One Year Plus One Day

So this is the day a year ago that we signed all the official paperwork that recognized Lilly as a Cantilina--the day after we met her.

We had a wonderful day of celebrating together yesterday--we ate homemade sweet and sour chicken and potstickers, we gave Lilly a single yellow rose to commemorate her first year with us, and we talked about how exciting it was to welcome her into our family. We watched together the video I posted yesterday, and it was the first time she had really seen most of the photos from her early days in China, her early days with us, and the photos of her with her foster mama and at the orphanage. I wasn't quite sure how she would react to the visual stimulation of possible memories, but she thoroughly enjoyed the chance to see herself when she was "a baby" (her word) in China and see us receive her from her "ayi" (orphange caregiver). She did not seem to recognize the ayi, maybe slightly recognized her foster mama's photo, but did not react at all badly to seein them. She was surprised to see that she and the other little girls in our gotcha' day video footage cried really hard--she kept asking us "why are they crying?" and I had to explain repeatedly that they were scared because they didn't know their mama or baba yet.

I was also unsure how seeing all of this might affect her nighttime sleep (not at all, it turns out!). But today it was interesting that she wanted to play out the scenario in our playtime together at home. She pretended to be the "baby" coming down the hall with her ayi (she would say each time "what's it called, mama? Whose hand was I holding?" and I would answer "your ayi." "yes, ayi.") I would act very excited to see her and receive her with hugs and kisses and smiles and she acted--without the extreme crying--fairly similarly to how she acted in China--very reserved, quiet, withdrawn, and unsure. It was really funny! We did it 2 or 3 times at her prompting, and finally I managed to divert her on to something new. Probably good for her to process it all in this way! But I much prefer the Lilly we have now--with life, and personality, and laughter, and love--rather than the emotionally shut down version we had a year ago!!

So now we begin year two, and life is so very normal it's amazing. Praise the Lord.

At this point, I may need to change the title of my blog! The adventure of Lilly's adoption is now over, and now we simply have the adventure of everyday life in the Cantilina household. Maybe "Cantilina Chronicles" or "Cantilina Crew" or--any other suggestions??

Thanks for reading. I hope to be better about updating since we have much coming in the next few weeks and months with Lilly's medical care. Stay tuned.