What's Next?

It's Saturday night and I have just viewed our Olivia Day video for the first time today in its entirety. I want to share it but right now it is just too intimate, perhaps that will change soon. Seeing yourself with your children on video in one of life's most stressful and yet overwhelmingly happy moments along with your spouse and father whom you love dearly is just indescribable. I almost shudder seeing it, isn't that strange? The video is like I remember, but not entirely. Those of you who have had children either through adoption or natural birth might be able to relate. I am grateful that I have the video since there are several aspects that I did not even remember, and I am sad that I have it. I can't even explain why...human memory is a strange and wonderous thing.

Olivia is a dream. She is the fairy tale child. I was not expecting or prepared for the fairly tale. I have a friend who has two Chinese children and she speaks often of the emotional fairy tale adoption that was her first child. No one is more surprised than I am to get the fairy tale the second time around! I am embarassed to admit that I was too uptight and scared as a first time parent to enjoy the ups and downs of babyhood with Ava. I want Olivia to stay 10 months old with every fiber of my being. (I am the mother who has professed to being a kid mom, not a baby mom.) I wanted Ava to be three years old at this stage, I pined for preschool. It is me...I'm flawed. Ava wanted to move contantly as a baby and be out of the house, so we did. We went somewhere everyday, I am not exaggerating. We had completed Kindermusik, the Children's Museum classes and Gymboree by the time she was 15 months old. She hated the house, this is also hard to say since it was in part a bit of a rejection of all that we had to offer. Why did she cry in the house? And love the mall? Olivia is different, she is alive in that playroom. Ava is even now alive in that playroom, she plays with Olivia non-stop with toys she hasn't looked at for 2 years. Olivia is the catalyst for a new type of trust and love in our family. I am dumbfounded, humbled and in awe that China would let us take her. Sometimes looking at her huge wise old eyes makes me tear up. Everything this kid does is golden in my jaded eyes. Every grin, every mimic, every nod of the head makes me swoon with mommy love.

I was unprepared...am unprepared for loving two equally...differently but equally. What was I thinking? I would adopt clones? No, but I just wasn't prepared for the emotional rollercoaster of two darling girls, two different and wise as sage children.

I've been thinking about how the next few posts will shake out. Perhaps a trip recap? Of course there is a short packing discussion for adoptive families since no one else in their right mind would be interested in ziplocs. Should I share the Olivia Day video? I have several pictures of the girls that I will post soon of course, and maybe even my follies with the pediatrician who called yesterday to tell me that the board of health will be calling us as the identify the type of Salmonella Olivia has and how we should treat it. Oh, more diaper joy to share with the state, fabulous. Right now they are busy with spinach E coli so we can talk to them next week. (I knew that the diaper situation wasn't normal, damnit.)

Who cares about all the details....I am in love with two ladybugs. May they both sleep peacefully through the night.