My daughter

She is two and a half years old.

For one year and three weeks of those two and a half years--she didn't know I existed.

She was born in China and left to be found by one of the Half the Sky SWIs(orphanages) in that country. She was left with a note.

The nannies loved her. They gave us a load of pictures starting from when she was a month old; ending in the clothes she was wearing when she met us. We think they might have been taken that day.

She loved the nannies. Loved them so much that she trusted them enough to love us. When we visited the SWI we met them. Got to thank her second-favorite nanny. We didn't see her favorite--she couldn't stand to say goodbye to our little girl again. When the nanny put her into my arms she told my daughter that I was her mama. As we walked out she looked at me and said "Mama." An emptiness that had been inside me through eleven years of infertility hell, including a seven year wait for a non-special needs child from China was began to be filled.

Now, my heart is so filled with her I can't imagine life without her.

She has two laughs. One is what I call her polite laugh. I get this one when I pretend that her shoes go on her head as I help her dress.

The other is her full out laugh--I hear it when she's getting tickled, hanging upside down or something really strikes her as funny.

Her moods are mercurial as any two year old. Her favorite words are "MINE!" and "NO!" Her favorite sentence is "I do!" as she struggles to learn how to dress, climb, and all the things she needs to learn.

I will  call her Lotus on the blog--mainly to give her a degree of privacy. She's my flower, my darling, my daughter.