Family Nopal

A few months back, Siana had an interesting conversation with our 4 year old niece Stella.  We often call her Stella the Great , when you read the conversation that follows you’ll understand why.  Here’s how the conversation went:

Stella: Tia are you going to have a baby?

Siana: No, but I’m going to have big kids like you.

Stella: Are they going to come from your tummy?

Siana: No, they’re going to come from Mexico!

Stella: Oh!  They’re going to come from Tata’s Tummy!

There are so many awesome things about this conversation, the best being the comment about Tata’s Tummy.  The Tata she is referring to is her great-grandfather, Edgar’s 96 year old grandpa Joaquin.  Stella knows that Tata lives in Mexico, but he visits a lot and she knows him very well.  She made the connection that obviously if the kids are coming from Mexico, they are somehow coming through the only person she can think of that lives there and that’s Tata.   Smart, yes. The best response to what appears to be a difficult conversation with a 4 year old?  Definitely.  Somehow easier than talking to adults about adoption? Maybe, depends on the day…

Here’s a pic of Stella playing dominos with Tata and Edgar

We’re in the waiting phase and it’s a long one.  Not long in the scheme of how long we’ve been working with our agency – which has been great about keeping us updated and advocating for us.  But long in that we’ve wanted to have a family for a long time.  It’s a long haul.  And we’re mostly staying optimistic, depending on the day, we take turns.  In the mean time, we’ve taken on the following activities:

• We remodeled our 1940’s kitchen – ok, so we hired a contractor to remodel it.  But we were without our kitchen for almost 2 months, which felt like a lot of work, you haven’t lived until you’ve over-experimented with a toaster oven. Here are the dramatic before and after photos:

BEFORE

AFTER

• We built some new bedroom furniture – thanks IKEA

We went to the beach – Took a couple of days off and enjoyed the beach, one of the perks we should take advantage of more in So Cal

So we wait. Our nopales have been through a lot as well, they’re growing like crazy and at one point a huge piece broke from the weight.  We trimmed it back and it continues to grow and thrive.  We hope this is a metaphor for our journey, sometimes we might break and fall, but we’ll get back up and keep on going.