I Don't Like Pasta: thoughts on travelling and eating with a pre-schooler

I should start by saying I’m not a foodie. Food is not the first thing I look forward to when I travel. This has a lot to do with me being vegetarian, and always living under the assumption that there may be one item on a menu that does not have meat.

That being said, I have found that the most annoying thing about travelling with a kid (or which many parents will say there are many) is all about food, and not in the way that you would think.

Our kid likes to eat. 

Last week, we were skyping with my sister while our kid was eating. (We find that skyping during mealtimes is a good way to keep her from being just a blur to the people we are skyping with as she runs around our flat like a maniac.) We don’t often skype with my sister while our kid eats, due to her schedule, but my sister mentioned more than once how watching our kid eat made her feel hungry; ‘she makes the food look so good’. We’ve had this comment from other skypers in the past, because our kid really likes to eat (unlike many other kids I hear about).

I should say that one more time; our kid likes to eat.

We flew to Berlin today. We landed around lunch time and thought we should get something at the airport. Our kid wanted pasta (I should note that I have grown to dislike pasta immensely because I’m constantly making it for our kid). She was insistent on getting some sort of cold penne thing. I got a couscous salad.

After one bite, our kid declared that she didn’t like the pasta. I said she could taste my couscous. She ate all my couscous for lunch. I ate penne (I should note that I have grown to dislike pasta).

After a bit of a hassle to get from the airport to our hotel (no need to bore you with the details), we got into downtown Berlin. Our kid must have said ‘I’m very hungry!’ about 19 times. All of these times were less than 3 hours after we had had lunch and even after eating some bell pepper, carrots, and candy, the phrase continued time and time again.

After settling into the hotel, we went to find a place to eat. With a kid less than 4, on foot, you’re limited to walking a few blocks from your hotel to find a place to eat. There are a number of great looking restaurants near our hotel - a falafel place that caught my eye, an Indian place, Thai place, Mexican, Sushi. We didn’t go to any of those places. We went to place that had chips and sausage on the kids menu.

Lauren thought the menu looked very ‘German’, so I thought, what the hell, when in Rome...Berlin....why not?

As expected, there was one vegetarian item on the menu - ‘noodles with vegetables’. We walked in to see the place was run by a Chinese family. Sweet, I thought, ‘noodles and vegetables’ might actually be decent (yes, I’m stereotyping). 

After much whining from our kid about how hungry she was, the food came. She liked her chips, but not her sausage, she liked Lauren’s beef and vegetables. She liked my ‘noodles’ because they weren’t noodles. They were penne. Seriously? My second penne meal in less than 5 hours. Did I note already how I’ve grown to dislike pasta? I ate it and our kid ate it too (she’s a good eater). Did I hate it? No. Was it remotely what I had in mind when I thought I was getting noodles and vegetables? Absolutely not.

Our kid wanted ice cream after dinner. I like ice cream. There was an ice cream place right next to the restaurant. She wanted chocolate chip ice cream. I asked her if she was sure she didn’t want chocolate. She wanted chocolate chip ice cream. I got the chocolate. She wanted to taste my chocolate ice cream. She wanted to swap. I ate chocolate chip ice cream. Our kid ate the (far superior) chocolate ice cream. Was I happy about this? No I wasn’t, but what am I to do?

Some might say, I’m being a good guy for giving up my preferred ice cream, or meals, for the sake of my kid. Some would say I should let my kid live with her choice. I wish I could be more of the latter when it comes to our kid, but I’m more the former. 

I don’t really want to be a good guy who gives up his ice cream to his kid, even though she was given the chance to get it herself in the first place. I don’t really want to be the good guy that passes on an awesome-looking falafel place to eat penne and vegetables. I don’t really want to be the good guy who eats penne he doesn’t want while his kid eats the couscous he would rather have.

I don’t really want to be that guy, but I am. In the end, I don’t like travelling and dealing with our kid’s eating habits. But I want to be the guy who has a child who sees the world. And I’m willing to eat some pasta in foreign countries (I should note I’ve grown to dislike pasta) if it means I expose our kid to the great cultures of the world.

I thought, 'Why not?'

I was going to the gym on Saturday when 3 young Chinese men approached me, asking if they could interview me about exercise in Scotland. Always up for helping out students, I thought, 'Why not?'

They asked me what sports were popular here; what sort of exercise I do; my thoughts on team sports; what sports are offered at the University of Edinburgh (it was at this stage they realised I wasn't a student - I don't look that young, do I?).

