Our baby- unknown date
Our baby Anju will be 4 tomorrow. We've always called her our "baby". We've often gotten comments when people overhear us call our 2 or 3 year old "the baby", but it's fitting for us. When she was in India, we were excited to get "our baby" home. Once home, she was carried around like an infant for months, as she could not walk. She clung to me like a baby koala clings to its mama for months and months on end even when she was able to walk by herself. Because of her early life in an institution, she's always been just a bit behind emotionally- and still very much a baby in many ways. Besides, she loved to hear that she was my baby, and I was thrilled to finally have a tiny bundle to hold once again.
Perhaps I still call her my baby because I missed out on her babyhood. She was six months when we got her information, and after the initial flurry of pictures, we saw her grow from afar in odd photos taken at 3-month increments until we picked her up at 19 months.
Or maybe it is because she missed out on her babyhood. Solveig and Jonah each had special songs as infants that I sang to them as I rocked them to sleep or fed them in the middle of the night. Solveig had, "You Are My Sunshine", as her name means sunshine. Jonah had the Winnie the Pooh song since he was my big boy "all stuffed with fluff". Anju asks, "What is my lullaby, Mama?", and I'm not sure what to say. She slept through the night her first night with us, and has no special lullaby. She says "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" is her special song, and that's fine with me, but I know it just isn't the same.
So, even though tomorrow she is 4, she is still my baby. And, of course, my twinkling star.
Anju shares her birthday spotlight with her Great-Great-Grandma Edna.
They met at Grandma Edna's 100th birthday party in April 2009 when Anju had just turned 2.
That means Grandma Edna is celebrating her 102nd birthday!
