6 Months

That's a whole half a year since Val's arrival. How did we get here? One day at a time, of course. In many cases, after one long night at a time.

There are so many exciting things in Val's world today.

• Val has slept through the night (10 pm- 10 am, with interruptions only at 8 am to eat) the last two nights. This is awesome, execpt that the only way to acheive this is to have her in our bed all night. Which means that we don't sleep as well. But Val does. Chicken, egg?
• She's *this* close to crawling. She jacknifes her butt up, then moves her arms forward only to flop over to one side. Then try again. She also scoots on her butt to get a little bit further.
• The laughing. Oh god the laughs. They melt my heart. Every time.
• The arms and legs, they flap with glee when she's excited. So hard that when we put her in her new hook-on highchair she nearly flapped the table over with the excitement.

  

• We started solid food. Sorta. We mixed up some rice cereal, and she ate maybe a half a bite, then said 'screw this.' And that was that, though we'll try again soon.
• We were randomly inspired to hand her a sippy cup with water in it. She grabbed the thing, immediately drew it to her mouth and had a sip. She also played with the cup for a good long while, until she bonked herself on the head with it and we took it away.

There's no way to say this and convey everything behind it. But I have to try.

Val, becoming your mom is the coolest thing that has ever happened to me. We are so lucky to know you.

Another Tuesday

Every Tuesday, I think of Val's birth, of all the craziness that went into just getting her into the world safely (wee tilted conehead and folded-up ear that has since unfolded notwithstanding) and of course, most importantly of this moment:

(which was actually not the first moment I held her but since I was more cleaned up, we'll go with that one). Since that day, we've had almost 6 months worth of days with her and though it's been exhausting, being Val's mom is so ridiculously amazing you're probably sick of hearing me talk about it.

But she should know how very much we adore her now, in case when she's older and full of teenaged spite, she decides that her parents never loved her. Because, dear teenaged Val of the future, that's the biggest crock of shit ever. So don't even waste your time thinking it.

So many exciting things have gone on with Val the last couple of weeks. Here's the recap:

• Her newest favoritest hobby is sitting on the floor surrounded by toys.

  

  Toys that light up and make lots of noise aren't too interesting to her, except her beloved Chime Garden, which is always a hit. She's so into sitting surrounded by toys that during church this week that was THE ONLY THING she wanted to do. So that's what she did.

  But she's not shy, she'll sit with her toys anywhere:

  Though, often, they aren't actually her toys. They're Sam and Riley's. And those girls have been awesome about sharing their toys, often creating a large pile of baby-appropriate toys around her (how do they know????), like this one:

• She's *this* close to crawling. Puts her elbows out in front of her, then jacknifes her legs up. And most of the time, promptly rolls over to one side, then plays on her back.
• She officially moved out of 'New Baby' diapers and into size 3's. This was hard on Andrea and I both, but so necessary since a whole lot of poop had blown out of the 2's in recent weeks.
• And now a little bit about me. A huge part of the reason we chose to expand our family by getting pregnant was for me. Andrea really didn't care whether we adopted or fostered to adopt or what.

  But I did, it turns out. I had a serious talk with myself, a talk in which I realized that it was really important to me that I have a child who was genetically related to me.

  I've never lived with someone who looks like me, I've never spent a lot of time with someone from my gene pool. Though being adopted has brought a lot of joy into my life and to my family's life, I wanted something different for Val. And yes, for me.

  This is always so hard to talk about because I in no way want to slight my family or make you think that I doubt for a second that the universe sent me in the wrong direction by sending me to them. I know it did not and though my feelings of guilt about feeling this way are apparently fairly typical of adoptees, they're still my feelings.

  Being adopted was good for me, for my birthmother, for my family. I know this.

  Just the same, I wanted to know what it was like to be part of a family that's genetically related. Because, people, my genes, they are strong.

  So when I saw Val, saw how much she looks like me, I breathed a huge sigh of relief and thanked the heavens above for granting me this one wish. Whoever she turne out to be, she will never have to look upon the faces of women she sees in the street and wonder if that's the one. She'll never have to guess where this or that came from, why she has reddish hair (if that holds out), why her eyes don't seem to be the same color all the time, and yes, why her buttcrack looks like that.

  Because I have those answers for her.

  I accept that she may well have all of those questions about her sperm donor. We have about 10 pages of answers for her when she needs them. In the meantime, it soothes my soul that she looks so much like me. Though she would no doubt rock my world just as much if she didn't.

• But anyway, back to what she's been up to. We're about to start her on solid foods. Or at least rice cereal, which seems like a grand adventure.

  It's the first step away from her total dependence on me. I'm both looking forward to it and dreading it, though if I never saw my breast pump again, I'd be happy.

• She's going to take her first airplane trip, going to visit my parents in Ohio. Maybe she'll see snow, though more likely it will be cold and grey outside. Sweet!

  But she'll get to be shown off for all my mom's friends. There's no way I can deny mom the chance to do that.

That's pretty much all of what she's been up to. Except for her first meeting with a balloon: