Milestones

Monday
July 29, 2013

Our next door neighbors are building a tree fort for their nine-year-old son.  Correction:  it's not a tree fort, it's a deck fort, as the boys are quick to tell me, because it's suspended beneath their deck, not perched in a tree.  Andrew and Matthew spent a lot of time under their deck today, helping Aaron's dad with the new fort, and hopefully learning a few carpentry apprentice skills along the way.  Michel joined them for a while, and she made an eager helper, holding dowels in place to allow for space between the floorboards.  Thanks, Tom, for looking past language barriers and letting Michel have a role in the construction!

We met Mike at work today for lunch in the John Deere cafeteria.  Mike has always touted their executive chef and high-quality meals, and we thought it would be a fun chance for Michel to see where Mike spends his work days.

She tried blueberry yogurt, which she loved!  If I had known that, I wouldn't have been buying so much vanilla yogurt this month!  She also had a variety of fruit and some hard-boiled eggs.  The buffet format has great benefits - allowing her to see everything and pick what she wants - but it also has some challenges.  I had to watch to make sure she wasn't sampling directly from the buffet (and I caught her just before licking her fingers and dipping them in each flavor of yogurt on the salad bar).  She also didn't understand why she couldn't have the sausage that was part of the pasta and stir-fry buffet.  She really wanted just sausage, nothing sauteed with it.  However, she was always responsive to my instruction and correction.  After nearly a month of having her with us everywhere, I am already starting to forget how many experiences here are still new to her.

This afternoon, Michel and I selected pictures for an album she can take home with her.  I don't know how many thousands of pictures I have taken of our adventures this month, but I chose the best pictures from each day, then let her pick her favorites from that list.  Kidsave suggested 30-40 photos, but I was pleased that we narrowed it down to 79.  Thanks, Amy & Jack, for giving Michel an album that holds 120 pictures!  There is plenty of extra room for the little souvenirs she has accumulated this month:  baseball tickets and gift tags and such.

We uploaded pictures to Walgreen's to pick up later, along with the two disposable cameras Michel has used since her arrival.  After dinner, Michel and I headed to the home of Steve & Diana Hudson to work on Michel's photo album.  Steve is the local coordinator for Kidsave, as well as the pastor at our church.  Steve & Diana adopted their daughter through Kidsave after hosting her in 2011.  Diana graciously offered the use of her extensive scrapbooking supplies for any host families who wanted time, space, and materials to assemble a book of memories for their host children.

Michel and I enjoyed assembling the pictures into an album, decorating the photos and adding embellishments.  Since we had a very simple album style (for merely slipping in 4x6 photos, not the full 12x12 style requiring major page creation), I thought we'd have a fairly simple assembly process.  Ha!  I underestimated Michel's desire to create an artistic masterpiece.  She wanted to trim every photo with decorative scissors, add a colored background to every page, and include more stickers than I thought possible!  The Hudsons were tremendously gracious in letting us stay for nearly three hours, and Diana sent us home with a bag of supplies for Michel to finish her album in her last days with us.  Now I understand why Kidsave recommended 30-40 pictures!

While we worked on the album, Michel had time to talk with the Hudson's daughter, Daniela, who came home from Colombia around Christmas time of last year.  They chatted about everything from their lives in Colombia to the personal details Dani has memorized about Justin Bieber.  I was wondering how much Michel would start to put the details together:  Daniela came to Des Moines with Kidsave two years ago and was adopted by her host family...  Would Michel start to wonder about adoption?  (Up until now, she has not asked anything about adoption, although we have discussed adoption in a generic sense.)  In the car on the way home, Michel started asking questions.

"Daniela came to Des Moines for a summer vacation two years ago?"

I kept the answers simple, knowing I could not volunteer anything about the adoption advocacy mission of Kidsave.

"Yes."

"And she was adopted last year?"

"Yes."

Amazingly, Michel left it at that.  I'm guessing the wheels have started to turn in her head, though.  Will she find a forever family here?  Will she be adopted?  Will she someday sit at the kitchen table with her adoptive family, chatting with a future Summer Miracles kid who thinks s/he is here just for the summer vacation of a lifetime?

As we left the Hudsons, we drove past Special Olympics Iowa, where their athlete oath is etched on the side of their building:  "Let me win.  But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt."  I translated it for Michel, and we were both touched by its message.  It seems to have so many implications in her life.  She may or may not find a forever family while she is here.  She may or may not be able to stay in the loving foster home where she currently lives - she may be transferred to an orphanage.  She may or may not achieve her dreams of college.  There are a lot of unknowns in her life.  But I pray that she is brave in all of her efforts.  And ultimately, I hope that she has a loving family to back her in all that she attempts.

Michel loved the way her book of memories turned out.  She shared it with Mike and the boys when she got home and was so proud of her decorative efforts.  When we got home, she immediately wanted to continue working on it, until we had to cut her off to get ready for bed.  She definitely personalized it with her own style, including lots of stickers and lots of letters - sometimes to spell out captions for the pictures, sometimes just "alphabet soup" style to decorate the picture.  She especially liked the background designs that included bright colors and patterns.

We sent Michel up to get ready for bed, and she called to us a few minutes later.  The Pack & Play portable crib was still set up in our room, left over from the weekend visit with our nephews.  Michel had climbed in the crib and was curled up like a baby, begging us to take her picture.  It made me ponder how much she has missed out on in her short life.  As a baby, did anyone nestle her into a crib at night?  When she was a toddler, did someone take a picture of her beaming in a high chair?  Who was there for her on her first day of school?  I cannot tell you how much I want for her in the future.  I want Michel, and all of her traveling companions, to have loving families to be there for all of the milestones yet to come.