Unusual task

I've had this task on my list for several weeks.  I just kept moving it to the next, but today I needed to sit down and get it done.

When we have our gotcha day on Monday the 4th we are given the opportunity to talk with whoever brings her to us.  It might be the orphanage director or an assistant director.  It might be her specific nanny or it might just be someone who can make the trip that day.  It is a 4 hour trip from Suixi to Guangzhou.  I hope it is someone who knows her and  can help comfort her.  She likely has never been in a car that long.  I worry about her.

Anyway...  We will be given the cance to talk with whoever brings her and we need to be prepared to ask some pertinent questions.  So today I sat down and wrote a list of questions to ask someone I've never met about my little girl, who I also have never met.

These are questions mothers instinctively knows.  But I don't know them.  I don't know if she has been sick recently although I suspect she has.  I don't know if she still takes a nap.  I don't know what she likes or doesn't like to eat.  I don't know if she sleeps in a bed or a crib?

I also know I will not likely get answers to all of these questions.  The person who brings her may or may not know her very well.  And here is the honest thruth.  They may not know the answers because it doesn't matter.  It doesn't matter what her favorite food is.  They all eat the same thing regardless.  It doesn't matter if she wants to take a nap or just lays awake.  It's the schedule.

And I understand that to some degreee.  I'm a preschool teacher.  When its time for snack you eat today's snack.  When it's time to go outside you go outside.  You follow the schedule.  I don't know what my students favorite foods are or if they always nap when they leave school.  But someone does.  They leave my classroom and go home. To their mother and father.  To their bed and their favorite foods.  My classroom is a nice place.  There is food and art and play, but it is not home.

It will be huge learing process for all of us.  For Shane and I to learn what she likes and dislikes.  Honestly she will probably have to learn what she likes and dislikes.  Her choices have been pretty limited.

I am so ready to know the answers to my questions.  Not because someone else has answered them but because I am her mother and I know her.