Although we have not heard that our adoption papers have been signed, we decided to tell the girls about it because EVERYONE knows and asks. Anna was very excited. She knew that her friend and his baby sister lived in the orphanage and when we told her they needed a family she asked repeatedly in rapid fire succession if we could be their family. We told her that we asked "Haiti" and they said yes but it will take a long time to do all the paper work. She then moved right to wanting to know if she could go on the air plane to get them. Sorry, but no. The next issue was where would they sleep and could the babies sleep by each other and me and my friend could sleep by each other so I could look at him at night and check on him. Yes, that would be great. Two weeks later, "Mommy, when can we get some more kids in our family?" Me: "Remember we talked about the 'Haiti kids'?" Anna: "Yea, but you said that will take a long time until I am almost 6. We should get some more kids first, before they come." Maybe she is just social, or maybe it was her first year in the orphanage, but she really believes that more kids are more fun. I hope this great desire for siblings lasts through the teen years.
Oh, we did tell her the kids names. She has been calling them “my friend and his baby” or “the Haiti kids” because we did not want to confuse the issue with different names and were not ready to go public with their new names until we exited IBESR and visited them. (We had Beth in our house for eight days before we knew we were adopting her and the name change was difficult for Anna and Beth still gets called “Baby” by all of us a lot.) Anna knows their Haitian names and uses their new names. She understands because she knows her Chinese name. In case you missed the names in a previous post, they are Emery and Abby. Beth thinks they are at our friend's house. Every time we go there she asks, "Where Abby?" We tell her she is in Haiti and she just says "Oh." I often wonder what goes on in her little head. :)