The interview ended with an odd question where they asked what I would say to someone 'fat and lazy' about exercise. I tried to talk about walking as a form of exercise, and got the response 'Why would they listen to that? They are FAT and LAZY?'. All right then, I thought, no need to get too worked up about it. I rephrased the same idea and I don't think that's what they wanted to hear, and they thanked me for my time and I went to the gym.

On Sunday, I took our kid to the Royal Mile, because she really wanted to see Elaine Davidson, who lives in Edinburgh and regularly sets up shop on the Royal Mile. Our kid somehow thinks Elaine is some sort of family friend. Elaine is great, but she has no idea who we are; she's just super-nice to everyone.

We ended up at the Castle, where we were approached by a group of a dozen or so Italian students, who wanted to interview me. Always up for helping out students, I thought, 'Why not?'

I still don't get the point of this interview, a day later. I was asked questions like 'What is a popular Scottish food?' (Haggis), 'What is a popular Italian food?' (Why are you kids asking me this; you're the ones from Italy), 'Who is the most popular Italian athlete?' (again, you're the Italians). I did answer all their questions and they thought our kid was cute, although she didn't like that daddy took 5 minutes indulging these strangers and their questions, because you're not supposed to talk to strangers (good point).

We did, eventually, see Elaine, but she was talking to someone so we did a quick hi-bye.

Later that afternoon, I was walking to Sainsbury's, waiting to cross the road, when I saw an elderly woman who was staring at me and giving a half-smile. I gave a half-smile back. She came up to me and asked if I had a lot of hair under my hat. I showed her my hair and then we talked and walked to Sainsbury's together.

I'm not a social person (I would actually say I'm anti-social), but I've always liked talking to elderly women. I've said I'm an old soul many, many times. Occasionally up for talking to elderly women, I thought, 'Why not?'

We talked about hair, parenting (in her time and mine), and it was one of the more pleasant walks I've had walking to Sainsbury's.

What's the point of this blog? I've been quiet about the world has been going for a while and I thought, 'Why not?'

We live in a world of growing isolationism when someone running for president of the the country where I am a citizen, who I am not willing to give the dignity of even naming, talks in such extreme isolationist rhetoric that I don't feel like I would be welcome to live in that America. I live in a country where 'the people' have decided that they don't really like foreigners and want to keep them out, which makes me feel unwelcome where I am now (not Scotland specifically, but I have no plans to head south of the border anytime soon). I'm someone who has never felt 'at home' anywhere, but not feeling at home and feeling unwelcome are two very different feelings.

Here I am an American, living in Scotland, on a random weekend in July, who had social interactions with some Chinese students, some Italian students, a Brazilian woman with piercings all over her body and a woman who may have been German (although it makes no difference to me where she was actually from).

I like diversity. It's a good thing. It has made the world far better than worse. Who are these morons who want to end it?

Sliding Doors

I have this memory of being a boy and my dad reciting The Road Not Taken, the poem by Robert Frost, which starts...

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, 

And sorry I could not travel both 

And be one traveler, long I stood 

And looked down one as far as I could 

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

I feel like my life, and that of my family, has been like that of the character in the poem. We tend to take The Road Not Taken. My dad, an American, ended up in West Africa for a big portion of his life; my mom, a Ghanaian, ended up in America for a big portion of her life; me, a who-knows-what, had now ended up in Scotland for the past 6 years.

When I was a university student, I joined a student organisation for students who had some sort of mixed-raced background. I met several trans-racial adoptees as part of this organisation. It was from meeting these people that I decided I wanted to adopt a child at some point, and I feel forever grateful for the friends I made at that time in my life, who were adopted, because they opened my mind up to something I hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about before then.

Although I had known a few adopted kids growing up, this was the first time I really got to hear the stories of adopted children; where their lives were before they were adopted and where they ended up, at the time I got to know them.

I often wondered about the lives of these friends of mine. Particularly, I wondered what their lives would have been like if they had not been adopted, or if they had been adopted by someone other than their parents. I never felt comfortable enough to ask these friends (or their parents) their thoughts on this; I thought it was too prying and kept those thoughts to myself.

Now, I find myself on the other side of that coin. I’m a parent of an adopted kid, and over the past 6 months, I’ve thought a lot about our kid’s life with us and what it would have been like if we had not been in the picture.

