But those fishes are hideous!

This morning I offered Julia time to cuddle and have a bottle after breakfast. She very willingly got on my lap and took her bottle of warm cocoa. I want to continue to peel a little of the layers of Julia's feelings but I know she is feeling tender about her saddnesses. Instead, I talked about how I would have treated her if we had met her as a baby. (She had looked at some new pictures that Sherri posted of Cami and Delilah, and Julia commented that her baby (Cami) was growing into a big girl.) I asked if she gave babies bottles in China and she said that she gave "her baby" bottles. This was a perfect invitation to say that there must have been someone to gave her a bottle when she was little, and someone who taught her how to peel potatoes and sort rice. I said that there must have been someone in China, maybe someone like a Bobja or grandma, who helped her grow to the strong girl that she was when we met her. Julia was quiet -- so rare for this kid. I assume that she was thinking.

Maybe this is a way of getting to her about China, a way of working out some saddnesses. Maybe it is the person or people who cared for her that she lost -- either while she was in the orphanage or when we came for her -- that she is most angry with.

I am making most of this up. No, all of it. But I don't want to wait until Julia can tell me all of this, I want to do the work now. It feels appropriate and I feel like something in Julia was touched or triggered by my mother's death.

Julia funny of the day: We were buying fish at the fish counter today and there were whole fish in the refrigerated case. First, she said: All those fish are dead! I said, yes, yes, that we only eat dead fish, so that is what the store sells. Then she said: But those fishes are hideous, Mom. (a work straight from an episode of Sagwa) Chruckes were heard all 'round.