I wonder if everybody have the same questions when they look at their adoptive children. In my case I always try to imagine how they will be in a couple of years, or as adolescents , or when they become adults. Is such a mystery now…
I try to imagine the faces of their biological parents, do they look more like their mother or their father? What kind of personality traits they inherited from them.
Will they be good at math, or arts? Will they be tall or short? And the list goes on…
Believe me is not that I’m worried about their future, is just because it’s a big mystery, a bigger one than with my biological child. I want to know what’s hidden inside them, their potential.
Sometimes I can’t wait to know!
How much is nature and how much is nurture?
Probably everybody ask the same questions and get surprising answers over time.
It’s a little like reading a book, it’s not only the author the important one, also the reader has to open the book to complete the circle.
Last week we went to the dentist with Feromsa for the first time and he found him really healthy and only has to fix a couple of really tiny cavities, but the think is that they took an X-ray of his mouth and… Boy, he’s full of surprises!!
It turned out that just inside, waiting to come out in a few years, he has some HUGE teeth! Really, really big. Each permanent teeth has the size of three of his baby teeth, so you can imagine that his mouth will be really big to fit those new choppers!
So, I started to wonder if he is going to be a tall guy. Even when now his still very short for his age (but catching up!) he has big hands and feet and a strong body which points to a tall and muscular guy in the future.
When we were in Ethiopia the coordinator at the Guest House told us that he comes from a region of tall and thin people and that it was a matter of time until he develops into one of those men.
We weren’t so sure then since he was so short, but now that I know him better I’m starting to think that there is some truth in that statement.
So we just keep playing the guessing game, and since Miguel and me are kind of short for American stardards, I can picture myself as an old petite white lady with a black huge son many heads taller than me. We will sure get more attention than we get now!
Feven on the other side looks like she is going to be a short athletic slender woman, she is right on chart now but I think she will stay in the lower range of the table, just like Dylan is. She has beautiful delicate small hands and feet, a very Ethiopian look, or I should say Amhara look, since there are so many different ethnics groups in the country.
So I guess we are writing the book together, they come with their nature and we are providing the nurture. Sometimes I find an unknown seed sprouting in my back yard and most of the time I let it be, I don’t care much about weeds really, and after some watering I discover that is a small tree and I have the joy of see it grow little by little. I have many cedar trees that I’ve seen grow over the years and is wonderful to watch nature develop. Such a small fragile plant turning into a big and strong Western Red Cedar!
So, let’s just keep watering those kiddos!

AliciA