Iris marks her tenth day with us today. It's amazing what ten days can do. With the ability to adapt rapidly and adjust our understanding of our identity or accept new circumstances as a given within a short amount of time, what once was unrealistic or non-existant becomes the norm.
In these past ten days, Igor and I have been getting to know Iris better, have been sleeping less, and have enjoyed watching her very expressive mannerisms. Igor is improving his diaper changing and burping skills, while I'm learning to eat and feed her at the same time. If I'd been told a month ago that it wouldn't take long until I couldn't imagine my life without her, I'm not sure I would have believed it, but already I feel like she's been with us for a lot longer than ten days.
As it is customary here to pierce a baby girl's ears when she is a day old, since we didn't do that and rarely dress her in pink, most people say, "Oh, what a cute little boy." Yesterday, as we attempted unsuccessfully to get a birth certificate for her (something about not knowing how to register her, since her mother is a foreign resident). We got her pictures taken for her national identity card, which we incidentally also could not apply for because she doesn't have a birth certificate. Without asking, the photographers put her picture on a blue background with Mickey Mouse automatically asuming that she was a boy, so we had to take a few pictures with pink today.
