Honoring my daughter

I put out a request on our facebook page asking for suggestions for blog posts people wanted to see.  A friend requested this:

Personally, I'd love to read about how you try and integrate [pacific island] culture into baby girl's life. [...] I'm wondering what else you've done and/or are planning to do to teach her about her heritage

Interesting topic question.  And very loaded.   I have sat with this question since it was asked.  Why?  Because I needed to think if I was really doing everything I could and have enough information to talk about. 

I think I do.  And I think we are doing a great job. 

I figure I will attempt to talk about this, but this may become a two part blog.

I also want to make it perfectly clear that while I am willing to talk about how we incorporate aspects of my daughter's culture into her lives, we are still learning.  We are not perfect.  Nothing is perfect about how we do any of this. 

So first thing first, we are learning her language.  The key to connecting with your culture is knowing your language.  So I've been working on learning it since we matched with her (birth)mom.  I'm old, so it's a slower process for me.  But everything I know I use with her, constantly and without hesitation.  I speak to her as much as humanly possible in her language so she hears it and can learn it. 

Traditional clothing on her first birthday.

The second thing we are doing is keeping an open communication with her (birth)parents.  We send pictures and converse as often as they feel comfortable.  Having this link will hopefully give her some sense of knowing her entire story. 

We also incorporate big days from her islands into our every day life.  Small celebrations we also try to bring to our home, so she knows what they are and why they are important.

Her first birthday was also celebrated in the style of what it would have been if she were born on the Islands.  We had traditional food and dancing.  We dressed her traditionally and several people who came gave traditional gifts!  It was amazing and wonderful and we were so happy to extend this celebration to her. 

As for what we are planning... I haven't really formulated any big plans.  We plan to connect with others from the Islands as she gets older.  We also plan to take her celebrations of her culture that we recently found out happen! 

We want to just expose her as much as we can, so she knows her roots and her story.  We hope we are doing enough, but we can always do more.  And we will.  Always.