Happy Greater Than Day!

This blog post idea came from Lisa, another adoptive parent to a beautiful little girl from Vietnam.  I would not have thought of this on my own but when I read her Greater Than Day post it really resonated with me what a momentous occasion it is.

For those of you who are wondering what the heck I am talking about or just questioning whether I've gone crazy, let me explain Greater Than Day.  Greater Than Day refers to the number of days that Nathanh has been with Erwin and I versus the number of days that he was living in the orphanage in Vietnam.  Yesterday they were tied and today Nathanh has been with us one day longer than the number of days he spent in the orphanage. 

I think this is a significant milestone.  I think it took me until some time towards the end of January to really stop questioning myself as a parent (okay I am sure I will have lots of opportunity to question my parenting in the future).  But what I mean is, when Nathanh was having a bad night or time, questioning whether there was someone else who knew him better, knew his likes and dislikes better and could do a better job at caring for him at that particular time, than I was doing.  And in reality, maybe there was.  The nounous who took care of him at the orphanage obviously cared for him and loved him.  And I am sure that those wonderful ladies have so much experience and tricks up there sleeves that they could have consoled him and any of the children with great skill and affection.  Although I haven't felt that way in awhile, I now know that I know Nathanh better than anyone else and that he is very attached to both Erwin and I and no there is not another person out there who could comfort him as well as I can.

I was speaking with a fellow adoptive parent (gosh, there seem to be a lot of us out there, I have met so many since the beginning of this process, many of whom I knew before, I just didn't know their children or grandchildren were adopted) anyways, this individual and his wife adopted older children.  He said that they were once told that if you take the age of the child when they are place with you, you need to double it before you are going to have full attachment.  One of his girls was five when they adopted her, so he figures it will take until she is ten until she feels completely secure and attached to them.  It was an interesting discussion, but in light of that rationale it shows just how important Greater Than Day is.  We were very fortunate to have Nathanh come into our lives at such an early age and we are lucky that Greater Than Day has come so quickly for us.

So here is the kind of cool part, it just so happened that today we were invited to a reception in honour of Vietnam's Director of Adoption who is visiting Canada right now.  It was a great honour to meet him and to thank him for his role in bringing Nathanh into our lives.  When asked what has been the best part of his trip, he said just meeting so many wonderful families and seeing that the Vietnamese children are so obviously loved and cared for...how wonderful is that?  It was great to spend our special day with so many other families with children from Vietnam and to be a part of the relationship building between Canada and Vietnam.