Little Monkey: Year One
2005-11-11, 14:43

It's Laurana's first birthday today, officially (party tomorrow).

As is usual for my existence, the event brings up a complexity of emotions. First and foremost, the sheer joy of having our daughter and the fact that she's one year old today. But also there's the... guilt? pity? sadness? in thinking about the parents she left in China, the birth parents she'll never know. I've been going back and forth between the two all morning, all day.

Last night, it was just the baby and I for a spell while H and the two older kids were out checking out our county recycling center (whoopee!) with the Scout den. Among other things, such as playing and trying to sneak in some cleaning, I set up the VCR to capture some stuff off of our DVR, which needs to be cleaned off before it gets switched out next weekend for the new, improved model. The on thing I managed to have time to relocate was our recording of an episode of Extreme Explorer, in which host Lisa Ling goes on a trip to China with a group of adopting families - in Nanchang, no less, though not through the same orphanage. It cooked along, and they got to the scene where the families met their new babies and, well, I started crying. I was replaying what I managed to remember from our own meeting moments, feeling now what I was too stunned and in shock to feel at the time. I was too busy being focused on being a hyper-vigilant Super Parent to allow myself to feel such trivialities as unbridled joy. I didn't know at the time that we'd received a genius, magic baby. She is a ray of bright sunshine in what otherwise right now would be very dark days for us. It's hard to believe that it'd only been four months yesterday (which, it just dawned on me, was a good day to watch that particular adoption special) that she came into our lives.

We have in our lives a child who is truly beautiful, is unendingly curious, funny, mischievous, and had liked every food she's tried so far except for blueberries. She's already learned a few words in sign language, the most used being "all done", though there's also "more", "eat", and "frog" (mainly because she likes to stick her tongue out at people). She's trying desperately to say both "cat and "dog"; they sound remarkably similar, but you can tell the difference. Also, all cats are named Bubba (the name of one of our cats), because it's easy to say.

She's quick to smile at just about anyone. She's also taken our game of 'toots' (touching foreheads) to new heights by using it as a greeting for anyone and anything. I prefer to think of it has her way of honoring those people and things around her. H and I have mused about how funny it would be if this practice were taken up in the area of international relations. "Well met, Ambassador, and welcome to our country." *toots*

Anyway, I digress. I believe I was discussing a birthday here. Little Monkey is one year old, and suddenly I'm feeling like she's growing up too fats, even though we still hold her and feed her and rock her to sleep and change her diapers and try and fill her head with as much knowledge as we can cram in (and as we have time for). No matter how hard things have been, no matter the outside influences that would see us anything less than happy, I know in my heart that she belongs with us. She may be destined for greater things in time, but for now, we are together.

-- End Transmission --