Today Is Her Birthday!

OK, technically it's tomorrow but I doubt I will have time to write a post tomorrow so I am doing it tonight. I can't believe it but tomorrow my baby girl will turn one. In some ways it feels like it was just yesterday that I was boarding a plane to pick her up and in other ways, I can't remember what it was like before I had her. Every day she does something new and exciting and you can just see her brain churning. She continues to be a delightful, smart and happy baby and the very best thing that has ever happened to me. Motherhood has given a richness and a calmness to my life that I can't quite explain but I relish none the less.

Unfortunately, tomorrow is a busy day at work for me so I can't take the day off to spend with her but we will celebrate when I get home home with Birthday cupcakes and Spaghetti and meatballs. Yes, you read that correctly. I gave her a meatball on Thursday night and she loved it. She has been eating table food all weekend which included hot dog, turkey, mashed potato's, turkey sausage and eggs. I guess that she has just been waiting for the table food. She's eaten more than I could have hoped for this soon in the game. Turns out that she also really likes birthday cake. We went to the American Girl Doll Store on Saturday to celebrate my niece Meghan's birthday and I gave her a taste of the cake and she could not get enough of it.

Saturday we will have her birthday party and I'm really excited though I don't feel quite prepared but I'm sure I will figure it out. Until then, I'm just going to enjoy spending the day with my one year old!

A Picture Post

Today I had Gracie's one year/Easter pictures taken. Her mom made a rookie mistake and scheduled the pictures around nap time so she wasn't so happy about that but we did get some great shots! And thanks to Auntie Amy for the great birthday outfit!

Feeling Better

So first, I would like to thank everyone for their love and words of encouragement. They were very appreciated and really healped to give me perspective on things. It really made me feel so much better.

Today was a busy day for us. I took the day off because we had two appointments. The first was with Dr. Miller at the International Adoption Clinic and the second was our second post placement appointment at WHFC.

The appointment with Dr. Miller went really well. She only gained a couple more ounces since the weight check and Dr. Miller agrees that we need to see the GI doctor and a nutritional specialist. So we're doing that in the middle of April. She was really great in reassuring me that I'm doing all that I can and other than the weight, she is really excelling. She is 27 inches which is great and her head circumfrence is good too so that means her brain is growing. When we went to see Dr. Miller for the first time in December, Grace was measured as between a 5-8 month old in most categories. Today she measured at or beyond the 12 month level in every area except gross motor where she measured at 10 months. It's honestly amazing to see how much she has progressed in just 4 months. She went from being a rag doll to a crawling machine. She rolls, she crawls, she sits up, she claps, waves and plays peak-a-boo all on her own. She says three words, momma, bye,bye and uh-oh. She can follow simple instructions and she babbles like crazy. Her personality is really coming out and she is such an engaging child. I am so proud of her and I love her more than words can express.

Our second meeting was a post-adoption follow-up with our social worker Deb at WHFC. We went into the office in Waltham and not only did we see our social worker but we also got to see some of the Africa team that helped bring Grace to me. One of the social workers had met Grace when she was in Ethiopia for a training. That was during the time that Grace was on a feeding tube. She couldn't get over the difference between the fragile little baby she saw then and the perky little almost toddler that she saw today. It really helped me to remember that her progress is remarkable.

So on Monday I will officially be the mother of a one year old. My Gracie Lito will be one on Monday. I can't believe it. We're having her birthday party a week from Saturday and I am very excited. It won't be a huge bash but my beloved friends Andrea and Rob are coming in from Ohio for the weekend to meet Grace and I just can't wait.

On Saturday we're going to have Grace's one year/Easter pictures. I can't wait to see how they turn out.

Pity Party- Table for One

Today is the first day where I truly felt the single, working mother guilt. I have had twinges here and there but today I felt it from the soles of my feet to the top of my head. In many ways, it's probably a ridiculous over reaction on my part but I am a strong believer than if you need to cry or sulk or fume over something you get 24 hours and then you figure out how to move on. So since I'm still within my 24 hours here I go.

