Victoria – One Year in the US

We recently passed the one year anniversary of our adoption of Victoria. And while we noted it, I think the most interesting thing was how it just wasn’t a big deal at all.

After a year, we simply don’t think of Victoria as “our adopted daughter”. She’s just our daughter. There’s just no difference.

Though there are big differences between Danielle and Victoria. I have no idea if this is genetic or normal first child/second child differences. Victoria is a complete nut.

The therapists with Early Intervention have done their magic and Victoria is completely “age appropriate”, as they say. And in truth, from hanging around the big kids, she is a bit more than age appropriate. If we are at a playground with one set of climbing stuff for the 2-4 year olds and another for the 5 and up crowd, she has no interest in the kiddie stuff, she’s climbing the 8 foot ladder.

I was at the park one time with her and Danielle and this other father was there with his sleeping 16 month old. So he was watching Victoria and finally said to me, “How old is she? She’s fearless”. She’s the most self-reliant 1 1/2 year old I’ve seen. If we leave our door open, she’ll just go. If there’s someone there who looks like they might be going someplace interesting, she’d just leave with them. She gets into everything. But always with that smile. It’s that “I’m about to do something bad but you can’t get too mad at me if I’m smiling like this” look.

She’s boatloads of fun. She loves music (the Elmo “Kids favorite songs #2” has been playing constantly at our place for the past few weeks). She only has a few words and they are amusingly bilingual. She says both gracias and thank you and often the opposite of what you ask. “Tori, say thank you”. “Gracias”. She seems to call anyone that she wants something from Mami. So I spend a lot of time trying to convince her that I’m Papi. She just laughs and smiles a lot.

So here’s a couple of recent pictures of Victoria Dallas Fischer, now 20 months old and doing great.