Kajal's 7th birthday was amazing. Last year, when we celebrated her birthday she'd only been home a few months. She still didn't speak much English at that time and I'm not sure that she really understood what a birthday was. This year, I started reading books about birthdays and being born, leading up to her big day. Kajal doesn't seem to remember much beyond the last few years at the orphanage in Pune. Those years were so painful for her and still so vivid, that she doesn't talk of anything before. I explained to her that she was in the stomach of her birth mother, a woman in India. That this woman gave birth to her one day and that day was a magnificent day because it was the day she entered the world. I read her the book 'on the night you were born' for several nights in a row and I pretended I was the moon singing her name in the wind. I think she began to understand. We talked about the fact that she'd never had a celebration before I came to get her... certainly she was never celebrated. I asked her if there was anything she missed, anything good she could remember from India but she would look at me sadly and simply say... No, Mommy. No good in India. It was just all hunger, lonliness and pain to her. So we focused on planning her birthday... she couldn't decide on a theme so it was a Hannah Montana/TinkerBell/Princess party. Tinker Bell came and sang to her... and I have to admit, I bawled the whole time. Watching my little one with a balloon crown on her head, surrounded with friends and Tinker Bell singing Princess songs...well, it was magic. Kajal wasn't sure she was the real thing, after all.. .this Tinker Bell was six feet tall. During the course of the party Kajal ran up to me, all excited... Mom, she is the 'real' Tinker Bell. How do you know that Kajal?

She looked at me very seriouslly... I asked her Mommy, and she told me.

Ahhhh... ever since, Kajal will tell anyone she meets how Tinker Bell came to her 'second birthday'

Everyone tries to correct her, don't you mean 7th? No, she'll say, this was my second birthday party.

And indeed it was, her second birthday ever.