Fading Memories

Soren was barely three and a half years old when we came home with Kiera and Matteo. He knows he stayed at his Grandma and Grandpa's house while we were "at China" as he worded it, but when we pressed him for his memories of that time, he thought intently before finally answering that he thought he made a fort while we were gone. Really, that's all he could give us. He insists though that he remembers coming to the airport and that Kiera was carrying an orange backpack and wearing a purple shirt and that his dad was the first person he hugged.  Okay, he got that correct. However, most other details are far fuzzier or incorrect.

Oliver remembers a little more, yet surprisingly not as much as I would have thought since he was five and a half at the time.  He remembers minor details, like that the bitter winter winds rattled the windows at Grandm and Grandpa's house and more monumental ones, like Skyping with us and even some of the reactions Matteo had during what was probably his first ever Skype session. Oliver rattled off many more details of the night we arrived home and said that what surprised him the most about Kiera and Matteo was that they were really little.  He had thought they would be Soren's size. (Although, they quickly caught up.) 

What surprised me the most about their memories is that neither remembers a time when Matteo and Kiera were not their brother and sister. This was especially surprising of Oliver, who has clear memories of meeting them for the first time and had a reasonably good understanding of the adoption process.  Yet when we had Oliver and Soren recall special memories that occurred before Kiera and Matteo came home, like being at the cabin with Grandma and Grandpa, neither could explain where their other two siblings were.

Oliver and Soren know that Kiera and Matteo came into our family differently than they did, but for them, those are just minor facts.  What matters most is that they are all siblings and they can't imagine it any other way.