What a Difference

One of the families in our Guizhou yahoo group (Guizhou being the Chinese province that Luci is from) posted a link to a video of their daughter's first few months with them. This daughter was adopted at age 8 months (1 1/2 months younger than Luci was when we got her).

I cried when I watched this hand-over from one family to another. This baby was in foster care from the time she was found until adoption. Luci was in the orphanage from the day she was found until her adoption.

Why the tears? Because this little girl looked so much like Luci except that she was well-nourished and was doing all the normal things 8-month-old babies do. Like sitting up. Rolling over. On her belly, pushing up, as if doing a push-up. Crawling. From lying down, putting herself into a sitting position. Picking up bits of food and putting them into her mouth. Sitting up nicely on the Red Couch at The Swan without slumping over. And looking so healthy with those chubby cheeks and legs!


Luci was so different. Such a stick-figure, and very poor muscle tone. How much brain development was missed by having such meager food and attention? And grieving for her for the lack of love lavished on her those 9-and-a-half months. Other than the physical differences, these two girls look a lot alike!


Luci, home for just one week. She pushed herself into a sitting position, for the first time ever, all by herself...at age 10 months exactly. You can see just how skinny she is. Nothing "extra" on this little girl, at all!


But heartened, as another blog friend said in one of her posts, we are "Plan B" for Luci. (Thanks, "Snapshot.") This mom tells better than I can here that God's "Plan A" for children is to be taken care of by their parents, by the families to which they are born. For some reason, Luci was not able to stay where she was. Was she a daughter when they wanted a son? Was it in-laws who pressured them into abandoning this precious little girl? Was she child number 2 after child number 1 was a daughter also? Was she half Buyi and half Miao (she looks so Miao to me but the orphanage director was adamant that Luci is Buyi), and that mixed heritage is the reason?

Whatever the reason, John and I are happy, deliriously so, to be Luci's "Plan B."

Luci two weeks ago. A lovely, healthy little girl who knows she is loved.

Unraveling the Past

Miao baby with her silver crown. Photo from Tribaltextiles.com

Just some thoughts here:

I am looking at Luci's official papers from those white folders we got at the end of the adoption in China and it says she was found at the doorway of the All-Around Shop in Saji Town, of Liupanshui City. And it lists the name of the man who found her! Here it's been 2 1/2 years since we got her and I never even noticed the name of the man who turned her in. It even lists the name of the shop where she was found. Those items were not in the referral we received before adoption. I guess I was in a daze when we got all this info while in China, and I don't pull it out, ever. (Except to carry to the basement safe room when there's a tornado--but I don't read it when down there!) Bouyei baby on her mother's back. Traditional headgear has some silver on it, too. Tribaltextiles.com. This baby looks a lot like Luci did when a baby, but the mother has a face that is not as round as most Miao faces are.

Hearing all the latest on the Bouyei people on the Guizhou yahoo group makes me really wonder about Luci. She looks so much like the Miao women in the photographs at the Minority Museum in Guiyang. I wonder if she is half-Miao and half-Bouyei and that is why she was given up? That would make sense to me, since she looks so much like Miao (with a round, flat face.). Not giving her up, I mean--but that they don't usually like children who are "mixed," and that might be the parents' reason for letting her go. Besides the fact that the Bouyei villages are very poor and a son could provide for their later years.

What a pity. If they'd only known what a pretty, smart, nice little girl she is, they never, ever, ever! would have let her go.

Luci with the silver crown her daddy and I can afford.