In Which Adoption Makes Me Dust Off Some Old Feelings

I've come to a realization about myself over the past few weeks.  All along I've been secretly in love with the idea of having a little girl. 

I didn't even suspect that I wanted a girl; when Jeremy and I got married I knew that the odds were in favor for us having a boy, as Jeremy comes from a long, long line of all boys.  Sure enough, we had a boy, and with Connor's birth and the subsequent discoveries we made about his genetic condition I knew that the likelihood of us having a girl was now close to nil.  Connor would either be an only child or we would be adopting-- and since we didn't have a preference as to whether or not we adopted a boy or a girl, it was extremely likely that we would end up adopting a boy.  Between 70% - 90% of families who are adopting request girls, and in many countries (China being the notable exception) the number of boys waiting far outnumber the girls.  I was happy with the idea of having another boy.  I like boys.

Yet somehow the child who seemed the best fit for our family ended up being a girl.  And while I'm trying to keep myself from becoming overly excited as, after all, she's not ours yet, I'm finding myself rapidly losing the battle.  From out of the corners of my closets I'm pulling out carefully tucked away toys that I'd saved from my childhood just in case: a large box full of my old paper dolls, a little wooden doll's bed with clothespins for bed posts, delicate embroidered pillow cases and linens.  I've suddenly noticed that the extensive independent reader and young adult book collection I've acquired over the years is composed less of books like Captain Underpants and much, much more of books like A Little Princess.  "Plucky young girl has adventures and ultimately saves the day" seems to be the general theme I've gone for.

I was such a tomboy-- I spent most of my childhood barefoot with holes ripped in my pants at the knees, climbing the tallest trees in the neighborhood and playing soccer and football with the boys on the playground.  Why is it that I'm now drawn like a magnet to all of the frilly little girl dresses, hair bows and tights and patent leather shoes that I wouldn't have been caught dead in as a kid?  I feel a little bit like I did the first four months of my pregnancy-- those innocent, naive, giddy months before we got the devastating (at the time) news about Connor.

Perhaps most telling is how I find myself slowing way, way down in the toy aisles of the local stores when I'm passing the section with the play kitchens.  I find myself fingering the "mother daughter" apron sets and dreaming about our little girl standing next to me while I work in the kitchen, chopping little Velcroed-together vegetables while I chop real ones on the counter above.  Why have I never had this fantasy about me and Connor working in the kitchen together?  Is it because he's a boy?  Have I really bought that heavily into gender stereotypes?  Or have I not been thinking about this because I knew it was such an unrealistic expectation for Connor, given his developmental delays, and I knew I'd be setting myself up for disappointment?

That, instead of the having-a-girl thing, may actually be the underlying issue here.  I'm fully aware of the fact that this adoption-- the adoption of an older child with special needs-- is not going to be a walk in the park.  But according to the orphanage, other than her language delays Sylvie is developmentally on track, so the idea of her and me playing "kitchen" together is not out of the realm of possibility. 

For the first time in the past four years I'm letting myself think about what it would be like to have a child we can do the sorts of things with that typical parents do with their typical children, and I think my brain is just going a little overboard as a result.  I remember so many fun things that I participated in with my parents when I was a kid; things that I expected to be able to do with my children and which I put up on a corner shelf in my figurative closet after Connor was born.  I haven't missed them; Connor has brought us so much joy and has enriched our lives in so many incredible ways.  But I think that just like the idea of having a girl, I didn't realize how much I was holding on to the idea of having a child who was able to share in those things until I allowed myself to start thinking about them.

So I'll do my best to reign myself in-- a lot can happen in the next year-- and I'll be preparing myself for meeting the unique challenges that adopting and parenting an older child born in a different country and who currently has no formal language will bring.  And I'll be more than ready to accept and love our daughter for who she is no matter where she falls developmentally.

But I may buy those aprons anyway.  Just in case.

~Jess