Prayers and names and families

Maimie certainly is looking forward to her baby sister joining our family. Actually we all are, but I think the rest of us learned enough from Maimie's adoption to know that it could be a pretty long wait. Or maybe we are guarding our hearts until it's a sure thing. At any rate, Maimie is excited and often talks about her new little sister. When she outgrows clothes, she wants me to put them away for the baby. Every night--and often at other times throughout the day--Maimie says the following prayer: "Dear Jesus, thank you for our new baby. Please keep her safe and healthy until we can come and get her. Amen." Tonight she embellished it a little. After the usual, she added something like: " Thank you, God, for my whole family and help for the baby to have food and clothes and somebody to bathe her." It was way too cute.

Another thing that seems to occupy Maimie's thoughts is what we are going to name her little sister. This has been going on for months. At first, she wanted to name the baby "Mikaela" or "Daddy" or "Jacob" or "Joseph". Eventually after telling her that we already had enough Mikaelas, etc., she decided to try for other names. Then when she asked me what we should name our baby, I told her maybe we should wait until we see her photo. That seemed to work for awhile. Now, however, she is back to giving suggestions again. The current favorite is "Kai Lan" after her favorite character.

For probably over a year now, Maimie has been intrigued by families. She is often found hugging one of us saying how much she loves her family. She notices other people and wants to know if they have a family. After watching the movie, "Monsters, Inc.", Maimie asked me if Boo had a family. I told her that Boo did have a family but they weren't shown in the movie. It took weeks of convincing before she let it go and moved on from asking about Boo. Sometimes Maimie will be playing with a stuffed animal and will say that the animal needs a mama. Then she will look through the animals for a suitable "mama" for that animal. The other day she was watching Sesame Street and came running in to the kitchen to hug me and tell me that Dorothy (Elmo's pet fish) has a family. Then she says, "Just like Maimie!" It gets me every time. I know our older children probably asked some of the same questions and had some of the same fascination with family that Maimie does (although I don't really remember it specifically). There's just something about this little one's concern for others having a family that grabs at my heartstrings. She used to ask me if her family loved her. Often. I mean, very often. I continually reassured her that we did indeed love her very much. Then the line of questioning turned to "why does my family love me so much?". It seems Maimie never grows tired of hearing the "whys". But fortunately for her, we will never grow tired of telling her.