First and Second Day of Day Care

Monday was Abigail's first day of day care. She is at a great place that we love. She eats a little breakfast at home, then a little more there. They learn about a theme each week (this week was fish-themed), have lunch together, and then all the kids lie down on a mini cot and take a 1-2 hour nap. After that, we pick her up.

On her second day, she impressed her teachers by eating all of her peas with a spoon all by herself at lunch. She loves the swing outside (no surprise), she loves to blow kisses to her teachers (no surprise), she loves her green blanket (no surprise) and she is patient enough to wait quietly while the other kids get their pudding snack first (big, huge surprise!).

Quick Update

We have not had time to update this in 13 days. Life with Abigail is accelerating at an exponential rate. Here are a few of the things that are new in the past 2 weeks:

• Her English is coming at a quicker pace all of the time. She speaks "uh oh" when she does something accidentally (such as dropping her fork at dinner), "thank you" in appropriate situations, "more" often while signing it, "muh" which means milk, "I uh oo" is getting closer and closer to sounding like "I love you", and she says "no" while shaking her head.
  
  
  
• She is proficient at the signs for "down", "up", "milk", "more" and her newest one is "please."
  
  
• Her dog Jedi has died. (But she still approaches and pets dogs all the time in the park and on walks.)
  
  
  
• She wants to hold our hands, both of us, all of the time. She "shows love" by hugging, kissing, waving, nodding and giggling, climbing in laps to cuddle, and the hand holding.
  
  
• She met her grandmother "Grandma", Larry's mother and was crazy about her.
  
• She knows what sounds go with which pages in her favorite books and she can make those sounds as she "reads" the book.
  
  
• She can go to sleep on her own (thanks Grandma!!).

Abigail "fits in" here

We have been home almost 2 months. Abigail is adjusting to life here, just as we are adjusting to having her here. Our focus now is all on her: not on all of the extracurricular things we used to sponsor at school, not on each other, certainly not on ourselves. But this is where we are and where we want to be in our lives.

I was just thinking of Christmas a little over a year ago, which was Christmas 2009. It was the first Christmas after Lar's dad had died and his mom was spending the holiday with my family in the snowy north. I remember one evening when Lar and I made the announcement "We are going to apply to adopt a Chinese baby with special needs." There was stunned silence for a few beats, our parents realized we weren't joking, and my mother ran for the Manischewitz and

glasses.

On paper Abigail might have a special need, and of course, we don't know if her cleft repair will have an affect on how she speaks. But this wonderful, happy, creative, thoughtful, beautiful, loving, amazing little girl is anything but a "special needs" kid. Although people always tell us what a lucky little girl she is, we know we are the lucky ones, to be allowed to raise this girl, our daughter.

Thing are so blissfully ordinary now. We take walks. We go to playgrounds and parks. We snuggle under blankets and read books. We adults never stay up late anymore. But at the same time, it is everything but ordinary. We get to see the whole wide world all over again through her eyes and it is astonishing, fascinating, and wonderful.

For example, this weekend, Abigail took her

maiden voyage in her new wagon (funded mostly by Jim & Steph). Just a girl and her dog. Having a nice evening ride in a wagon. In a beautiful neighborhood. On a warm spring evening.

Today, Abigail took a ride in her wagon to the duck pond. She was supposed to be taking stale pretzels for the ducks to eat. But most of the pretzels did not make it to the duck pond.

Abigail had very little regard for the ducks. We found out anyhow that ducks do not like stale pretzels anyhow.