Happy Birthday, Chen Le!

Chen Le when she was a baby, before she was known as Chen Le.

Chen Le at about 8 months old.

Chen Le a couple of months ago

Chen Le a few nights ago.

Chen Le turns 4 years old on this 2008 Tax Day. Chen Le is my baby. She was born in our laundry room, just a couple of months after we moved in our new house, to a cat of mine who went AWOL a couple of years ago, who was a baby to a cat we still have at my grandma's house, Attie. She's 6 years old now and an outside cat. Chen Le went through many names before becoming Chen Le, the only one I remember being Charlie, which was courtesy of my brother, Scott. Chen Le was born roughly the time we sent in our application to Great Wall China Adoption (GWCA). She was about 2 weeks over 3 years old when we got our Travel Approval for Reese. Now, she is 4 years old. I decided to give Chen Le a Chinese name because we were adopting from China: Chen means "dawn" and Le means "joy". I named her this before I took Chinese lessons, so we actually pronounce her name wrong. We say "Chin Lee", and it should be "Chun Luh". But, by the time I knew that, it wasn't worth changing either the pronounciation or the spelling to correspond with how we said it, because changing the spelling would change the meaning, and I liked the meaning. A little Red Thread here: Reese's nickname in China was LeLe, or "double joy", because she was such a joyful kid. And roughly 3 years before we knew that I named my cat "dawn" and "joy", which I usually translate to "dawn of joy", and Reese really is the dawn of our joy.

Happy Birthday, Chen Le, my baby girl!