mama

Today is day 5 with Anna and this morning she called me mama. And yes, my heart melted.  We've had two days just to ourselves and have gone on walks and spent time just playing, reading and getting to know each other. And I just have to say, I love what I've learned in the past few days.



Day 2

This girl has spunk and she's stubborn. But she's no match for her mama. When she does or doesn't want something, she let's me know. A podcast called "traveling with your newly adopted child" had some sage advice "do not worry about creating bad habits or reinforcing existing bad habits while you are traveling" and I am trying to do just that. But that is much easier said than done. Because I feel like she is attaching much more than I expected, I'm already setting a few boundaries which she clearly doesn't like, but she accepts after a mere 5 seconds of crying or so.

She loves to laugh and be tickled. She has the cutest little raspy laugh. In the beginning it was hard to get her to smile, let alone laugh, but now everything is a game and is funny. She still has moments of darkness when she seems confused - mostly when I am putting her to bed at night or she when she first wakes up in the morning, but other than that, she's a pretty happy little girl.

She's pretty smart. When I say, "let's go Anna" she picks up my flip flops and hands them to me (remember, she doesn't know a lick of English). I can show her something like how to put a lid on a water bottle and she will remember what that funny blue object is for. And, she's learned the baby signs for "more" and "bread" in one day, she's copying sounds and starting to respond to her name "Anna".

She's a great eater - so far she's only turned away honey dew melon. She's eaten everything from American to Chinese food - I'm hoping this will rub off on chicken nugget Ryan.

She's a fabulous sleeper. After we get past the first fearful minute (it's so sad to see her scared little face), she just lays down and eventually drifts off to sleep. Knock on wood that this will continue!



Day 3 - touring the Shoulin Temple

All in all, she's doing great! I don't have any recent pictures since Tony left because my hands are full and he took the good camera home, but the pictures here are from day 2 and 3 so you can see she's doing pretty well - and it just keeps getting better day after day!