Foreign Babies Made Our Own

JRH, my friend and occasional commenter on this site, is going to have a baby this week. Well, she’s not having the baby - someone else has already done the production work - but she’s certainly going to obtain the baby. I am very, very excited for her, her husband, and her new son.

Five or so years ago, give or take a few months, Bowyer and his wife and their two year old biological son (whom I call Bub) got on a plane and flew over the Atlantic to Russia, where they added the not-quite-two-year-old Noodle to their family.

Mr. Chili picked the exhausted bunch up from the airport and brought them home, where the girls and I were waiting after having done some grocery shopping and general nesting. They were gone for a little more than a week - Russian bureaucracy being what it was at the time, they had to stay a few days to see the paperwork through - so I headed to the homestead to put fresh sheets on the beds and stock the fridge, and to have dinner ready when the family arrived.

I remember the boy coming up the stairs in his new mother’s arms. I’d seen pictures of Noodle in the Russian orphanage, but they didn’t do him justice. He was small and long, blond with almost neutral-colored eyes, and hungry. We joked that the child would eat just about anything we put in front of him, and the answer to “do you want some of this?” was always a wide open mouth. He didn’t speak much - Russian or English - though he seemed to understand a great deal. He was playful and ticklish and wide-eyed with wonder at his new life.

I was in love immediately.

Today, that baby is seven, and is still skinny and long, and still mostly blonde. His eating habits have gotten a little more discerning, but he’ll still eat a wider range of foods than his brother will. He likes Batman and Star Wars, he’s gotten over his paralyzing fear of pools and bathtubs, and he still sucks his thumb when he’s tired or sick. He is my Noodle, and there is no doubt in the Universe that he belongs to us just as surely as if he were our own flesh.

Noodle the Rock Star, circa 2005

 

Safe journey, JRH. I cannot adequately express how terribly happy and excited I am for you!