Today I took Grace for a weight check at her pediatricians. As I have mentioned eight bajillion times before, Grace is on the small side and I am a crazy woman about it. She has been eating better of late so I stupidly put a number in my head that I expected her to be. The number I set was 14 pounds. She was 13 pounds 3 oz about 7 weeks ago so I thought 14 pounds was a reasonable guess. In actuality, I was hoping for more but would have settled for 14. Today she weighed in at a whopping 13 pounds 10 oz. Now, I know any gain is positive, but I would be a liar if I said I wasn't worried that she had only a seven oz weight gain in almost two months. So here's where the guilt comes into play. As soon as I heard the weight I thought, this is your fault because you work. If you stayed home with her you could feed her every hour and a half. You could make sure she drank every ounce of every bottle and every drop of baby food. But because you decided to be a single mother, now your baby is suffering. Now, let me say two things here. 1. Grace could not be in better care and my sister Kate could not be more in tune with her needs or more dedicated to making sure she eats, even if she were her mother. She is super on top of the eating and she sits with Grace until she's eaten but lets face it, some days she just won't eat enough no matter how you try. So in no way am I attributing her lack of weight gain to my sister. If it wasn't for her dilligence, we would have had a smaller gain (can you imagine what a whack-a-doodle I would be if that happened? Not a pretty image I imagine). 2. I realize my line of thinking is CRAZY. I know that I am doing everything possible to make sure she's as healthy and loved and well cared for as possible. And the rational side of my head knows that if I tried to feed her every hour that child and I would be ready for the looney bin. I know I add a lot of stress to the eating situation and I have been really good about backing off. If I were home with her all day I could likely cause a big set back. But the bottom line is that you feel like she's missing something because I only have limited time with her. I give her everything I have when I'm home and I know that it's a lot. I also know that I have unrealistic expectations of what enough is and I need to let go of it. Overall, she's a healthy girl who is developing well, is pretty well adjusted and happy. I need to focus on that. And I will........in 11 more hours when the pity party is over. While the nurse Practioner was not alarmed at the weight gain she did say that if she doesn't have a good increase by her one year appointment at the end of April, we'll need to go see a feeding specialist. The important thing here is that we get her issues worked out.

On a more positive note she crawled forward last night!! She only did four crawls and then I got so excited that I called my sister and the kids down and sure enough, she refused to perform. My daughter is super stubborn and she likes to play with her mama. I kept saying Gracie, crawl for Auntie Kate, please crawl for Auntie Kate! And at one point she looked at me, said Mama and then shook her head no wildly and then gave me a wicked grin. Like she was saying I know you want me to crawl but uh-uh. She kept teasing us though. She would move one knee forward and then move it back. Then she would giggle. She's something.

I'll report back soon with a new attitude. Well, not so new that you wouldn't recognize me.

Baptism

Yesterday was Grace's Baptism and frankly, it turned out well beyond my expectations. I know that Grace and I are loved by many people. I know that many of them shared the anxiety and excitement and uncertainty while I was waiting to bring her home. So I wasn't surprised that just about everyone of the very intimate group of friends and family that were invited came. It's one thing to know you're loved, it another entirely to see it displayed on their faces and in there actions. It was a day filled with love and excitement and blessings for a baby girl who was embraced into God's family the way she has been embraced by my own.

She wore a dress that I bought her while I was in Ethiopia. She was not crazy about the head wrap so there aren't a lot of pictures of her wearing it but here are a few.


She really did well. She whimpered a little bit when the priest put the water on her. She gave me this horrified look like hey, I already had a bath today, what's up with this? Other than that, she did really well.





Afterwards we had a small dinner at a restaurant. It was really nice and everyone seemed to have a really good time and Grace was really social and engaging.

Ok,so now I'm going to make this very long post even longer by telling you about the most incredible gift that my cousin Ann gave Grace but before I do that I have to give a little back ground.

My mother passed away almost 8 years ago from cancer. I miss her every day but since Grace came home I think I feel the loss a little deeper than I had. And while I know she would adore Grace, it makes me sad to know that she'll only know her through stories and pictures. My mother and my cousin Ann's father were brother and sister and extraordinarily close. Their mother, my Grandma Connolly passed away when my mother was 14 and my uncle was 12. They and their father were a super tight family and because of that, their children have always been close.

