Congratulations…

to Maia, Ryan, Spike, and Bell JiFang on becoming a family of four…go see, go see!

Maia’s also doing some yeoman blogging from Nanjing on what to expect for future families….

West Wind

Happy Valentine’s Day…

okay, so two little Valentine’s tidbits…

my favorite love song is “Into My Arms” by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds…if you don’t know it, look it up on itunes.

I recently came across what I think might be the most romantic line ever written…by Anton Chekov, in a letter to his last wife…

“Hello, the last page of my life…” Love that.

R. and I are both sick today. Not the best way to spend Valentine’s, although since we haven’t been out together sans Bee since we met her, I can’t imagine it would have mattered. The Bee is not sick. She has been sick a grand total of ONE time since we met (a cough and runny nose last month) and has NEVER had a fever since we’ve had her. Amazing.

We have a jam-packed weekend planned, so I’m hoping the elders of the household feel more spiffy soon. We are going down to the Valley of Death on Saturday to celebrate Chinese New Year with a dragon parade and hang out with the FCC folks, and then in the afternoon we’re going to see the musical version of Goodnight Moon (one of The Bee’s all-time favorite books) on stage. We’ll spend the night in a hotel, and then on Sunday afternoon we’re off to see the Doodlebops. Which I imagine will involve buying The Bee a pink wig.

Ahem.

Glimpses.

Once in a while, The Bee pulls a shocker that makes me draw in my breath. She was 20 months when we met her, and we didn’t expect her to ever wax on about her time in the orphanage…she won’t remember it, right?

Well, you’ll remember her Buddhist prayer stance that I blogged about last summer here. This morning we were in the bathroom, and she was going through drawers, per usual. She has become fascinated by an oversize medicine dropper that has a rubber squeeze bulb on one end. Today she was playing with it and signed “baby” followed by “milk.” Now, I have never told her that feeding babies (particularly babies affected by clefting) milk is one of the possible uses of this device. And I can’t imagine she’s ever seen images of this on TV. She hasn’t. So it gave me not just a few goosebumps to realize that she was accessing some residual memory from The Before Time. It’s so eerie–and rewarding–to see that part of her life popping up, preserved in her, even if it is only in remainders.

The other thing she did this morning was equally fascinating (to me), although not nostalgic: she woke up quite upset, crying. (I’m assuming a bad dream.) She usually gets up out of bed now and will come greet us in our room, and then either climbs in bed with us or goes back to her room and turns on her music (she operates her CD machine now) and reads books for a while. This morning, she just stayed in bed and cried. When I hugged her, I asked her why she was crying (you know, trying to get the child to articulate her feelings and all that jazz), and she signed “boys, girls, play, sad.” This is the exact combination of signs she always used to make when I dropped her off at the Y’s daycare, while I went to work out. For weeks, she signed “boys, girls, play, sad” when I asked her why she was crying at KidZone. So, I thought it was incredibly interesting that she connected that feeling to her emotions in bed this morning…feelings of being alone, of being left behind. She was really thinking about what she was feeling and was trying to explain it to me through a parallel experience. There’s so much going on in there, and I’m grateful for these clues about the person my daughter is becoming.

Finally, Happy Lunar New Year. We have desert pack rats running around the ranch. They are huge. And hoarders. And have nests of salvaged flim and flam, not unlike my own habitat. So, cool beans to the Year of the Rat.

What We Woke Up To…

this morning…our first (and I expect only) snow of the year:

It was gone by noon.

What I Wish I Had Written…

Here is a post from my dear friend Maia that says nearly exactly what I want to say about my adoption: Perfect. (And I assure you I don’t just admire it for the kind words she said about my own blogs…she’s a gem, though, for that. )

It’s high time there was a more genuinely positive discourse about SN adoptions out there. Back in the day, I was never one of those people who ever thought I could “handle” it either. I just wanted a kid, quicker. Thank god we have the ability to learn, to be transformed.

More Harping on Time.

Today, February 1st, The Bee is two-and-a-half. In honor of the half-birthday, here are some shots of her from last weekend, when she was making her brother a finger-paint present for his twenty-first birthday. (OMG!–I knew my stepson when he was 12! How is this possible?)

Tick, tock.

Em told me it was a picture of a helipcopter and a rainbow, with “EM” (meaning her) in the picture too somewhere: