Calendar Girl

Tootle is from the Lily Orphan Care Center at Hangzhou Children's Welfare Institute. Each year the orphanage produces a calendar with a mix of pictures of children at the orphanage and at home with their forever families. It's a beautiful calendar, and it appears that the orphanage mails it to some families but not to everyone. And you may get a copy one year but not the next.

In 2006, Tootle was pictured in March wearing an adorable yellow coat and matching beret. We got a copy of this calendar from a family that was in Hangzhou to adopt their second child and came back with several calendars. I treasure this calendar because I didn't previously have this photo from Tootle's early life.

I will be on a mission to get this year's calendar after seeing a copy that a kind parent scanned into the photos section of the orphanage's Yahoo group. Tootle is once again in March; this time it's a photo that I snapped a few days after we got home in 2005 of Tootle picking strawberries and enjoying the sunshine. There may also be a photo of her in the orpahange in December (in the white fur coat); it's hard to tell from the scanned picture.