One Little Chinese Head

I am so excited on this cool morning...Yesterday Jacie slept from 3:30 pm to 3:30 am. So...though I did not sleep that long, I did sleep for more than one hour in a row. I had not slept for three nights straight and was struggling. She had not either.

 

This morning she (after dressing herself in a bright pink sweatshirt and bright green pants) was outside playing with the babies (dogs) in her new jelly bean bike helmet...I know sounds adorable...It was. I took a picture and will try to upload it. Though the uploader does not work with my camera well.

 

She is doing well. She learns something new every day I think. One of the hardest lessons has been that every time we see someone or go to the grocery store we are not going to buy something for her. That is a hard lesson for anyone but especially someone who has had nothing and all of the sudden given everything...and it has just started. We have only given her the basics (with a couple of special things thrown in...)We hesitate to give her too much too quickly, she doesn't understand. Monday, I took her to Willer's Shoe Store. She needed a pair of sandals that didn't trip her and another pair of tennis shoes for good. We did amazing well in communication considering that my Chinese is limited to "Ba-dad, ma-mom, Ne-ho- hello and xie-xie- Thank you).) When we went to leave, she tried to get me to buy Loren a pair of shoes and myself. All I could think was that she didn't understand why we only bought 2 pairs and left the other 500 pairs...She also threw a fit when I wouldn't buy her the eight different items that she wanted in the span of 30 seconds at Lowry's. I throw a fit in Lowry's when I can't get all of the books I want too. Unfortunately she made it so she could not get the plastic 'cell phone' that I planned to get her at Wal-Mart. She is quite fascinated with the cell phones and picked one up in China (a kid's.) She wanted it but it was $10. American. That was crazy, so I shook my head 'no' making a mental note that I would look for a $1.00 one when we got home.

 

The hardest part is the language barrier. Instead of being able to explain to her that $10. was way too high for that cell phone and we would look for another (cheaper) I just had to say 'no'.

It is difficult to describe to anyone how hard it is to communicate. An example is when we were in the store yesterday, she excitedly bellered "Ma, ma." Which is about her only American word...so we hear it a lot. Anyway, she wanted to show me something. She took my hand and showed me to the bicycle aisle. I will break in here and say that plans are in the works for a bike. So she loved the princess bike. She touched it and smiled then looked at me and touched the bike then touched her heart. She was asking if she could have it. Instead of being able to say, "We are going to get a bike, let's talk to dad and maybe we can come back for it." I had to say, "No" with no explanation...I hate that part.

 

I will tell you a funny story before I wrap it up for today...

 

We have found that she is afraid of the dark. She struggles terribly at night and tries to keep herself up the whole time...No that's not the funny part...

 

She wanted to sleep with Bart and I. We do not want to start that so we put her on the sofa in the living room, right next to our bedroom. She kept coming over and peeking in our room, "ma-ma" she would say. Anyway, as the night went on, she moved closer and closer to our room until if you looked down to the floor of our room , you could see our curtain flap and one little Chinese head sitting under it. That is how she laid the first night, with her body in the living room and her head in our room staring up at us saying, "Ma-ma" to make sure we were still there...This should be interesting.

 

Angie

 

BTW: She came across the lawn today carrying a dead chipmunk, that her 'babies' had killed. Yuck...barehanded. Can you say sanitizer?