Today we celebrated the 5th anniversary of Jiejie's adoption. We watched the video of her being placed in our arms, spurning the Good Night Moon bunny I kept inanely waggling at her, checking us out with her inky phoenix eyes. Meimei fell asleep on my shoulder while we were watching endless footage of bus rides in China and listening to the inexhaustible guide talk about the country's minority groups, which in all likelihood figure in the past of at least one if not both of our girls. Perhaps some day DNA tests will be refined enough to place a child in an ethnic minority and we can help Jiejie discover her history.
Jiejie decided we would save the Adoption Day cake she decorated for tomorrow. Meimei didn't mind. She was too busy trying to build the world's tallest sandwich out of wooden slices of ham, cheese, tomato, lettuce and onion that stack up and stick with velcro. Jiejie is having the usual night terrors that plague her this time of year, reflecting the trauma of leaving China and her familiar surroundings to come to her new home. She had a spell of night terrors around her 6th birthday too, as she always does. They don't last as long now, or happen nearly as often. I can tell she is growing up. But I can't tell if she is experiencing her grief or working through her sadness at the losses in her life.
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