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August 6, 2015

One Week Down

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So, let’s face it…I’m tired. Pooped, really. We have one week down under our belts (almost two weeks, really), and now that we are home and the adrenaline has worn off, I’m just plain ol’ tired. But Mia Grace makes even the tiredness sweet.

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She is sweet in the big moments of meeting new people and going new places, and she is sweet in the small moments of babbling baby talk and spewing out things like kale mixed with spinach, mango, and raspberries. (Baby food has come a long way in five years since I had my last baby! The most creative entre Catoline had was peas.)

We have had lots of exciting big moments, like finally getting to meet all of our 1300 cousins! We actually only have 9 cousins, but put 13 kids (including my four) all under the age of 14 in the same room and all of a sudden it feels like 1300 instead of only 13.

Last weekend, my brother, Taylor, and sister-in-law, Robin, brought over their youngest child, baby Susannah, to meet Mia Grace. It was so much fun to put them down on the floor next to each other and just sit back to watch what would happen. There was a lot of baby pointing and staring, and eventually they crawled over next to each other to poke one another in the face. (Actually, MG did all of the poking. It’s sort of a sign of affection. If she likes you, she hits and pokes you in the face…we’ve got to work on that! It’s not a great way to make friends, as Susu can attest to.)

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But a great moment for me as a mom came when I scooped up Susu and put her in my lap. Mia Grace immediately noticed and did not like that at all! She crawled over, began to cry, and tried to push Susu off! Bad for Susu but a great sign of healthy attachment to mom!

It was so interesting watching Susu as a normal, healthy ten month old. Her crawling was so purposeful, quick, and exploratory. She constantly pulled up on furniture and wanted to try to walk. And at the slightest little bump or fall, she would cry like a typical ten-month-old and want mommy’s hugs and kisses. Even though Mia Grace is almost twice Susu’s age (she was 18 months old on July 31st), she is smaller than Susu. Re-reading notes I took from a class on adoption and attachment over a year ago, I was reminded that kids raised in institutionalized care are usually half their age developmentally. Seeing MG next to Susu reinforced that to me. Her crawling is slow, sometimes hesitant, and is never exploratory. She only crawls to come to find me when she cannot see me. I have seen her pull up only once on a piece of furniture, and she has yet to cry when she bumps her head or scrapes her knee. On the way to the doctor on Tuesday, she quietly picked a scab (one that was not ready to be picked) off of her leg and had an oozing wound by the time we parked and got out of the car. She never uttered a sound and I had no idea what she was doing until I stopped the car. It is moments like these that I remember where Mia Grace came from. She is our daughter, she belongs to our family, but her past is still something that creeps up into her present. I call reminders from her past “orphanagisms,” and they are what we daily pray over and work towards healing.

But like I said, Mia Grace makes each and every day a joy. Every morning when I wake up and peer down at her small frame in the pack and play next to our bed, I still can’t believe that she’s ours. And at the dinner table, with her high chair sandwiched between Jason’s chair and mine, her hair all a mess from running her sticky hands through it, Jason and I still look at each other in amazement. Sometimes it still feels like we are babysitting – like good friends of ours went out of town on a long trip and left us with Mia Grace, but they will be headed back any minute to pick her up. But nope. She’s ours. And she’s here to stay, which is just fine with us. The Baker Six just wouldn’t be complete without her.

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