Learning to Liv...: January 2010

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Growing Up

I'm now living the cliche - "what happened to the time, she's all grown up."

We've been home 9 months together and LT is 22 months. I'm not sure what happened...but it seems that all of a sudden she's growing up. Very few signs of a baby and lots of signs of a happy, fearless, funny, determined toddler. I'm not sure when all of this happened but it's here. Even though she was 13 months when we came home, due to her unfortunate series of circumstances she was more at a 6 month old level when we met. Pretty quickly, I saw great strides in her development. But in the recent month it's like she hit a big milestone and officially entered all things toddler. She's coming into her own and I'm so proud of her.

She is social and requests her own play dates.

She's independent and likes to sit in big chairs.

She's outgoing and loves a dance party.

She's nuturing and kind.

She's helpful and makes me pancakes in her kitchen.

She's sweet and laughs at my jokes.

What's amazing about all this is how resilient children are. In a matter of months children get back on track. I am witness to the power of the human spirit, not just in Liv Tunsitu but in all of the children in our adoption community. They all are coming into their own and I feel so lucky to be a part of this experience and family.

Today we had the monthly Ethiopian luncheon at Messob and it was packed with families. It's so cool to see the children have each other and treat each other with love and excitement. It's moments like today that I feel ultra ultra lucky. I just wish I could bottle all these special moments and never forget the small strides that add up to big change.

Flag Meaning:

The colored stripes on the Ethiopian flag are significant - the red stripe stands for power, faith and blood; the yellow symbolizes peace, natural wealth and love; and the green represents the land and hope. The colors were also interpreted to have a connection to the Holy Trinity, and the three main provinces of Ethiopia. The star represents unity of the people and the races that make up Ethiopia. The five rays on the outside of the star represent prosperity and the blue disk represents peace.
The three equal horizontal bands of green (top), yellow, and red with a yellow pentagram and single yellow rays emanating from the angles between the points on a light blue disk centered on the three bands; Ethiopia is the oldest independent country in Africa, and the three main colors of her flag were so often adopted by other African countries upon independence that they became known as the pan-African colors.