A Whole Decade (with Molly)

  

      My blog is dedicated to family life after adoption.  A huge factor in adopting and adapting is siblings.  One of our siblings is having a birthday today.  Today my Molly is 10.  Every parent thinks their children are amazing.  And they are.  God made all kids to have their own little personalities and quirks.  Molly isn't just amazing and quirky.  She's exceptional.  The night she was born (at 3#11 oz, after an ambulance drive and an emergency CS), she proved to the world her strength and character.  The NICU doctors told us "She's early, she's tiny, she's going to need help breathing....okay her breathing is great...she'll need a feeding tube....well, she's figuring out sucking, so we'll go ahead and pull that there other tube out too."  I always felt that if I wasn't her food source, she really didn't need me.  She was always just so  strong and determined.

  Those traits are still hers.  Earlier this year, she told us that she would raise her own funds to go to Rwanda on a Visiting Orphans trip. We shouldn't have doubted her.  She has her trip raised and enough extra to begin providing extra food for Kimisagara.

Busing tables at Pizza Ranch for a Rwanda fundraiser.  

         Years ago, before she was old enough to start school, Molly got bored with me.  She'd taught herself to read and had long passed the preschool stuff.  As I was learning about her being "gifted," I was told that frequently, gifted children lack sensitivity or the ability to relate to their peers; that they can become overwhelmed with the problems of the world and that sometimes making friends is hard.  Molly has overcome this, and although she is always writing a new story about rescuing near extinct animals or making adoption mandatory, she still offers the new girl to jump rope with her crew at recess.  The girl can't fit into any stereotype.  Love that. 

   I love that Molly does her own thing. A couple of weeks ago, she wore new Toms for the first time.  I had warned her to watch her step (she's more than a little klutzsy and frequently day dreams, a bad combo) while walking home from school.  Then I watched her step into some mud.  And sink a bit.  I was mad!  I scolded her and she said, "Mom, I never want to be a girl that worries so much about how I look.  I wanna be myself."  So many lessons there!  After discussing the difference in cleanliness and hygiene, not to mention wasting her parents money on shoes, my heart to swell a bit to know that she has this sense of self. 

Is this vintage?

      There are a lot of reasons to celebrate big sis.  When Molly became sister to 3 brothers, she took on noise, stress, chaos, inappropriateness, nudity and frustration.  There have been many times that she has had to wait  a long time to tell me about her theater class or the newest story she's writing because of the dysfunction under our roof.  Every time that I am have a pang of guilt about that, I look at her patiently helping Etienne with his letters or giving Zeke a "warm up" snuggle and I know that she gets it.