Accomplished

I had so many things that I wanted to accomplish during my month at home. I wanted to rearrange the furniture in my bedroom, organize the attic, and clean out the cabinets in the laundry room. Instead, I built a tower with blocks, learned to change my voice for different characters in a story, and semi-mastered a bedtime routine.

And I feel like I accomplished a lot. Giles County’s newest citizen has learned to find the toy department at Wal-Mart, appreciates the 5 cent coke at Reeves, and knows most of his great-grandfather’s friends at NHC on a first name basis. So while my bedroom may look the same, nothing else about my life remains unchanged.

Someone asked me earlier tonight if my life was completely different now. And without hesitation, I said yes. But it is the best kind of different I could have ever dreamed of. There are nights when Larkin refuses to sleep and wants to be rocked for 20 extra minutes and I have to remind myself that I chose this journey, and that 20 more minutes don’t compare to the two long years it took for him to arrive!

I don’t think I realized that something was missing from my life until he arrived. And I guess the saying is true that you don’t miss what you don’t have. Now, I could not imagine my life without him.

Decisions, Decisions

As I was organizing picture folders on my computer, I found one titled, “Baby Z.” We have come a long way! What started out as a two year compilation of boys and girls names was cut in half the day I got pictures and information about Baby Z. Baby Z then became a reality. I began to go through my list and pick out names that I could imagine myself saying for the next 70 years, and screaming across the house for the next 16 ;) I even screamed a few to see how it sounded.

I finally settled on Larkin thanks to my friend Erin’s book collection. She let me borrow a few books to read in July, and two of the books had someone named Larkin in them. The author of one book was Alli Larkin, and the other had an introduction written by David Larkin. I realize that Larkin was their last name, but I took it as a sign.

So Larkin was set! And the even harder part began! I had to come up with a way to turn Baby Z’s Ethiopian name, Zelalem, into a more American version. Thankfully, a wise woman helped out! My favorite granny from Collierville came up with Elam as a way to shorten Zelalem. I liked it, and put it on my list of names to consider.

One day while I was searching for meanings of names, I just put in Elam to see what the computer could tell me. In Amharic, Ethiopia’s language, Zelalem means forever. And I loved the idea of that. Adoption puts a child with a forever family, so I wanted to find some way to keep that meaning! So I was overjoyed when Elam came up as the Hebrew word for forever. I was over the moon with excitement! And that sealed it!

Larkin Elam Sanderson.