"Maggie in My Heart"

That was what Perez said when he made this Valentine cookie last week. Yes. On Valentine's evening I was at the kitchen table with a child- sized apron on and my hair in a messy ponytail frosting cookies with my 9 year old son while my husband went to the gym to exercise. We are SOOOO romantic it makes you all sick! So, as "mom-ish" as it is to spend Valentine's Day making girly looking sweets with my son, we both couldn't get enough of it. Without any prompting, Perez picked the biggest cookie and decorated it for Maggie, holding it up to his chest saying, "Mom, take a picture. It's like Maggie in My Heart." And yes, another cheesy "mom" moment when you, without bias of course, think your son is the greatest kid ever to walk the planet.

Without fail, people ask if Perez is excited about having a sister. If you know Perez at all, it doesn't take much of anything to get him excited...much less the thought of having someone his age to play with to get away from the boring-ness of his parents. Needless to say, he floats somewhere between antsy energy and complete off the wall "you better calm down right now" or , better yet, "you better go pogo stick around the block again so I don't send you straight to bed at 4:30 in the afternoon" type of excitement.

From about 5 months of living here, Perez was asking about a sibling. He came from a boarding school of 450 kids where he slept in a dorm with about 60 of them. He was never alone and never without partners in crime. And we never intended him to be an only child. Perez came up with the family plan for us from the get go. We had him. We were going to adopt another boy...aged 5...who was brown. Then, we were going to have a baby...a girl...who would be pink. Straight from the kids mouth it was hilarious. When we started talking adoption again, I got an almost censored comment and a very strange look when Perez, a third grader mind you, told his classmates "my parents are trying really hard to get another kid."

Perez has always wanted a brother. He wants someone to push around and wrestle with and tease and do all the things brothers do. It took him a few days to warm up to the thought that we can't guarantee a brother, that maybe God would give us a sister. Once we told him that he was going to be needed to protect his perfectly innocent little sister he jumped at the opportunity. If you know anything else about Perez, you know he is fiercely loyal.

So onward we go, maybe with a tinge of nostalgia. The three of us knowing that things will never be the same, but longing so much for the one who will make it different.

From Uganda with Maggie in My Heart (and a heck of a lot of Perez in there, too),

Ali