Waiting for Hari

Movies, School, and Order

Here is Cheshire and Julia laying in bed together in Hong Kong just a little more than 2 weeks ago. I do miss Chesh, and Julia misses her as well.

Yesterday, David's birthday, we went to Marcia's for a late brunch and then to the movies. Julia's first visit to another home. She was pretty good -- playing outside on the swing set, and inside on the electric piano. She ate waffles and fruit and loved Marcia's tapioca pudding. Julia almost sat through the entire movie -- we took a short walk about 2/3 of the way through. She watched pretty intensely.

Julia and I visited her school today, and we will visit again on Wednesday and Thursday. Today, we visited at lunch time and I packed lunch for Julia to eat there. We ate at a table away from the kids eating but Julia watched and said hello to lots of people. Then we went to a play area in a great indoor space. Julia had fun playing in the playhouse with kitchen and fake food things. We also visited the playground and Julia sampled all the swings and the climbing equipment.

The administrator of the school may set up some developmental tests to figure out what Julia needs at school. She is not sure whether Julia can be tested without English. I expect that if she starts school soon, I will be in the classroom with her until she learns some social skills and feels comfortable.

After the school visit, we went to the Mall to return pants to Children's Place. I expected that this would be a bit of a challenge but I wanted to get credit for the pants that Julia will never wear. We had to walk through Von Maur and Julia had a number of mini-meltdowns when I wouldn't let her touch things she shouldn't, whining and going to the floor, and me waiting until she was ready to get up and move on. The store, and mall in general, were pretty empty -- thank goodness -- and a very nice sales lady kept me company, talked to Julia, and told me about a friend of hers who had adopted 3 kids. We spoke while Julia calmed down and the woman asked how I was holding up and I had to answer that I was really okay about everything. And I am. We did get through von Maur and into the kids store. There Julia found these groovey girl-like dolls. I thought she wanted one and I would have been willing to buy one for her, but she only wanted to put them in order. She sorted the four different dolls into separate piles and put the sorted piles on the display.

Then we went to Marsh where she got to ride in her favorite cart with a car on the front while I shopped for dinner supplies.

All this and I was able to make dinner, and Julia was pretty pleasant during our after dinner walk and play in the church playground. I think we will be somewhat quieter tomorrow, and let Julia digest what we did today. 

posted by Suz @ 11:14 PM