Adoption/Birthday Celebratio

So, we did it this past Saturday, and it was incredibly wonderful. We sent out an invitation that said that we were celebrating both her birthday AND adoption. We sent it to both our family, including VeeGee's great grandparents, and friends because dh decided he didn't want to do any sort of different invite for his family. Before we sent the invites out, we let his grandparents know what the party was going to be about, that it was going to be a celebration of both. I think they are really beginning to be peaceful about the situation.

On her birthday, she got a card from her birthmother. I was SO relieved. It was actually addressed to VeeGee with our last name and was so so sweet. I am beyond thrilled about this, and am really hoping that we can keep up correspondence with her.

(Off Topic: I have been showing VeeGee pictures of her birthmother a lot lately as we've been redecorating her room with lots of family photos. She's had the strangest negative reaction, refusing to look at the photos and screaming "No!" while swatting it away. I'm concerned about this, an want to find ways to positively incorporate her birthmom's image into her life - advice would be welcome.)

Anyway, there were over a hundred people here!!!!!! Insane!!!! As a former chef, I NEVER run out of food at parties, but I almost did. Holy cow.

So, to the best part: I wanted to do something ceremonial, but not something toooo cheesy (just kinda cheesy). What I did, was get a spool of red silk rope and passed it around to the entire group (everyone was connected). I spoke about the "red thread" poem and expanded the image to include a sort of metaphorical umbilical cord. As we were all holding the same line of thread, we thanked all of our family and friends for holding us up through this journey and invited them to continue to be a part of the adopting of VeeGee into our lives and our community, symbolizing our connectedness to each other. We then passed around scissors and invited everyone to cut off a length of thread to make a bracelet, anklet, necklace or bookmark to keep as a reminder of our community. It was pretty neat, and I really think it meant a lot to a lot of the people in attendance. Without being too in your face.