Flashback Ethiopia: Babe in a Denim Dress

Lately I have been amazed to find in my house not a tiny baby but a toddler in the making. Anna has grown so much, gotten so much more hair, and gotten so good at standing that already she doesn’t look so much like a baby anymore; she looks like a little girl, standing tall, ready to take on the world.

But sometimes when she is at her sweetest and most innocent, sleeping or waking up or drinking a bottle, she seems to shrink in my arms. She weighs next to nothing again. Her sometimes-chubby face seems tiny again—tiny nose, lips, cheeks, closed eyes, ears.

The third day we were with Anna, the nannies had dressed her in a denim overalls dress. She fell asleep on Aaron’s chest in the room we visited her in, and we marveled at her tiny hands, ears, lips, cheeks; her perfect skin and long eyelashes.

Today as I rocked her to sleep for her nap I found in my arms again a tiny girl in a denim dress, and in a flash I was brought back to Addis, to those first days of wonder and those first naps together. She looked every bit as small and soft and innocent today as she did then. She slept peacefully in my arms as I marveled at her tiny face, her perfect skin, her precious curls. She hasn’t changed at all. She is still my baby girl.