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As of today, at six weeks old, Meera Grace is now:

• one of the most easy, mellow, laid-back, happy babies on the planet — continuing to have the most sunny disposition and rarely unhappy
• smiling (often waking up smiling)
• laughing (started laughing on July 5 and has laughed many times each day since)
• trying to ‘talk’/interact with verbal sounds back-and-forth when people give her eye contact
• working very hard to suck on her fingers/hands (i.e., spending most of her waking hours struggling to get her right hand into her mouth)
• loving having her diaper changed
• kicking her legs like crazy
• still loving her black Baby Bjorn chair
• still loving her mobile of “friends”
• still loving a nice warm bath
• staring for hours at bright lights and contrasting colors
• sleeping more and crying less (which is saying a lot since she was already crying very little)… even during her ‘fussy period’ between 4-8pm each day
• sleeping through more than you can imagine (i.e., K & O’s loud antics)
• wanting to eat (and demanding it) every 2-4 hours, 24×7, no exceptions
• watching with wide eyes as her crazy brothers play like maniacs around her
• enjoying one bottle each night with her Papi
• adoring her Mama as if she were the center of the entire universe, lighting up when she sees her, cooing and squealing with delight, etc.
• loving life
• fitting in pretty darn perfectly with our family

Today Meera Grace met her Godmother. Beth came from Connecticut to visit and meet her baby bundle. It was a special day for me — to see these two together. Braydon and I could not be happier that Meera will have Beth as a special force in her life. Choosing godparents is tricky and Braydon and I take it very seriously —- the spiritual/religious aspects of it and lots of other aspects of it. Beth was the obvious choice for Meera Grace. Today was the start of many days that they’ll have together. Meera loved being held by Beth. She was deeply content in Beth’s arms. And she smiled huge, huge smiles at Beth for long stretches during the day. I want Meera to know that right from the start she had a really good connection with our dear dear dear dear dear friend Beth.

4th of July Paintings by Kyle and Owen, painted this morning
Owen’s, on left, titled: “Fireworks, 4th of July Concert, and Moon” (important notes from the artist: yellow moon at top left, green grass at bottom, big and little fireworks all around)
Kyle’s, on right, titled: “Fireworks All The Way To God” (important notes from the artist: big fireworks shooting right off the top of the paper, dark green grass along bottom, instruments — violin, trumpet, and trombone — just above grass on left side)

A lot of what I’m thinking about this 4th of July are the same things I was thinking about last 4th of July (click here for a post of mine from a year ago). The big difference this year is that Meera Grace is with us. As a tiny 5 week old baby, she is already so incredibly extravagantly privileged in so many, many ways. Just one of those ways is that she was born with automatic U.S. citizenship. Braydon and I both just had to laugh when, as easy as pie (American Pie; pun intended) Meera’s Social Security card, with brand new Social Security number printed right on it in fresh ink under her name, arrived in the mail a couple of weeks after she was born. It just arrived in the mail. Do you know how hard we had to work (how many hours and hours and hours were spent; how much frustration we experienced; how many phone calls we made; how many visits to the Social Security office we made; etc…) to get Social Security cards for Kyle and Owen??? Any adoptive parent knows how hard that process was (especially if you adopted from a place like Haiti where immigration has its… let’s just say… ‘issues’). Meera, like most of us born to privilege, doesn’t have a clue how very fortunate she is. She is unaware of the privileges she is cloaked with. She has no idea what a privilege it is to be a U.S. citizen, what a privilege it is to simply receive her Social Security card in the mailbox. The privilege — the unearned advantage — is invisible to her. As it is to most all of us who have it. Over the years, as we teach her –as best we can– to recognize her privileges, including the privilege of having been born here, our hope is that she’ll navigate privilege’s slippery slope with compassion and grace. We are living a life of plenty. What a slippery slope it is. Over the next few days, as we indulge in some of the luxuries that our life as we know it affords us, we will be remembering what a privilege it all is. Yes, that’s right, as we picnic and swim and barbecue and watch the fireworks we’ll be remembering just how unearned most of our advantages really are.

