We have now been home 2 weeks with our new addition! Hard to believe... Everything's been going very well so far. We found a 4-child groove pretty quickly. Abha isn't trying to test our every nerve yet and the last 2 weeks she's fallen right into the rhythm of the family. I'm sure we have some rocky waters ahead but it's nice to have built a foundation. Also, I hope that a little more language develops, both me understanding her and her understanding me.
Abha has picked up a few words every day and now has moved on to a few phrases. "Wery good" and "Blue four five six seven eight fourteen sixteen eighteen nineteen" are my favorites. Why does she repeat the latter so often? I don't know. She's heard Logan count a lot I think.
She struggles with sleeping, but so far it's not been terrible. She doesn't like to sleep alone (she slept in a bed with 4 other toddlers) and so we rock her to sleep and most nights have to get up at least once to rock her again. Sometimes if it's late enough in the morning anyway we just take her to our bed. We are so thankful that she accepts this nurture and will happily take the opportunities we get to fill her attachment bank.
Abha is a big eater. She prefers Indian food (like chana masala or dhal or anything with rice) and tolerates it quite spicy. She can eat 3 or 4 bowls of Indian food if I whip something up. Otherwise she is tentative but will usually pick one or two things to eat at each meal and eat a lot of it. At first, when we were in country, she would finish her plate no matter what it was on it. I believe she was conditioned to do this at the orphanage. Now she is starting to have a few opinions and will say "no" to something (usually a green vegetable though she ate tons of spinach today) but even so eats great. She drinks so so so much milk. She gained 4 pounds this month! Wow!!!
She is feisty and fun and can run around with the boys hootin' and hollerin'. She is slowly becoming accustomed to life in an American family but there are many more differences than there were in Gianna. She does not like movies. Couldn't care less. She sits for maybe 20 seconds and then goes wandering to find something else to do. We've tried different kinds just in case it's a sensory thing (like Baby Einstein and other very gentle videos like Blues Clues) and even those she just doesn't give a rip about. Not a problem, it's awesome and healthy that she finds other activities, just something I noticed. She did not have many toys in the orphanage and so has very baby-like play skills. This week we showed her how to play with baby dolls, how to play dress-up, and how to color. She latched onto the baby doll thing though wants to just copy the exact scenario we did before (like a real baby would!) and today she was really getting into dress-up and branching out in outfits. Coloring is a long ways away. Her drawing is the same little squiggles with a pen. She doesn't want to use crayons and can repeat circles when you draw them but lines are difficult. We believe this is due to a lack of exposure. In school we were told she was learning Marathi letters, and she must not have ever colored! I'm sure it will come in time.
We are adoring our new little addition and the busy-ness she adds to our house just works.
getting her coconut oil hair treatment before bath (makes her hair very shiny)
first snow experience was fairly well received!
watching from the safety of Mom for a while
Ummm... no thanks for the ham and cheese, but 4 bowls of leftover chana masala please!!!
