much. But him and Caelleb picked up right where they left off and it was wonderful to watch them together. He is still cute as can be with a smile that melts your heart!

He was more interested in eating the wrapping paper & ribbon than the gifts inside. :)
Look at him examining Bryndyn's face.
Merry Christmas to all of us!!!
Once a brother. . . always a brother!
More pics capturing the joy of the day. . .
I'm not sure exactly what all of this means. We are still very much trying to navigate through this situation/relationship. I know we will not see Jamie on a real regular basis. But I hope that we laid some groundwork today to at least staying in some sort of touch with him. Only time will tell. I'm not going to overanalyze too much (for now). What I know today is that he is doing well & it was SOOOOO wonderful to see him! Merry Christmas Jamie! We love you!