Waiting for Hari

23 Sept -- 2 weeks home!

Gosh, I noticed that the last two postings were rather down. Julia has been surviving in an institution for 5 and a half years, and although the behaviors she used to thrive in the orphanage do not work particularly well at home, I respect her strength, her spirit, her intelligence, and her soul. We are getting to know each other and very slowly learning to be a family.

Between those two rather down posts were two pretty good days – Thursday especially was very sweet because we moved at Julia’s pace. We played the piano twice and Julia was very interested in using her single finger to play twinkle and are you sleeping. We played with the trains and worked on a very simple puzzle. We also snuggled on the couch for a long time. When we left the house it was already the middle of the afternoon. We went to the little playground at the corner church and Julia went from one swing to the other as I pushed her higher and higher. She now says “higher!”

Today, we had a fine morning. Julia and I cuddled in bed. She is very shyly exploring my body in the morning. She rubs my arms and back and touches my breasts every so often. It is the kind of activity that Cheshire did as an infant. I hope that I am becoming Julia’s mother.

Julia and I had breakfast so that David could sleep in a little. Then we played with play dough. She is getting better about making impressions, using the cookie cutters, and taking the cut shapes away from the rolled out dough. I’m still rolling.

After lunch, we went to an arts festival in Carmel (Indiana) and saw Amber and Chris and the twins from our travel group. We spoke very briefly – the dancers and later the rain kept us from much conversation but it is good to see folks from our group. We also met an actor who stared in one of David's plays about a year and a half ago, AND he had a Chinese daughter as well! His daughter, Anna, has been home almost a year now.



We were in Carmel to see a very nice Chinese dance troupe perform. The dancers are all local women and they did a wonderful job. Lovely costumes and very interesting music and choreography. The only problem was that a storm was blowing up, and it sprinkled, drizzled, and then rained. We all wound up under the performance tent until the storm threatened to blow the tent away and the electricity went out. Then we ducked into a cafe for soup and hot cocoa before heading home.


Of course, no festival is complete without a balloon animal made by a clown. And so, here is Julia with her first balloon animal -- a bunny -- personally made just for her. It took at least 45 minutes before she popped the balloon.

We visited the library where Julia found another five year old to be too noisy with. Maybe she is on target for a five year old???!

At home, we planned to watch a movie together and then have left overs for dinner. Julia and I were waiting for Daddy to bring home a movie. Julia has started to use a Barbie water bottle and she was laying across my legs like a baby drinking the bottle as if it was a baby bottle. Okay, so this is one of the moments you read about in adoption books when the child actually is asking the parent to baby them. Pretty cool, I thought. We’ve reached some new high. BUT after a little singing and cuddling, Julia took a big sip of the water, pulled out the bottle and squirted me in the face. A move that would be great for the movie, but really was the pits in person. I told her no and she laughed at me. She then started hitting and pinching me and I again told her no and put her on the floor. She took another sip of water and stood up and went over to my lap top and squirted that. David was home by this time and after we cleaned up my machine and me, and told Julia not to do those things we felt rather at a loss for how to change this behavior. This was all unacceptable and she wasn’t taking our scolding or our “time in” very seriously. David took out the many, many hair clips from Julia’s hair and told her that he was angry. She freaked out because of losing the hair clips and I had an idea. I took all the hair clips and told her to sit in front of me, to be quiet, to stroke nicely my face, etc. Each time she did what I said (and demonstrated), she got one clip put back in her hair. We backslided a few times and she lost the clips again, but by the time dinner was ready, Julia had all her clips in her hair, and was feeling pretty good about herself. And I was feeling like I was in the Miracle Worker. I have been looking for a consequence that she would respond to when she is misbehaving or testing. For now, hairclips are pretty precious to her, and perfect for the short run to work with.

posted by Suz @ 12:19 AM