Waiting for Hari

7 weeks home

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We are now 7 weeks home and this has been in pretty eventful week. Julia has been eating words! For a little more than an week, Julia has exploded with vocabulary. She is using more English words every day and looks for the names of things. She uses mostly nouns but there are a few verbs and adjectives thrown in. She is also looking to me to supply words to her when we are doing are flash cards and also during our daily round. She is also counting to 10 all by herself and makes some connection between the numbers and what they mean. Julia is singing the alphabet song although she is missing many of the letters. She plays with her alphabet toy very often although she is far too interested in the letters, W, Q, X, and Z. It’s funny that she picks the letter least used in our words.

Julia had a good report from school when they went to see the play last week and another good report on Wednesday. I saw a vast improvement in her behavior on Saturday when we went to Chinese school. She sat at the table she was supposed to, she tried to do the craft, and went to the carpet when it was time to sing together. She was much calmer and more willing to be quiet. Actually, at Chinese school, Julia is in a class with 3-4 year old kids. Lots of the kids had trouble on Saturday and I got to see many of the behaviors that we see in Julia. Her participation in Chinese dance class was almost incredible. Okay, she did not do everything she was told, but she also did not run around the room and scream like a banshee! Really, she made an attempt to listen and follow directions. And hugged the teacher at the end of class.

We finally found the show Sagwa on PBS. It is based on the Amy Tan book of the same name and is about a family of cats during ancient times in China. In the show, they include a few Chinese words, actually very few and very easy ones, but Julia seemed to be enchanted. We will tape a few episodes to play for her from time to time.

We visited the federal court in Indy last Thursday. It was a very successful visit. Julia met lots of people, mostly a few at a time, and was her charming self. She is a social being, and although I am not ready to have a house party to introduce her to lots of friends yet, she is ready for a little more socializing. She does need some extra holding and cuddling when we do new things but in this regard she is not so different from other 5 year olds.


We did shopping for Thanksgiving baking supplies yesterday and most of it went well. Julia loves to get the plastic bags in the produce department and open them to put the vegies and fruits inside. She does love to help. I wonder if she is trying to insure her place with us, or whether helping is just in her nature coming from her training at the orphanage. She did have a small (but loud) tantrum at Krogers when I refused to buy a Halloween cake. She wailed and screamed through a few aisles, but I was determined not to leave, not to let her hit or kick me, and to move through the situation. I kept talking to her, asking for her help, and ignoring the sympathetic or less-than-friendly looks from my fellow shoppers. It worked. It was a short tantrum, and Julia returned to her cheery mood quickly when it was over.

We had another longer tantrum on Saturday. She had worn her Halloween costume to Chinese school during the morning but needed to take it off to go outside in the afternoon. I expected the reaction, and so prepared lunch, set up clothes, and set up rewards for Julia. She cried when we took the princess dress off, and was very angry. I took her on the couch and held her like a baby, making sure that she could not hurt me with her hands or feet. Then crying and resisting went on for awhile – I think about 20 minutes but it is hard to estimate time when she is like this – but I kept talking to her – telling her that I loved her, that it was hard to give up such a pretty dress for the day, that she would wear it again on Tuesday, and that she was a great kid. She stopped resisting and just cried for some time, and then was ready to be put down. She went to her room for a few minutes, picked out some clothes, and brought them downstairs to put on.

Today, she was very willing to go to school. Putting on tights is still not her favorite but I find that if I bring them downstairs and only put them on after breakfast, she does better. We got to school, she wanted to take off her sweater, I said no, we walked to the door, and some of the kids from her class were getting off the bus. They greeted her, as did Mrs. Levine, and Julia skipped into school with no look back. I am looking forward to a good week. 

posted by Suz @ 9:50 AM