There's been some sort of lingering spring sinus infection hanging over our house, which, as one might imagine, has not contributed to domestic tranquility between the often warring factions of Daughter and Son (son!). The other day, the forces of fatigue and congestion led to a kind of crying match between the toddler, who was armed with a pretty annoying toy whistle, and the little girl, who had been taking a pre-dinner nap on the sofa.

I, being a young man about town, missed the screaming part, and only got home in time for the sullen, sniffly silence afterward, with the toddler tucked in bed and the little girl sitting, dark-eyed and downcast, on the kitchen counter in her nightie. I didn't miss the bedtime debate that followed, though. You know the conversations -- processing what's been going on, letting the last dregs of whatever out before settling comfortably in to sleep. Often, in our house, this involves jokes or silly stories. But on this particular night, Daughter took a gently reproachful tone while talking things out with My Pulchritudinous Spouse, and came out with the following bizarre bit of conversation. Bear in mind, she's 4 years old and our family doesn't really talk about her SWI all that much.

Daughter: You took too long to come get me when I was a baby!

My Pulchritudinous etc.: I couldn't just come. I had to wait until they told me it was OK to come get you.

Daughter: What did they do, put a fence up?

My etc.: Well, while you were in the orphanage, you had nannies who would take care of you.

Daughter: They used to wake me up to make me drink. I didn't like that. What reason could someone possibly have for waking someone up when they're asleep to make them drink?

My etc.: Because it makes you big and strong.

She seemed to be satisfied with that explanation. But here's the thing -- what she said about the nannies is literally true. There was a regular feeding schedule at the well-regulated Fuling First Social Welfare Institute, with a bottle that I'm sure came promptly every night at 1:00 AM, whether the babies wanted it or not. To the best of my knowledge, though, we've never told her that. We were told the feeding schedule on the day we met her, and promptly began feeding her whenever she seemed hungry. She's seen pictures of the SWI, and photographs of the nannies handing the babies to the intimidated-looking parents, and we've talked about what the town was like, and what Chongqing is like, and what the river is like, but we've never talked about feeding schedules.

And Son (son!) never really had one, either. So she has to be getting this from somewhere. But where?

As a kind of parenthetical note, we've begun noticing certain differences between the way Daughter and Son (son!) throw temper tantrums, the things that set them off and the things that bring them to an end. We've begun to sort of wonder... Daughter was abandoned on a roadside naked, wrapped in an old black jacket, at 9:00 at night. A foggy night. In January. She was approximately a week old. Son (son!), meanwhile, was three days old, and brought into a local government building by a man named Huang (which became his Chinese name). He had a bottle. It was 6:00 in the morning, the time when people wake up and go to work. There's something about bonding and loss and being left alone or being passed from hand to hand that seems to *ping* with what they're both like now.

On the other hand, maybe we're just creating narratives to fill in the cracks....