Here's Denby

I can't believe it's been more than a year. Like all things kid-related, time both flies and crawls. But when I look back over the year and all the things Denbele has learned and done, it blows my mind. She is now a walking-talking (potty trained!) social butterfly. She even has a nickname—Denby—so she could pronounce her own name. Denbele was too much of a mouthful for her. When I see the picture of Meaza with her bountiful curls, I can help but see a resemblance.

Denbele starts preschool in the fall. She loves to swim, run, climb and eat. She is the rock star of our playground—she often has an entourage of older kids or moms following her around. It's hilarious. Of course, she only has eyes for Willa. Most of the time.

And yesterday we got our court date for Denbele's re-adoption! Hooray! I don't know about other states but here in New York, we like to make things difficult so readoption is a process as laborious and bureaucratic as doing your homestudy or dossier and you cannot do it until your child has been home six months but if you wait longer than a year you have to re-do the homestud. The state treats a re-adoption as a new petition for adoption so you have to assemble all this paperwork (and get fingerprinted again) as though you don't already have the child. Which is nonsensical. But now we go see the judge! And then she will get her US birth certificate!

That's all the news from here. A sweltering summer and we are making good use of the public pools and beaches.

We love hearing from you and are so excited about Genet.

Here are some pics. The girls doing ballet together and Denbele eating cake from her "anniversary" party.

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Gayle, Nick, Willa and Denby