Friday Foto Challenge

The Family Fun Foto Challenge this week is "Gotcha Clothes". "Gotcha Day" is the day that we picked up Laina from the Social Welfare Agency in China. In this case, it was October 12th, 2005. At least that's what I think it was. I'm really bad with dates in general, and I don't feel like getting up and checking the paperwork. I know it was early/mid October of 2005 though. Laina was 10 months old. She's almost 2 and a half now. She's 90 centimeters tall (I know that height so I can order my Hannah Andersson dresses for her. I have no idea how that translates into inches). She weighs about 28 pounds, now. She weighed about 19 pounds when we met her.




She was wearing a 2 piece, non-split pants outfit. The other 4 girls were wearing the same outfit, just different colors. Under the outfit, she had on some red stripy leggings which were split in the crotch, but the split was because they had been cut with scissors, not because they were made that way. Under the split pants leggings she had a diaper that was held on by an elastic band. She had red socks on. On top she had a long sleeved shirt that was white and pink stripped. I used the shirt regularly until she outgrew it. The "gotcha" outfit I never had her wear again because Jorg thought it was creepy to see her in it. So, after a year and a half, here is Laina in her "Gotcha Clothes".




When I was taking out the clothes, the little elastic band that was holding up her diaper fell out of the bag. It's just a fabric covered elastic that was tied in a knot. This little band made me wonder about what my little 2 and a half year old would be doing if she hadn't come home with us. I wonder if her strong spirit would have eventually been crushed out, or would she have become stronger? I also remembered how I felt before we went and picked her up. I know that I wanted to be a mommy and I know that I was going to be the best mom I could be. I also knew that I didn't have any idea what I was doing. Becoming a first time mom to an almost 1 year old from an institution isn't easy. They write books about adoption, and attachment, and development, and china, and babies, and babies from China. There is no book about me and there is no book about Laina. There was no manual about how can someone with the skills of Laura be a mommy to a little girl with the quirks, needs, demands, skills, requirements of Laina. I had to figure it out, Jorg had to figure it out. In the end, when all is said and done, we can only do the best we can and I hope Laina decides that, too. My standard answer when people say, "Oh...she's so lucky to have you for her parents..." is "Well, why don't you ask her about that in about 12 years". Hopefully we'll have done all right. And how I got all this psychological blah blah from her gotcha clothes is going to be the subject of psych 207 at the community college next term: Nature/nurture, Freud....GOTCHA!!!