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I STARTED PICKING Dorito up two or three times a week to get him out into the sunshine and to do his exercises with him away from the orphanage. Often we went to the park, but if the landfill kids weren’t at our house sometimes I’d take him there.

In my office we’d go to the Sesame Street website and I showed him who The Count was. I let him sit on my lap and look at videos of the baby on the computer screen and I taught him how to say “baby”.

I pasted little colored shapes on the wall of my office, just barely out of his reach. The point of it wasn’t really for him to learn his shapes or his colors in English (although he happened to be picking up on that pretty quick), but to get him to stand up on his tip toes and stretch when he pointed at them.

“I thought you didn’t want any kids in your office,” Laci said one day when she spotted the shapes.

“I haven’t had any kids in my office.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I haven’t,” I insisted. “Those are for the baby. I’m just getting things ready for her. She’s going to be a geometry wiz like her daddy.”

“Uh-huh,” Laci said again, smiling as she walked away.