Are you Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot?

We have a small regional grocery chain in our area that we like to frequent.

They call themselves a "general store" because they have groceries and fresh local produce, and also anything you need to run a farm. So, for example, if you need some locally grown tomatoes, some milk, a saddle for your horse and some food for your goats - you can get it there. Or a new sink, some wallpaper, and alarm clock. General Store. They mean it and they've been around for over a hundred years.

It is an especially nice place to visit if you are hungry because they usually have lots of 'samples' out for tasting. This makes it a favorite place of Lana's - she loves fresh fruit and fresh tomatoes.

Lately they've been selling roasted peanuts still in the shell. (They've probably been selling these for over a hundred years as well, it's just that Lana noticed them and wanted them, so we've been buying them.) They have a few options in terms of flavor - salted or Cajun. David had Lana at the store about a week ago and she dove into the sample dish of Cajun peanuts. One of the employees tried to stop her, saying, "oh, sweetie, that's the cajun!" just as Lana shoved one in her mouth. "Daddy! It's SPICY! Can we get some??" she said, to the amazement of the woman working the store who thought that there were going to be tears instead of excitement.

They bought a small bag to bring home. Lana has been guarding these Cajun peanuts a bit carefully. She will share them with David but she clearly views them as her own. She graciously offered to let me try ONE, which made my eyes water and sent me looking for a glass of water. I have not touched them since.

Yesterday she must have gotten one that had a particularly large amount of spice on it, because she lunged for her water and exclaimed, loudly,"OH! MY MOUTH HAS GOT THE BURN! MY MOUTH HAS GOT THE BURN!" David and I tried not to crack up.

It must not have been too bad, though, because after a little water she was cracking more shells in her tiny capable hands.

Two Years

TODAY it is very important that I write. Because TODAY is the second anniversary of our Giving and Receiving Ceremony. TODAY is the second anniversary of the day we went from being a family of three to being a family of four.

A few days ago, I was sorting through Lana's clothes, and bagging up things that were too small. (She has been growing like a weed lately). At the corner of one of her drawers was a wrinkled pair of yellow capri pants with a bad stain over the knee.

She is wearing the pants in this photo.


We bought those pants two years ago tonight, at a shopping center in Da Nang. (We also bought her a yellow sweatshirt with a red tulip on it, and a pair of pink pants and a turtle neck. And crayons and coloring books and boxed milk, and pretty much anything else that she pointed at in the grocery section of the shopping center, because she was so very thin. And she wouldn't eat much, aside from fruit.)

The reason that the pants have a terrible stain on the knee is because she was wearing them when I dropped her. In the road. Yes, in. the. road. In Vietnam. Where traffic is INSANE.

I don't think I blogged about this when it happened.

We were walking in the road near the Somerset Westlake in Hanoi and I was carrying her in my arms, when my shoe caught in something and I tripped...and I dropped Lana in the road and she was almost crushed by a taxi.

When I think about it now, when I think about what might have happened, what could have happened, it makes my heart beat really fast and I feel panicky.

More panicky, in fact, than I felt at the time it happened.

I think I was numb. I think I was in a state of heightened awareness. I think I had reached a level of 'completely-and-utterly-freaked-out' that was previously unknown to me. So dropping my newly adopted child in the road in front of a taxi didn't really register as it probably should have.

And with two years hindsight, all I can say is Thank God, Thank God, Thank God that taxi driver stopped.

This has been quite a journey. We are in such a different place than we were two years ago tonight, when Lana fell asleep watching a Strawberry Shortcake video in a hotel bed in the city where she was born, a city she may never return to.

Tonight we went to dinner as a family, and Lana gleefully ate a cheeseburger and french fries and lettuce and tomatoes. She stole shrimp off my plate.

Afterwards, Lana and went shopping, because Coldwater Creek was having a 70% off sale and Gymboree was having a 60% off sale, and Lana grinned at me and said, "Let's Go SHOPPING MOMMY!"

We are dangerous together, she and I.

I could not bring myself to throw out those yellow pants. They are tucked in the back of her closet, and someday, maybe, I will tell her the story of why there is a stain on the knee, and why, of all of her clothes, I kept that pair of wrinkled pants, even when they no longer fit her.