I’ve mentioned books on this blog before, but have never ‘plugged’ a book. And I’ve definitely never asked/nudged/pushed anyone to buy a book (not even my own book!) So this is a first. Having said that…
Please go buy this book!!!
You know we’re huge fans of the Livesay Haiti Blog. We’ve become huge fans of the Livesay family too— and the work that they’re doing in Haiti. Troy is a gifted photographer, and some of his beautiful Haiti photos are collected in this book.
I bought three copies of this book yesterday– one copy for our family’s coffee table, and a copy each for K & O (we’ll put them aside with some other ‘Haiti/Adoption-related-things’ that we’re collecting along the way to give to the boys when they are old enough to really appreciate them). Please consider buying this book, learning more about Haiti from it, and showing your support for what this family is doing on the ground in Haiti!
Please click here now to go check it out (and buy copies of it!)

I’ve let the boys take their “own” photos with the camera before, but have never posted any of their photos here. But they are starting to take some pretty interesting photos now, and they definitely understand the whole concept of the camera and aren’t just clicking away for the sheer heck of it. They are taking photos of the things that they conscientiously find worthy of the camera shot. This is the first post of their pics, taken by them, for them. This morning they took these shots. As a sociologist, I can’t help it — I just find it all so fascinating. (P.S. Hi to my awesome PhD student Maggie!!!)

Oh my gosh! This was — I don’t know — the funniest/cutest/strangest/sweetest thing I think that I ever did see! This morning Owen was holding Meera on the couch. He somehow managed to figure out how to hold her up with just his right arm so that he could get his thumb into his mouth (he’s lefty and sucks his left thumb). He was sucking his thumb and Meera started to fuss. Next thing I knew he was sucking his thumb and had put his pinky finger into her mouth and she was sucking his pinky. The two of them sat like this for a solid 5 minutes — happily and contentedly.

Recently K & O have become fixated on knowing the specific countries that their friends who were adopted were adopted from. The fact that they (K & O) were adopted from Haiti is big for them/us. We talk about Haiti all the time, and they know lots of other kids (“lots” is relative and used loosely!) who were adopted from Haiti. But they have friends who were adopted from other countries too. They know that Joy Lin, for example, was adopted from China, and they talk about this a lot. They have started to recognize other Chinese kids when we’re out and about and will sometimes comment that they “look just like Joy Lin!”… and have now started to comment (when the kids they see have obviously white parents with them) that the kid “must have been born in China, and adopted from China, just like Joy Lin!” The other day the boys were playing — they set up chairs and it was “an airplane!” They were flying “to China!” The plane was “going overnight!” (thus the blankets). And they were “going to China for “an adoption!!!” They went “to the orphanage!” And “got their babies!” And brought them “all the way back to the United States!”

If you’ve been looking at this blog recently you’ll have seen that in many photos of Meera she is sitting in a black Baby Bjorn baby chair. This was delivered to our house from Babies R Us before Meera was born. We had put it on our baby registry, so someone who loves us obviously bought it for us from there. But… there was no packing slip and no note to tell us who this is from, and I can’t get the info from Babies R Us. I have asked several people who I suspected might have given it to us if they were the giver… but so far have not figured out who it is. This is a very generous gift. And, as it turns out, Meera LOVES this chair, sits in it for long stretches of time every day, and it is by far our most used baby gear item so far. If you are the generous gift giver please email me to let me know it is you so that I can send you a thank you note (I’m finally getting to the huge thank you note project)!!!!

Big Brothers…
And Little Sister…

We found this scene yesterday. I almost jumped right in to yell at the boys for being up on the table (a big no no), but then we realized what was happening. First we watched with overflowing hearts. Then Braydon started snapping pictures. And I grabbed paper and pen so I wouldn’t forget the exact quotes~~~

“We’re your big brothers Baby Meera.
We’re your big brothers.
If there’s thunder and lightening we will take care of you.
If you’re stuck we will save you.
We will take care of you your whole life.
If you’re lost we will find you.
We love you Baby Meera.
We’re your big brothers.”