tender moments

I caught these photos this morning as Lily was watching her adoption video. She goes through phases, sometimes asking to watch it several times a day. Then, she may go weeks or months without asking to see it. She likes to sit in my lap for the first few times she watches it. We talk about the pictures on the screen. She mostly comments, but she is just starting to ask questions about what she is seeing. She mostly wants to know why I'm not in all of the pictures. I have to explain that I was there, but I was behind the camera, taking her picture :)

These might be some of my favorite pictures of her, ever. At first, she didn't know that I was watching her or photographing her. I was so captured by her changing expressions. I could hear her quietly commenting on the images that she was seeing, "There's mama and daddy, I'm a baby there, China is so far away, mama gave me a bottle, I pulled daddy's nose, I'm on a bus with mama and daddy, mama brought my pink blankie to China, mama put a hat on me because it was cold". She went on and on and on. One of her favorite pictures is when her foot had red ink on it, so the official paperwork could have her print on it. She always comments that "the red will come off in the tub". The comment that broke my heart a little was when the pictures from her orphanage came on, she said "that's my orphanage" She said it quite happily, obviously too young to comprehend the implications of that. But my heart hurt because no three year old should have to watch a video of themselves and see their orphanage.

The last part of the video is pictures from when we arrived home. Pictures of her and her brothers and mama and daddy and Woody and her house and her room. She said with a big smile, "that's my home!" It was then that she looked over at me, and flashed me her big bright beautiful smile.

No words can express how much I love this child.