The little girl, a baby no more, is sitting in the middle of her parent’s bedroom playing with blocks. While her Dad looks on, the girl hears someone else in the house. Instantly her head, covered in feathery dark hair, whips around and she yells “bah” with strength and authority. Staring at her father, she cocks her head and waits patiently for the expected reply. And she gets it.

Ray has trained all of us in this house to yell “bah” whenever we hear her small voice making the utterance. She’s learning and growing, each day coming up with something new to her world. Brian and I call the “bah” communication her locator. She’s a people intensive kid and it’s unclear to her why, if someone is in the house, they would not be there in the room with her. Boggles the mind. At the very least they should make their location well known to her.

It’s exciting and sad and terrifying to watch her edge into toddlerness. She’s just sticking her tiny baby toe in the vast waters of being a girl, but she’s doing it with confidence. My excitement comes from knowing this is the right and natural course for her. She has to grow up and I certainly don’t want to always be holding on to her baby days. The sadness is from my sentimentality and my tendency to mourn time past. It goes too fast, they said. And now my newborn is not a newborn anymore.

Now let’s address the terrifying. Brian and I went to church this morning, as is our custom. We’ve tried to put Ray in the nursery several times, but always get called back to find her in many small, melting pieces. The nursery workers are usually in small pieces too. So we changed our tactic and now I accompany her while Brian goes to our class. We’re hoping to ease her out of the separation anxiety stuff. This morning I checked her in and acquired my “parent helper” tag from the front desk. We walked into the sunny room made for delighting small, toothless children, and she shyly examined the other three babies and four adults. It didn’t take long before she was wide open on the floor playing and chasing the other babies. Then it didn’t take long before the cute chaser turned into a toy stealing, hair pulling, pacifier snatching baby terror. One of her poor victims was teething when suddenly the one thing giving him relief was plucked surreptitiously from his mouth and popped into a triumphant smile; she doesn’t even like pacifiers. I’m fairly certain the other three babies had no idea what had hit them. Same goes for the kind staff, but no worries… that’s just (apparently) my kid.

From the time Ray was born, family, friends, and strangers commented on her happiness. It wasn’t until today that I found out the depths of her happiness are also the depths of her determination, the depths of her anger, the depths of her joy, and probably will be the depths of her anxiety as she starts having things to be anxious about. She’s not one of those children that will bounce through life relatively unaffected by the ups and downs. I believe she’ll turn out to be one of those people that will feel deeply, whatever the emotion, and struggle to tone it down. I know what that feels like and I know how exhausting it is. I’m terrified of parenting a child with such intensity roiling beneath the surface, but I’m hoping that being a like-minded person I can guide her through it.

The fact that we walked away from a church nursery today with two bumps on the head, a bruise on the leg, and a wake of confused babies, tells me that life in PNG with this one is going to be a challenge. She will test every limit we set, my patience, and probably gravity a few times (just to make sure it still works). But God gave her to me. He created every little bit of her and put her in our family. I’ll trust Him to guide us as we guide her, and I’ll have faith that He will answer my most desperate prayer for her to find Him.