Little Footprints

Yesterday evening, we got a FedEx package from our agency. Inside was a piece of paper with an outline of Lan's feet. Her feet are about 16.5 cm long from the tip of her big toe to the back of her heel. I have no idea what size the correllates to - I'm going to take the outline of her feet with me shopping next weekend. To buy a pair of shoes. For Lan.

Let me say that again:

I am buying a pair of shoes. For Lan.

This is real. There is a REAL child with REAL feet on the other side of the world and I am going to go out next weekend and BUY SHOES FOR THOSE FEET.

I'm not sure why this makes this seem so much more real, but, it does.

The piece of paper also contains new measurements. She is 107 cm tall (42 inches, roughly). This puts her at the 87 percentile in height for a child - making her only about half a head shorter than her big brother. She has lost some weight since her last measurement, and is only weighing in at 15 kilos. That's 33 pounds. Which puts her at the 34 percentile for weight. I worry about the weight loss - is it an actual loss, or has their been some other issue - perhaps she was weighed with more or fewer clothes on, perhaps she was weighed on a different scale. Nonetheless, it worries me. A half a kilo is a lot of weight, when you only weigh 15 kilos.

I am overwhelmed by the things that I need to take care of, before travel can occur. Overwhelmed that travel could happen at "any time" or weeks and weeks from now. OVER WHELMED. Excited. Terrified. Nervous. But, mostly, overwhelmed. Tempted to crawl under my desk and hide from the world, a la George Costanza in the napping episode of Seinfeld.

Resisting the urge to do so, and going off to take care of some things,

LM