There's a little girl...in my neighborhood

Do you know the rest of this song?  If you do, then you know that we've been just a swingin' with our little Emma Hope for going on 11 years.  This little girl who is getting ready to turn 11 rocked our world--literally--around Thanksgiving of 2002.  We did the usual  Melton adoption shuffle of praying and paperchasing and waiting and waiting and waiting.  The SARS epidemic held us back. but finally, finally we were matched with a sweet little nugget, Wuo Chao Wei (little dancing bird), in  Anhui, China.  And we packed our bags and left her big sister in the loving arms of Mimi and Poppy and were on our way to claim her as our own.  Oh, we did not know that she would claim us first.



She staked her claim with many, many, much tears.  And a binky.  That girl must have cried for 2 weeks straight, except when she was in her mama's arms with said binky.  She was scared of her daddy (took her a while to figure out he was her best ally), and only mommy would do.  The part of our babies' stories that just tears me up is the part about the mommy.  There's a wound, a hole, that only God can fill, and thank you Lord for choosing me as your vessel.

This little spitfire made her way into our hearts with wails and laughter.  She's a firecracker, full of quickfire love and light and just as quick piss and vinegar (I'm not kidding).  She cannot hide her feelings.  One look at her lovely face and you know just what she is thinking.  She's got a will of steel, which I know will serve her well one day, but Lord help me in the meantime.

She's full of ideas--building Lego skyscrapers and filming epic movies with matchbox cars.  She prefers to spend her days in her hand me down camouflage pants from her uncles or dressed to the nines in fancy shoes and skirts.  She's the best kind of contradiction.

I try to inspire her to love learning, and she does, but on her own terms.  Did I mention Lord help me?

This girl who went from baby to middle in the family constellation this year is rallying.  She looks up to her big sister and imitates everything that 14 year old first born does.  She plays trains and dinosaurs and tractors with the baby boy and delights in every moment.  Her loyalty and spunk inspire me.

Happy birthday to my sweet Emma Hope.  You make every day full of adventure.  I never know where we are going to end up.  You light up my life.  I am forever in awe of you, my beautiful, willful girl.  I want to be like you when I grow up!

Love you to infinity (I win!),  Mommy

She's fourteen...she's beautiful...and she's mine.

There's this bewitching, brown-eyed, Asian beauty in our house.  She's organized (most of the time) and enjoys taking photographs of unusual elements that she sees in nature or in life.  She has a certain sense of style that evolves on a daily basis, but usually incorporates some variation of her love of riding a board on wheels at breakneck speeds (shhh, don't tell her daddy).  She is an adoring older sister (most of the time), and she has lovingly taken to spending every spare second with a certain little toddler boy.

She solemnly gazed at me with those perfect almond eyes when she was just about 5 months old, the day she was placed in my arms in Nanchang, China.  And now when I look at that face, I still see the baby girl there, the one who took a while to warm up to her new, novice parents.  The baby who absolutely, positively would not utter a word until she was sure to form a sentence.  The little girl who squealed with raucous delight the first time she discovered that she could tumble across the floor, cartwheel after cartwheel.  This little perfectionist was a seriously devoted gymnast, and her specialty was the balance beam.  

Then she/we realized that her heart might be better served without such nerve wracking hours of practice demanding perfection and she discovered the wild open fields of soccer and creek-walking and idle time.

Her natural habitat, though, is the ocean, probably on a surfboard inside the curl of a semi-colossal wave (we've only surfed the East Coast, so colossal is like, totally relative).  She transforms into a Polynesian princess, sun-kissed and salt-water soaked and full of sunshine.  

We named her with Grace because she is just that, a precious, undeserved gift given to us by a loving and generous Father.  

She is counting down the years (now days I was informed earlier) to driving; and while I am utterly and completely freaked out by this thought and truly believe that I just blinked and my baby (my baby) is well on her way to womanhood, I am delighting in every newfound interest, every controversial conversation, every midnight heart to heart sprawled along the bed that used to be mine that she sleeps in.  

She reminds me of all that I know to be true about this life.  It is full of beauty, if I take the time to really see.  It is fleeting.  It is a gift.  

I love you, Ally Gracey.  You are beautiful (and I see you!); you're growing up fast (and it's so much fun to grow with you!); you are a gift.