Up a Tree #3

Click Here for Up a Tree #1 and #2

Happy Easter!

Reunited with Jill

We went to the 4th birthday party yesterday of Jillian, the daughter of Beatrice's first babysitter, who moved to Massachusetts at the end of October. This was the first time we've seen them since that time and after Beatrice stating daily for a month "I miss them toooo much!" she finally got to see Tita Judy and the whole family. After a few minutes of warmup time, it was like the old days....

This first shot I snuck of her and Daddy doing a little Sunday morning reading before church....

Ring around the Rosy...

Looking up to the "big" 4-year old....

Hiking at the Dam with Daddy

730 Days

Two years ago, in a government building in Bac Ninh, Vietnam, Ve An district, I became a mama. What strikes me most now, looking back, is how brave Beatrice was that day, how calm, how open she was to the possibility of a new life, and how she looked at us with curious but somehow knowing and contentedly resigned eyes. We've watched the videos and photos of our first minutes and days together a hundred times, and the proof is there...her head resting on each of our shoulders, her fingers wrapped around ours, and the smiles that came sooner than we expected. There were no tears from her, in a room that was filled with crying. She was the only one of the babies who sat with us, her parents-to-be, during the Giving & Receiving ceremony. We'll never know if that was because her nanny saw some connection immediately, or if it was just coincidence. And when other moms asked me, days and weeks later, if I felt a bond yet or if I still felt like I was "babysitting some one else's child," I could reply truthfully that I never felt that for a moment. After a few short days together in Hanoi, I was "muh- mum" and, while we look back all the time, none of us can quite remember a time when we weren't a family. Beatrice will tell you now that she "waited" for us for a "long, long time" and that she was "very, very worried." She just started making up a story last week about "her baby" that she needs to go get, either by plane, train, or boat, that her baby is "crying,crying, crying and very sad and needs her mama." She often has us buying train tickets and packing pretend suitcases with bottles and food for this "very, very hungry" baby who is "very, very, very far away.....near China!" Maybe her incredible imagination is simply mixing with stories that she's heard and pictures and videos she's seen, or maybe she truly is the wisest old soul on this planet and April 8, 2009 was the long-anticipated event that was conceived by fate long before that day actually came.