I hadn’t really thought too much about our kid’s possible ‘Sliding Doors’ lives until we started travelling with our kid, and my witnessing our kid finally getting to see the lives we had lived that she was not a part of before she came to live with us. Lauren and I have very diverse backgrounds (as you can see from our wedding photo) and it’s been interesting to see someone so young exposed to our family diversity in such a short time span.

someone told my dad that this was the most diverse wedding photo they had ever seen

Because of diversity of locations of our family, our kid’s life has been a whirlwind over the past 6 months. She’s made 4 trips to 3 continents in that time; that’s insane! It’s while on these trips that I wonder where our kid’s alternative lives might have taken her. 

Amsterdam

In the past 6 months, our kid has walked over canals in Amsterdam, has been a few feet from meandering Ghanaian cows, crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, seen the Grand Canyon. She’s fallen down a flight of stairs in Maryland, eaten freshly roasted tuna from a market woman in Ghana, played in a pool in Palo Alto, and sat on the shoulders of a man more than twice her height in Phoenix.

Baltimore, Maryland

She has received hugs and high-fives from family that didn’t know she existed until a couple of years after she was born. These tokens of affection have come from family and friends who are from all over the world; people that she can say are her family and friends of her family.

Koforidua, Ghana

Our kid is now like the rest of our family. Our kid’s life is like that of the character in the Robert Frost poem. In the end, she has ended up taking a life less travelled by the majority of kids adopted in the UK. And I would hope that ‘that has made all the difference’.

In Antelope Canyon, Arizona

The Scottish Gaelic Medium School Diet

We had always planned on sending our kid to the Gaelic Nursery/Primary School that opened up in town a few years ago. Although I'm not sure what the benefits are of learning Scottish Gaelic, specifically, it is widely known that learning a 2nd language (even if it's a language that's only spoken by 60,000 people) is beneficial.

Our kid started going to the nursery school in August and getting her to and from school was 'Bus Hell'.

Getting a 3-year old to walk to a bus stop when you have to catch a specific bus, by a certain time in the morning, is just the start. Then there was the waiting. The waiting for the bus to take her to school. The waiting at the school when the bus got there far too early (the next bus would get us there late). The waiting for the bus to take me to work (which I seemed to always just miss, even though there are at least 3 buses that can get me from near her school to near my work). We would leave home at 8 and I would get to my office at about 9:45. Nearly 2 hours of bus-related activity, every morning.

Then there was picking her up.

I work from 10:00-1:30 and our kid gets out of school at 3:00. I had the option of walking home (30 minutes), being at home for about 15 minutes (not enough time to do anything), then heading out to catch a bus to her school. Alternatively, I could go straight from work to her school on the bus and then have to figure out what to do, in a part of town that has very little to do, for an hour.

After a month of this, I thought, let's get a bike and a child's bike seat. OMG, that's the best idea I've had in the past year (or two, or three).

Now, we leave home at 8:30, get her to school at 8:45, and I'm near my office by 9:20. Our kid has time to watch Sesame Street before heading off to school; I have time to go grocery shopping before work. At the end of the work day, I bike home and am home before 2 and don't need to leave to pick her up until 2:45; it's amazing how much housework can be done in 45 minutes (and it's work I don't have to do at 9 pm anymore).

All I can say is, the Bike Heaven has put Bus Hell to shame. I love the bike and all it does for my life.

I used the call the gym my church. I used to go every Sunday morning, being there right when it opened at 9, with the other (few) Sunday morning gym goers. I would also go a couple of times after work, during  the week. I love the gym.

I'm not someone who goes to the gym to get buff; it's where I go to clear my head and get some exercise while doing it. That being said, I weighed myself almost every time I went to the gym (we don't have a scale at home) and had a goal. I typically hovered at about 77-78 kg (about 170 lbs). I had this goal of getting down to 75 kg, but never seemed to.

Now, with our kid, I don't get to the gym anywhere near as often as I would like and have even considered cancelling my membership. If I’m lucky (and I rarely am), I can go two times in a one week. More often, it’s once a week, or once every two weeks.

I hadn’t weighed myself at the gym for months. The combination of me not going much for a while, the scale being moved from where it used to be (and me not bothering to find out it’s new location), and me feeling like I didn’t want to weigh myself because of my lack of gym-going.

Finally, at some point in January, I discovered the new scale location and weighed myself. I didn’t believe the electric scale. I got off of the scale twice to weigh myself again, and again. I left the gym assuming there was something wrong with the scale. It just can’t be.

