18 months

My baby girl is now a year and a half! It’s hard to believe that one year ago today we received the long-awaited call alerting us that it was finally time to meet Reagan in person. At the time she was still such a baby, and although she still fits into many of her 3-6 month old outfits, Reagan is quickly becoming a little girl. She can run, dance and hold her own in family wrestling/tickling matches. She is developing and learning to assert her will (and, fortunately, also learning the meaning of the word “no”). She’s talking more and more every day and tries to mimic every sound we make. I won’t bore you with the list of words that she can “say”, but it is this point that amazes me more than any other. The girl missed out on 6 ½ months of English-language development and yet she is still right on track – even ahead of her peers!

I continue to marvel at God’s protection of and provision for our little girl during the time we were half a world apart. Reagan has not been the least bit behind on any developmental milestone, and I think a great deal of the credit for that goes to the women God set to physically love and care for her before we were able. The other day I caught a glimpse of Reagan’s primary nanny in the background of a photo on another adoptive-mom’s blog and it brought a tear to my eye. On the surface the nanny seemed to be a rather unhappy, even somewhat cold, woman, but she lit up when she was interacting with Reagan – laughing, kissing her, making her giggle. By the third day of our visits to the orphanage, we finally realized that she was desperately trying to hold her emotions in check. She seemed to be dreading the moment she would have to say good-bye to the baby she had cared for since day 2, and the closer that moment got, the more she shut down. She waited until the last possible second to hand Reagan to me, and even then she was reluctant to let her go. Needless to say, that made for a very emotional morning, but I will forever be grateful for the opportunity to see God’s answer to my prayers. I continue to pray for those ladies, Luc in particular, and hope that someday Reagan will also get the opportunity to thank the women that helped shape the beautiful runner-dancer-talker we are enjoying a year later.