A Blanket and A Tiny Picture

This is the first tiny picture of Gwen!

Last night before bed Gwen chose "The Red Blanket" by Eliza Thomas as her bedtime story. It is the true story of a single mom's journey to adopt her daughter PanPan from China. The red blanket, which she bought for her daughter and took to China with her, was the first point of comfort for PanPan, and becomes an object of great affection for her as she grows up. It is a sweetly told story, with beautiful illustrations. I highly recommend it.

I've read this story to Gwen a number of times. Last night after we finished reading it I tucked the quilt I made for her while we were waiting for her referral around her, and I told her of its similarities to the red blanket in the story. She's heard about this before, but last night I think she made the connection to her adoption a little bit better.

The story also tells of the adoptive mother receiving "a letter with a tiny picture attached" after a long wait. Last night for the first time I told Gwen that we got a letter like that too, with the first picture of her we'd ever seen attached to it. "I want to see it, " she said. Fortunately I was able to get my hands on it pretty quickly, and I brought it into her bedroom where she was waiting on her bed. She was quite interested. I told her that the paper also said her Chinese name, Wang Yu. She said it several times, and asked, "Why they call me that?" I told her that the people who named her (most likely the orphange director) thought it was a pretty name; it means "Little Feather." I went and got Scott so that he could join our conversation. He studied the picture with her, said "Wang Yu" with her, and reminded Gwen about her China sisters, the other 3 girls who were adopted from the same orphanage at the same time as her. We said all their names. She knows who they are; we look at pictures on their blogs often.

There wasn't much more to this little encounter; we kissed Gwen good-night and put away her referral cover page, the one with the "tiny picture attached." It was one more step, though, one more link for Gwen to the miracle of her joining our family. Seems like she's stepped up the pace of figuring all this out.