A week or two later (the next time I made it to the gym) I weighed myself again. WTF. Either the scale was still broken or I had lost over 5 kg. Me, the guy who since the age of 14 had this idea that running would help me lose weight (running has never worked for me) had lost that much weight by not particularly trying; I lost the weight from riding a bike around town.

Until that point, I didn’t realise just how much bike riding I do in a given day. Here’s the breakdown:

I ride our kid to school (1.8 miles, mostly downhill):

I ride myself from our kid’s school to work (2.5 miles, mostly uphill):

I ride from my office to our flat when I leave work (1.4 miles, pretty much all downhill)

I ride to pick our kid up from school (1.8 miles, mostly downhill).

I ride our kid back home, on a slightly different route than going to school (1.9 miles, mostly uphill).

I ride 9.4 miles a day. You tack on taking our kid to weekend classes and I ride a bike well over 50 miles a week.

I’m not a ‘cyclist’. I don’t have much ‘gear’ or a cool bike. Although I’m amazed at how many people with ‘gear’ and cool bikes I blow by on my uphill ride to work everyday; me with my kid’s bike seat on the back and my work trousers (I do have dedicated bike shirts, but not really 'bike' shirts, just shirts I only wear when I bike). Either these people are really taking their time getting places, or they’re posers, but I digress.

I’m not someone who ever set out to log hundreds of miles on a bike; I just wanted a little more time to get stuff done and a little less time dealing with Bus Hell.

So, the moral of the story: if you want to lose a lot of weight, put your kid in a Gaelic Medium school. That’s the point of this whole thing......isn’t it?

Culture Shock

After not being in the US for 2 years, I expected some degree of culture shock. I got the usual comments from people about making sure to drive on the right side of the road. This was heard often enough that I don’t know how much people were joking and how much they thought that transition would be hard. Being that I barely drive in the UK, that thought never even crossed my mind as an issue and had no problem driving, even driving 3+ hours in heavy traffic and rain, on 4 hours sleep, from Dulles Airport to Towson.

That was my first moment of culture shock; the traffic and roads. While driving wasn't hard, you tend to forget how much traffic there is in parts of the US. We were moving less that 5 miles an hour on a freeway that had 4 or 5 lanes (each way). I kept thinking how different this was that my usual rush-hour travel, of me riding a bike through slow traffic on a road that has one lane each way; traffic that is only delayed by red lights, not unseen ‘traffic’ that led to the crawling pace we were moving on, on a major freeway.

The other culture shock I was prepared for was the diversity. When I go to a shopping centre in Edinburgh with our kid, I’m not the least bit surprised if my kid is the only brown-skinned, curly-haired person in the entire shopping centre. In Towson, I’d be a bit surprised if our kid is the only brown-skinned, curly-haired kid in the line to check out. This isn’t shock, really; it was a welcome relief to not stand out so much when I was out and about. I don’t know how much our kid appreciated not being the only brown kid in stores, in playgrounds, in the children’s museum we went into. She never made any comments about it, even though she comments about people’s skin colour in the UK, but I’m hoping she appreciated the diversity.

Because most of the trip was spent visiting people we knew, there was no culture shock there. I felt like the rest of the trip was spent buying stuff, so I had a number of shopping-related shocks.

I forgot about sales tax. In the UK (like much of the world), taxes are built into the price, so the price you see is the price you pay. I’ve never liked the US system of showing you a price, then tacking on sales tax after the fact, especially since sales tax differs from state to state. Something that says it costs $4 could cost you $4 in one state, $4.28 in another and $4.40 in another; it’s annoying.

I was in Safeway and saw something for $5. Sweet, I thought, that’s a good price, so I go to the self checkout and am told it’s $5.30. $5.30 is not a bad price for what I was getting, but I didn’t have any coins, and didn’t really want to accumulate coins on this trip. In that transaction, I got back 70 cents of coins, which I then had to figure out how to use up. I spent more time on this trip trying to use up unwanted coins (primarily on sales tax) than I had planned.

Our kid doesn’t always choose the right time to let us know she needs to do a poo. It’s happened several times while I’m in the queue at the grocery store and, most notably, while we were about to board a plane from Dublin to Washington DC (she said she couldn’t hold it until we got on to plane). Anyhow, on our first trip to Target, she and I were separated from Lauren when she announced that she needed to do a poo. I said what I almost always say when she says this in public, ‘Right now?!?!’. I started looking for a ‘toilet’.

I asked the first employee I saw ‘Could you tell me where the toilet is?’. The response I got was given with an eye-brow-raising-how-dare-you-say-that-word-and-what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you look: ‘You mean the bathroom?!?!’

