14 months!

Today Yun Gui is 14 months old.

We still haven't heard anything from China. Not even a whisper. No updated medical records, no pre-approval, nothing. On the other hand, we haven't sent them the photo book either. We haven't even made one yet. My husband keeps saying we should, but I don't think he's picturing the same thing I am. I think it's very important to get inside a toddler's head and create pictures that his young, developing brain can relate to, regardless of what we see when we look at photos. He just wants to collect a bunch of photos. We are therefore getting nothing done.

The builders are working hard. I've been scavenging some of their discarded materials so I can build a playset. I've made illustrations of it already. I should draw up plans and post them here.

A friend promised she'd give me her huge childhood collection of beanie babies and other stuffed animals. I'll probably keep a few for Yun Gui, and the rest will go to China with us to be donated to the orphanage. Beanie babies make good luggage padding! And what kid doesn't want a kitten-sized stuffed animal to love and hug?

I wonder if any studies have been done on the relationship between stuffed animals and attachment disorder. I know studies have been done on monkeys. They found that a baby monkey would choose a cuddly, soft 'mommy' that didn't provide food over a non-cuddly food dispenser 'mommy'. In other words, baby monkeys would willingly starve to death for a hug. That's a scary thought, but an important one.

This morning I wandered around in a cemetery, gazing reverently at all the gravestones marked 'captain'. Not all of them were military captains; in fact I'm sure most were civilian fishermen. And my cemetery foray wasn't planned; it just happened to be near the coffee shop, and I just happened to have some free time for a stroll after I bought my muffin. But I'd been wanting to do something reverent for Memorial Day, and that's what i ended up doing.

I also flew in a biplane yesterday, and exchanged WWI and WWII factoids with the pilot's buddy while we waited for the plane to get prepped. I guess that was related to Memorial Day. A lot of servicemen died in biplanes. They weren't the safest military vessels of their era, let's just say.