We decide that Maia will decide about Kazakhstan

Maia and I had been lying in bed, watching TV and also looking at this blog. Our conversation combined thoughts stimulated by the TV and the blog.

One of the posts we had looked at contained a picture of the spot down the street from the house where we had first talked about Maia's being adopted. I had reminded her of that and of what we had said about adoption--that she had two mommies and two daddies.

Maia had the remote and had stopped flipping through channels at an old Bing Crosby movie.

"That's a very old movie," I said. "That movie was made even before Daddy was born." Lately, I've been looking for openings to take our conversations back to her roots, and I decided to make use of this.

"Daddy was was born in Tennessee, Sweetie. We'll go visit there someday."

"On the airplane?"

She likes going to airports and traveling on airplanes.

"Yes," I said. "And we'll go to Kazakhstan, too. And we'll find your birth Mommy and your birth Daddy."

She thought for a while.

"I don't want to go to Kazakhstan," she said.

This surprised me. She had never expressed a negative reaction to going to Kazakhstan before.

"Really? How come, Sweetie?"

She was now lying with her head on my stomach.

"I don't know," she said. Then she said, "I want to go to Kazakhstan."

"But you just said you didn't want to go, Sweetie. Why did you say that?"

"I changed my mind," she said.

It seemed to me that she hadn't changed her mind, except as it was convenient for her to do so to deflect my questioning. I felt bad about having pushed her past on her.

"I tell you what, Sweetie--we'll let you decide. If you want to go to Kazakhstan, we'll go, and if you don't want to go, we won't go."

"Okay, Daddy," she said.

John, December 24, 2007