Right. The bathroom. Not a word I use much in the UK, and I didn't appreciate the guy's tone.

I know some people who are into guns and gun ownership. I don’t think these people are crazy gun people, or anything. I just can’t relate; I feel kind of the same way about Instagram. I just don’t get it.

Because of this, I had forgotten that one could go into a Walmart, and not far from where you can buy a kid’s bike, you can buy a gun. It’s not sitting out for anyone to pick up, but you could buy your kid a bike, and a gun for yourself, at the same time. I actually took a picture of the gun sales area, but it came out a little blurry, so I won't post it here.

Living in country now where guns are basically illegal, this sort of thing, and the ‘No Guns Allowed’ sign on a door to a Mall entrance (right next to a kid’s play area, I might add), are a bit unnerving. When I lived in the US, this sort of thing didn’t really strike me as odd, but on this trip, it was a bit scary to see a ‘No Guns Allowed’ sign as I was leaving the mall with our kid.

My dad likes ice cream. Who doesn’t? But the level that my dad likes ice cream is at a slightly different level than most. Before we left, I told Lauren that I thought he would have at least 4 different types of ice cream when we arrived at his house. He didn’t disappoint: Chocolate ice cream, Vanilla ice cream, Pumpkin Pie ice cream, a kind of ice cream called Waffle Cone, and Lime Sherbert (which is basically ice cream).

You don’t get ice cream at the cheapness and variety in UK grocery stores as you do in the US. Yes, I can pay a lot for some interesting Ben and Jerry’s flavour, but the store brand/generics in the US have things like Moose Tracks and Peanut Butter Swirl (I love those two flavours BTW).

At one point, I thought I would just check out the ice cream aisle in a store and was bowled over by the variety (and that an entire side of one aisle was all ice cream-related products). That’s the kind of shock I wish would make it’s way across the pond a bit. I could really go for some Mouse Tracks right now, but I can’t. I’m in the UK.

There were several times on the trip where discussions were had about if we want to live in the UK for the foreseeable future, or if we plan to move back to the US at some point.

On my last trip to the US, when we left, I felt kind of sad. I felt that I belonged more in the US than the UK. This time, I didn’t feel that. I wasn’t jumping out of my chair to come back to the UK, but I wasn’t saddened by it either.

I don’t know how much of this has to do with living here longer now, having a British kid, or what. Ask me which place I would rather live right now, and I can’t give you an answer. I honestly don’t know.

Life, Death, and Christmas

Death

Our kid: Why did Grandma Shirley die?

Me: She had a bad boo-boo in her tummy.

Our kid: What did she say?

Me: ‘Oh, no, I have a bad boo-boo in my tummy’

Our kid: What did you say?

Me: I was sad.

Our kid: What did you say when she died?

Me: I was very sad.

Our kid: Did you cry?

Me: Yes.

Our kid: What did Mommy say?

Me: She was sad.

Our kid: Did she cry?

Me: Yes.

Our kid: What did Grandpa Shirley say?

Me: He was sad.

Our kid: Did he cry?

Me: Yes.

Our kid: What did Grandma Shirley say?

Me: .....she didn’t say anything.

Our kid: Why?

Me: Because she had died.

Our kid: Why did she die?

Our kid likes to talk about death. She started asking about my mother’s death a few months ago. I teared up the first time it happened. Other times, I can’t help but chuckle, especially when it gets circular the way the above sample does. She doesn’t understand the concept of death and the other day we had a conversation about my bike light’s ‘death’.

Christmas

As a child, like many children, I liked Christmas. I think kids like the flashiness of it and the gifts. As I got older, I liked Christmas less and less. For one, I don’t care much for flash, but I also grew to see 25th December, not as Christmas, but as my mother’s birthday. I always felt she got a raw deal because, other than her immediate family, no one cared about her birthday because it was her birthday; they cared about it because it was Christmas Day.

As an adult, I focused more on my mother’s birthday than Christmas. I stopped wanting any kind of gifts for myself. It got to the point where the only gift I would get for someone in December, would be my mother’s birthday gift. Christmas became this thing that happened to be on my mother’s birthday, not my mother’s birthday happening to be on Christmas.

Life

My mother’s birthday in 2009 was the worst 25th December I’ve had. My mother had been diagnosed with cancer a couple of months earlier and I knew she wouldn’t make it her birthday in 2010. I was in California, nursing a cat that had just had surgery that cost me a month’s salary. My mother was on the other side of the country, in Maryland. She would only make it a few more months.