When Ann and her twin Jenny were baptized in 1982 it was important to my mother that they have something from her parents. My Papa had given Grandma Connolly a promise ring and it had an emerald and two side diamonds. My mother inherited the ring when her mother died and she had the two side diamonds taken out of the ring and made into pendants for Ann and Jenny. Somewhere along the way we lost the emerald, but that's neither here nor there. So fast forward to yesterday. I open up the gift that Ann had for Grace and there in it's original box is the pendant that my mother gave her 28 years ago. And with it was the card that my mother had written her on the occasion of her baptism. Ann wrote in her card to Grace that the necklace meant the world to her but it means more for her to pass it on to Grace from her grandmother and her great grandparents. I will never be able to adequately express what that meant to me because my vocabulary is not that broad, and I am not that eloquent. But to know that Grace has a piece of our family history sitting in a box in her room means more to me than I can say. Especially since our family tree is not about sharing the same bloodlines. Grace happens to be adopted and so are my cousins Ann, Jenny and Eric. I don't think any of us has ever felt like we were less of a family because we didn't share the same biology. We've just always been family and it didn't matter how the process of becoming family happened. It just mattered that we all ended up together. I'm still teary eyed thinking about what a self-less gesture that was and how Grace will always have that special necklace because of Auntie Ann's loving an generous spirit.

I think that this is the first of many occassions where Grace will someday look back and be in awe of how loved she is.

Three Months Home

I think her onesie sums it up beautifully. She was so, so, so worth the wait. On Thursday we hit two anniversaries. The 3 month anniversary of our coming home and Gracie turning 11 months. She's come so far in so many ways. She is now crawling. Only backwards and only a couple of crawls before she figures out that scooting is still the faster mode of transportation at this point. She's so much more mobile now and you can see her scanning the room thinking hey, if I want to get that thing over there on the floor, what's the fastest way to do that. It's like every day she learns something new. She has one tooth that came in and a couple more about to make an appearance. She says "mama" and variations of "Uh-Oh" and "yeah". She's really quite amazing. She is eating much better than she was and I can really tell that she's growing and getting so much stronger.

She has been babbling for weeks and had been saying mamamamamamamamamamama but I wasn't really sure that she identified me as mama and really knew who that was. Then about a month ago, she woke up at 4:30 in the morning which is really a rare occurrence for her. I went into her room because it was clearly a you need to come get me now cry. I was thinking, oh, I really hope you go back to sleep as I changed her diaper and then she looked at me, put her hand on my chest and said mama. And I thought, hey, you can get me up every morning at 4:30 if you're going to say that to me. It was positively thrilling to hear your daughter say that for the first time. It was the first time I really understood the meaning of the expression my heart is about to burst.

She seems to be handling our new schedule well and the weekends are getting easier for her. She still likes to have lots of sitting on mommy time but I do not have to spend every waking second holding her so that's been nice for both of us.

Yesterday was my niece Meghan's birthday party and it was nice for Gracie to see everyone. I forget how serious she can be when she's around a group of people she doesn't see a lot. She's usually pretty relaxed and vocal with me and my immediate family but I forget that so much is still so new to her. Once she loosens up she is really animated but it does take a bit.

We have an important event coming up. This coming weekend Grace will be baptized. It will be a fairly small affair but exciting none the less. She will be baptized in a dress I bought in Ethiopia. It's really important to me that we continue to celebrate her Ethiopian heritage. It's especially important given that one of the things her family expressed to me during our birth family visit was their hope that God would be an important part of her life. I look forward to sending pictures to her family.

I've actually been thinking a lot about her family. I sent her family pictures and an update of how she's been doing. It's the first update I've sent since being home. I haven't talked alot on this blog about her family, and I'll never give a lot of detail as I feel strongly that it's Grace's story to tell and decide who to share it with. For now, I'm just the keeper of the story. But meeting them was such an important part of the puzzle. I got to see the area where she was born and to get a small glimpse of what her life would have been like. I'm not saying her life would have been unhappy or unfulfilling, but it would have been hard. Being in Ethiopia gave me such a different perspective on what is important in life and what is truly necessary. Meeting her family was the most difficult thing I have ever had to do but it was also so rewarding to be able to look them in the eye and tell them that she would be loved, and adored and cared for and to thank for allowing me to have the great honor of becoming her mother. And yet, with all the gratitude I have, I also have great sadness for what they are missing. That sly little smile, the way she rolls her eyes to the side when she's not quite sure about something, the cute little voice she uses to talk to her baby dolls or the belly laugh she lets out when her cousins dance and sing for her. As full as my heart it, it hurts for them.

