She was worth the wait. 

“She’s amazing, just a wonderful little girl,” gushes Grimes. “There’s not a person she’s not friendly or very kind to.” 

In the 21 months since Mira became an American, her new mother says, she has made substantial progress. “In Ukraine, she could barely hold a pencil, but now she’s doing very well in school and speaks full English.” Mira attends physical therapy and is a “sponge” for learning. She’s also discovering the finer points of femininity, no longer wiping her face with her shirt and slowly overcoming trauma surrounding personal hygiene.