The only thing I remember of my mother’s birthday in 2010 was walking along a sidewalk in Mesa, Arizona, by myself, in tears. I remember nothing else of that day. I’ve dreaded 25th December in the years that followed.

I’m looking for a word that is close to ‘hate’, but not quite there. That’s how I’ve felt about Christmas for the past several years. It all reminds me of my mother. Because of this, I’ve disliked decorations, lights, any kind of Christmas event where people gather. The only people I want to spend time with in recent Decembers have been my family.

When someone is alive, you don’t realize just how and what their death will affect in your life. I became Mr. Anti-Christmas after my mother died. I didn’t want to be that guy, but there I was, looking forward to January, not for the new year, but for all the decorations to be put away and the celebrations to be over.

Now I’m at a stage where our kid likes Christmas. We have gone to the Edinburgh Christmas Festival (I’m not sure the official name, but that’s what we call it in our house) multiple times. She really likes Christmas trees and cards and decorations. I’ve had to change my tone a bit about Christmas.

For the sake of our kid, who was born exactly 29 months after my mother died, who seems to want to talk about my mother’s death so much, I have to separate my mother’s birth and Christmas.

It’s hard. But I’m trying.

Half-life

Half a life ago, I was picked up by two people I hadn't known very long. They put me in a car and drove off; I left the only home I’d ever known. I slept on the drive back, and didn't seem too worried about what had just happened. They took me to their small flat, took me outside that afternoon and we looked at a cat.

Half a life ago, my life drastically changed. I went from a family of four other people and a dog to a family of just two other people, and no pets at all. I went from a family that spoke with the only accent I’d ever known to a family with a very different sounding, foreign, accent.

Half a life is a long time, and I'm not sure how much of that first half I really remember. Was I really in that house with four people and a dog? What was it like to live there? What was it like to run through the hallway in that house, play in the living room, and ride in their cars?

My life now has a much smaller hallway, a much smaller living room, and I don’t remember the last time I rode in a car; we ride buses, if anything, where I am now. We have a big park I can walk to in a few minutes; the park where, half a life ago we looked at a cat.

Today marks the day when our kid has spent exactly half of her life with us.

There are times when I feel like she’s been with us forever and there are times when I feel like I don’t know her at all.

Who our kid is and who our kid was are two very different things, and I often wonder how much she wonders about her first half of life.

She’s no longer the kid with the thick Scottish accent who would say ‘Wee’ before just about everything ‘Wee car’, ‘Wee man’, etc. She’s not the kid would say ‘Ta’ on a regular basis; getting her to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ have been a bit of a struggle as of late.

She is a kid now, who gets so excited at the prospect of going in a car, that the first 30 minutes of a car ride is a constant stream of ‘We’re in a car!’, or some variation of that. She’s a kid who can tell you (with some help) what bus we take to preschool or to mommy's office. She’s a kid who, I wish we could provide a longer hallway to, so she can run like crazy, because running outside at this time of year is not my idea of fun.

I think a lot about who our kid will become; if she’ll be the kind of adult who wants to know about her life before us or the kind who just doesn't care. Will our kid become an adult who will wonder about the life that might have been or mainly think about the life they have? As I sit and write this now, I don’t have a strong feeling one way or the other. There is a part of me that hopes that, when she’s older, she’ll want to go on a mission to find out where her genes come from and there’s another part of me that worries she’ll want to do just that.

Although the past half of her life has been one of the more trying times of mine, the joy I have felt has been so much more greater than anything bad. The memory I have of her seeing that cat on that first afternoon, or any animal on any day, is far stronger than any memories I have of her worst tantrums.

The week before our kid came home with us, we were walking with her and her foster father, on a windy day. One of the first things I learned about our kid was on that day, when he said she loved to stick her face into the cold wind.

Just the other day, our kid asked ‘Daddy, did I like the wind when I was a baby?’ I told her that she did. She then said she wanted to pretend to be her as a baby and I would be me; I obliged, because it’s pretty easy to pretend to be myself. She closed her eyes, and stuck her face forward into the driving wind and made what she felt was a happy baby noise. I couldn't help but chuckle, being reminded of one of the first things I learned about this kid, and had the same thought I had half her life ago. ‘Man, this kid’s really Scottish.’

I don’t know what’s in store the next third of our kid’s life, or the quarter after that, or the fifth after that. I just hope that all of those portions are filled with better times than worse.