Sweet Mia

Mia turned 8 today.

Mia came to us at ten months old. She was dirty and smelly. I wasn’t sure what to do with her, feed her or give her a bath…so we did both…bottle in the tub.

She continued to grow, she did not, and still does not, sleep well. I thought I would never sleep through the night again. But she started sleeping a little more around three, and by four she could periodically sleep a few nights in a row without waking. She still wakes me up about once a week with her sweet little voice…

“Mom, I can’t sleep, tell me a story.”

So I do.

She wants to be a veterinarian or an artist or a cowgirl or a British person when she grows up…I am not sure what her fascination with British-ness is, but she regularly practices her accent, and she is rather good.

Mia..the British-veterinarian-artist-cowgirl

She doesn’t like tags in clothes, chocolate, or litterers. She really doesn’t like spending the night away from home or loud voices.

Mia can be rather challenging to grown-ups. When Mia hears adults say (about fostering): “I could never do that, I would get too attached.” She usually responds with a very kind…

“Yes, you can.”

And you can’t really argue with her for some reason. Maybe because she has lived it, maybe because she is small, or maybe, she is right.

Mia’s birthdays always remind me of when we got a call from our caseworker that they wanted us to come pick up a little girl. I was pregnant. I was terrified. And then little Mia came crawling into the room in a diaper and a  too-small shirt. She didn’t have anything else. She hated baby food. She loved guacamole. She couldn’t sleep, she couldn’t talk.

Mia is 8 today. It is almost unbelievable to me. I can hear her little slumber party squeaking, whispering and giggling down the hall…anyone who has girls will know that little girls do, in fact, squeak. It all sounds so normal. And I guess it is…normal, but definitely not ordinary.

Happy Birthday Dear Mia…Happy Birthday to you…