So, in a month I will be the mother of a one year old. I'm so proud of how far she has come but I will really miss this snugly baby stage. I love that she buries her head in my neck and pats my face when she's having a bottle. I love how she closes her eyes and giggles when I give her tons of kisses all at once. But I'm sure that new and exciting times are ahead of us.

Getting Into The Groove

So, we're nearing the end of week 2 of back to work and I think we're doing OK and getting into a routine. I wake up at 5:30. Luckily, I don't need a lot of time to get ready in the morning. In fact, I could be ready to go to the moon in 30 minutes. So I'm ready no later than 6:00. I get my coffee and Grace's bottle ready and then I get her up. I swear she is the happiest baby I have ever seen in the morning. Sometimes I hear her through the baby monitor talking to her baby doll. It's the sweetest little sound. After I get her dressed and ready we have our coffee and bottle together and then we have time to play before I bring her up to Auntie Kate's.

Grace has been doing so well at Auntie Kate's. She doesn't cry when I bring her up. She adores her cousins and man, do they adore her back. My niece Meghan thinks that she is a third mother to Grace. Meghan is almost 6. The night before I went back to work, Meghan asked me if I would be providing them with some instructions so they would know how to best take care of Grace. I told her I had written some things down and she said good, I like to have it in writing. I told her I would be up at 7:30 the next morning. We came up at 7:25 (because I am always early) and Meghan met me at the stairs and said, I thought you were coming at 7:30? It's 7:25. I said we came up a little early so I could tell them a few things. Was that OK? She said oh it's fine, I just expected you at 7:30. She cracks me up. The other night when we were leaving Meghan said see you tomorrow at 7:25 Gracie cause your mom is always early in case she has to tell us stuff. Jacob tells me every morning that Gracie is going to be a super great girl that day and then he reports back to me what she did all day when I get home. They are such great cousins and they crack her up.

In the evening she's really happy to see me. We have bath time, books, a little play time and a bottle. I really love the little schedule we have worked out. I still get to spend some good time with her and she knows she will start and end her day with mommy. Now the weekend is still a bit of a challenge for her. I think she's afraid that if she lets me out of her sight I'll leave so just about every minute of the day she needs to be either sitting with me or within arms reach of me. If I walk across the room or god forbid out of the room she looses her mind. So we spent a lot of time snuggling and playing. In all honesty, I would much rather have this scenario than to have a child who wants nothing to do with me. She just needs more time to realize that when I leave I will always come back. I tell her that every morning when I leave and soon enough she will come to believe that. Until then she just needs my constant love and reassurance and she certainly has that. Plus, who wouldn't want to spend their entire weekend playing with my gorgeous girl?

This week we got a great gift from Gracie's friend Enatu, who came home a few months before she did, and her mom. It was a gift set of Princess and the Frog hair care products from a company called Carol's Daughter. They make African American hair care products. We love the products. They make her hair so soft and fluffy.

We've been going to church and Grace is pretty well behaved except she blows raspberries through the entire homily. She's done this two weeks in a row and it's always in the homily and always when there's dead silence. And no matter what I do, she just won't stop. Well, I guess like mother like daughter. I apparently would wait until it was quiet to ask my mother if the boring church was over yet. We Flaherty women are classy gals.

Grace is doing so well. She has one tooth that is popping through. It's just starting to show and it looks so cute. She is rolling over all the time now and she can get from her belly to her knees to sitting up. She is also getting up on all fours and is rocking back and forth so I think she'll be crawling any time now. She loves to play patty cake and she loves to be sung to. Her favorite thing to do is to untie mommy's shoes. That can keep her busy for a long time. She is sweet and giggly and cuddly and I just adore her. I can't wait to get home each night to her. I consider myself the luckiest mommy around.