A letter to Rose-- December 27th

Dear Rose-

I thought about skipping a week with the chaos of Christmas and a house full of guests. After all, you're not reading these letters. Even if you knew about our existence, over here, 15 time zones away, you can't read or speak English. But whatever, we all know these letters are for me.

Your baby shower is tonight. Today we've been making cupcakes and filling the dining room with Chinese umbrellas and lanterns. In a few hours, some of our friends and family will come to eat egg rolls and dumplings, fortune cookies and cupcakes. We know that fortune cookies and cupcakes are not traditionally Chinese, but our aim is Chinese American, so I think we're on target.

Since you're baby number five, I'm 36, and it's the holidays and we know people have places to go and people to see, we're dispensing with any and all baby shower games. This is a preemptive move on my part because I'm so competitive I'd win them all, and that's not good behavior for a guest of honor.

Instead of matching the adopted celebrity baby to her parents, we're going to have people leave wishes for Rose on a "100 Good Wishes Quilt." I ran across this tradition when I was checking my email on Christmas morning, so we're not doing things exactly according to protocol, but the quilt is based on a Chinese tradition where friends and families contribute fabric to be sewed into a quilt for a new baby, and that quilt becomes that child's quilt throughout her life. Here in America, adoptive families often have their friends and families contribute two pieces of fabric, one to go in a quilt, and one attached to a piece of scrapbook paper along with their handwritten wish, which eventually becomes part of a scrapbook for the child. Once we came across the idea, there was no time to ask everyone attending the baby shower to contribute two squares of fabric, so we decided to make it easy on them. We'll have people write their wish on the quilt backing. Then we'll collect wishes from other friends and family who can't be here tonight and transcribe them to the quilt. We've picked out a whole bunch of fabrics-- pandas, chopsticks, Chinese zodiacs, Chinese girls, and a plethora of roses, and Mimi's going to sew them all into a beautiful quilt, just for you.

Next week, the house will be quiet again, the dozen people staying here cut in half. The big kids and Daddy will be back in school, and Maren and I will sort through the pictures from the shower and show you what a good time we had. The only thing that could make it better would be to have you here to celebrate with us. The good news is that you'll never miss another Christmas with your family.

Love,

Mommy