He's Growing

One difference between China and Taiwan (I mean related to the adoption process) is the flow of information. When adopting from China you wait and wait and wait, but nothing comes until the very end, and then all you get is a little burp of information -- a name (assigned by the orphanage), a supposed birth date, a possibly fabricated story on how the child came to the orphanage, then her weight, height, head circumference -- though that data is usually three to six months old.

The wait for Lu-Yu is going to be different. Waiting for a referral from China is an almost mystical experience, or at least the only way to make it through the long informationless wait it is to be mindful and prayerful. Now we have no end of information: we know his birth date, his birth weight, have his health records, photos from every month of his life, we know his doctor's name, and we know his mother's name. We know this little boy, this son of ours, but he's ten million miles away. And that's just not right.

This is what he weighs at just under 11 months (which puts him at the 50 percentile on the growth chart):

• length: 29.33" / 74.5 cm
• weight: 22.27 lb / 10.1 kg
• head: 17.99" / 45.7 cm

We're relieved that he is healthy. We're grateful to get the information. But I'd rather track his growth by how he feels in my arms.