Care Package

We recently sent off a care package to Annie. It was a while in the making, and while it may literally be on a slow boat to...well, you know...and we may get to Annie before her package, we thought we'd document what we sent.

Dayna has two identical starfish. One was a gift after surgery last year. The other she found at a garage sale and bought with her own money. Their names: Starlight and Starbright. After much deliberation, she chose to give Starbright to Annie. She'll bring Starlight with her to China so the girls can play together and Annie can make a connection with her sister.

There was a purpose behind every item we sent:

• A new outfit (since she'll probably get a lot of gently used clothes)
• The starfish to connect with her sister
• A disposable camera so we can have a better idea of life in the orphan care center
• A photo album with pictures of the three of us and her grandparents. The pictures are labeled in Chinese so the nannies can start identifying us as her parents, sister, grandparents, etc. (This was an effective tool for Dayna. About a year after she came home, she suddenly started calling Dan's dad "Ye Ye" which means "paternal grandfather." She would pull out her album and start saying his name in Chinese.)
• A CD with recordings of each one of us reading to her and singing to her. (Another effective tool with great memories of when Dayna recognized my singing voice within hours of meeting us.)
• A blanket embroidered with her Chinese name. (We'll have her English name added when we bring her home.) We slept with this blanket for several nights so it would pick up our scent. Another tool to help her recognize us.

 

 

 As quickly as we want to get to our girl, we do hope this gets to her first to help make her transition a little easier.