Four Years!

Xanthe's very first friend, Libby Mei, came to visit and get a new violin. Libby Mei was Xanthe's room mate for a year. They knew each other before we knew them!

Coco and Xanthe talking about Xanthe's Family Day and looking at the scrapbook.


You would think that Xanthe's Gotcha Day, or Family Day, as it's now called, would be a date emblazoned on my heart, but I can't remember what it is!  It was either May 22 or May 23, 2006, that we caught our first glimpse of our daughter.  Our group of eight couples traveled on a bus from our hotel to the Changsha city offices.  We got off the bus and took an elevator upstairs.  We had heard stories of parents who had to wait hours for their babies to arrive, so it was a shocking surprise, like being hit with a bucket of ice cold water, when we saw our babies all lined up, sitting on their nannies' laps.  There was a collective gasp from all of us who spotted the group of babies.  I knew right away which one of the eight identically dressed babies was Xanthe, but I didn't want to think about that, for fear I was wrong.  We were ushered into a room separate from the baby group, where one baby at a time was brought in.  It's all so hazy, the details.  I think Xanthe was first.  Her nanny wasn't there, so she was handed to us by the orphanage director.  He called her You-You, her nickname.  She was very quiet, staring at us and grabbing Scott's glasses.  Later, her expression was extremely worried, and she kept grabbing her ear, but at first, she was just in shock. The poor little thing must have been so traumatized.  Scott and I, we were in heaven!

It has been four years since then, and I could write for hours about the intense joys and challenges of adoption and Xanthe in particular.  She is one tenacious, willful, intense, demanding and spicy little thing.  One of my friends who has a Chinese daughter Xanthe's age said, "I just wish sometimes that they could be a little bit...less of a presence!"  Exactly!!  If Xanthe is in the car, it is a constant barrage of instructions from her about how loud or soft she wants the music or how much she wants the window rolled down or up or how hungry or thirsty she is, depending on what fast food signs she sees out the window.  If a song ends on the CD, she launches a tantrum that lasts until the next song starts.  This child does not rest.  At home, the less attention she gets, the more obnoxious she is.  That means nobody's practicing goes uninterrupted and no task is completed without having to cater to Xanthe right in the middle of it.  Punishment makes her very clever about coming up with new ways to be loud and disruptive, so I have to choose very wisely whether I want someone sitting on the naughty step moaning and kicking the wall or whether I want to hurry and fix Xanthe another bowl of cereal, even though I'm doing something else.

And then there's the night time, which has gotten a LOT better since Xanthe was a baby.  Now, she only wakes me up once.  Last night it was because her leg was itchy.  Where she gets the fortitude to drag herself out of bed in the middle of the night, every night, to report to me about an itchy leg or crooked covers or missing toy, I don't know.  But she is very diligent about it.  And very diligent about being the first one up in the morning, tapping me on the forehead and announcing which two kids of cereal she wants, and in what bowl.

That first day we met Xanthe, she was perfectly quiet.  We thought we had the best baby in the world.  We were wrong.  Oh boy, were we wrong.  Yes, we did get the absolute spiciest and most stubborn baby in China, but she is also perfect.  She, with all her opinions and instructions, belongs right here in our family. Without her, there would be a huge, gaping black hole of emptiness.  And quiet.  :)  Seriously, I can't imagine "us" without Xanthe.  So glad we have you, little You-you!