Talking about where babies come from is tricky when your kids are adopted. Grace, I’m convinced, thinks that all babies come from orphanages. She’ll probably walk up to her kindergarten friends next year and ask them, “So what orphanage are you from?”
Josiah, on the other hand, is just really confused. We’ve been talking about “his baby sister” for months and months (and months) now. But his mama doesn’t have a big belly we can point to and tell him his baby sister is inside. And we have no due date. We just keep talking about it and nothing happens, as far as he’s concerned.
Last week we had friends over for dinner who have a newborn. I was holding the baby, and Josiah carefully examined him. Then he whispered to me, “Is that my baby sister?”
Ummm…no.
Then yesterday, he came into the room with a ball under his shirt. “Look!” he giggled. “It’s my baby sister! And she is coming out!” He grandly pulled the ball out. Then he kicked it across the room. “She can bounce!” He exclaimed. “I can kick her!”
Ummm….uh oh.
Poor kid. He just doesn’t get it. And now I’ve been trying to tell him that actually, his baby sister is not a baby. She’s two years old. She can walk and talk and steal his toys. Of course, this makes absolutely no sense to him.
It will help when we can show Grace and Josiah her picture. We haven’t yet, not until we know the paperwork has been sent to Dar–because then that will mean that it’s pretty much guaranteed we will get her. (After we tell the kids, we’ll tell you–I promise!) And it probably doesn’t help that their Dad and I still can’t agree on a name! But I am really looking forward to taking both kids to the orphanage with us when we go to pick her up, because I think it will help them understand their own adoptions a lot better.
In the meantime, poor Josiah will keep thinking that his baby sister–who is not a baby–will pop out of his tummy someday–or arrive at our house with another family–or brought by a stork, maybe. When you’re three, who knows?
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