look-a-likes

I posted a new picture of Sloane on my Facebook account and several friends were like - oh, she's so cute! She looks just like you!

It got me wondering, because I think our kids look like us but does she really? So I pulled up some old photos (and I'm talking really old).

That's Sloane, my niece Harper (my brother's daughter who is 5 weeks older than Sloane), and me on my 1st birthday about a hundred years ago.

I think the answer is yes! There's a definite resemblance. I guess maybe that Chinese parable is true. Your family is connected by a red thread and it pulls at your heart strings until you are all together.

The funny thing is that it doesn't really matter. Does she have my eyes, or Scott's laugh, or grandpa's toes. It sure makes it a little easier since we don't have to field a lot of awkward questions because our kids don't look dramatically different than us (we expect that to change when they're both like 8 feet tall but we're good for now!). And some days it's hard when you see your friends theorizing about whether their little boy has mom's eyes or dad's, or where their daughter got her laugh. Our conversations are a little different. Unlike a lot of adoptive parents, we're lucky to know who and where our babies came from so we can answer some of those questions but, in the end, these are our children, our family, our heart and soul and like it or not they'll inherit things from us that go beyond hair color and a laugh.

So today, I look at these pictures of three little girls with the same lovely, clear blue eyes and I know that they may be separated by decades but they are bonded by love.