L adores books. When it comes to books, her attention span is amazing. Sometimes when her bros are watching TV, I prop L in between them with a stack of books and she will happily sit there for nearly an hour flipping through them (though I can't get her to watch TV for more than about 5 minutes!). The following is a common scene in our house. I often find her stooped down somewhere flipping through a book and pointing and 'talking' to the pictures.
L has recently started to respond to our commands to "smile" or say "cheese" for the camera. Here is her "cheese" face.
It's beginning to look and feel a lot like Christmas around here, particularly since our first snow of the season arrived yesterday. It wasn't much - a little over 2 inches - but just enough to coat everything in pretty white, score the boys a 2 hour early dismissal from school, and provide just enough coating on the driveway for some sledding fun. I got L all bundled up in her snow gear so that she could have her first snow experience (well, at least her first American snow experience ;-)). She loved it so much and just kept diving down into it. I couldn't keep her out too long because she insisted on rubbing her face down in it, and after a while it was getting pretty red and chapped.
We had some grownup fun on Monday night as we headed out to a black tie event at the Kennedy Center. It was a fundraiser for the Choral Arts Society, and started out with a wonderful Christmas concert in the concert hall, followed by a silent auction and dinner and dancing. It was a great night and the first time in a long time that we had the chance to get really dressed up.
Okay, so no idea how to make this the right direction!!
B had his Gingerbread making day at school this week - a Kindergarten tradition. Here is C's gingerbread creation from three years ago.
Here are some pictures from B's party this week.
And here is the end product.........
Of course we've been busy "decking the halls" and getting everything ready for Christmas. This year, we have a very attractive (and very necessary) accessory around our Christmas tree - a nice big L-proof gate! Unfortunately, she still manages to lean over on her tippy toes and snag ornaments off the tree!
Here are the boys working diligently on their shrinky dink tree set that Nana sent. You know how long it's been since I've made shrinky dinks? I have to say that even at 30-something years old, it is still pretty fun to watch them shrink up!
Kind of pathetic looking, don't ya think?
In other news, I had L evaluated this week by county early intervention for her speech delays. Based on her initial assessment, the social worker unofficially told me that she qualifies for services. The next step will be a more in-depth complete developmental evaluation by three professionals, including a speech pathologist. Once that is complete, then they will draw up a plan and set up services for her. I was under the impression that early intervention services are free, but apparently only the assessments are free. Speech services run about $150/hour, so $600/month! Ick! I'm just hoping that insurance is going to cover some of that.
How is it possible that it has already been one year since we saw this sweet face for the first time? I remember how surprised we were when we got "the call", as our agency had told us just a few weeks prior that there would be no more referrals until after the first of the year because the Korean agency they work with had run out of their yearly allotment of government-issued emigration permits (EPs). I was completely devastated and wrote some 'poor me' blog post about how unfair life is. LOL! When our social worker showed up with Seiyoung's referral package, we made her go through the entire package before looking at any of her pictures. We had gone through so much heartache during our adoption journey, that we wanted to be pretty darn sure that she was "the one" before falling in love with her picture. As she went through the file, we kept looking at each other - we both knew she sounded perfect for our family. And then she pulled out the pictures and I knew for certain that I was staring at my daughter.
Happy belated Thanksgiving to all my friends and readers out there! I hope everyone had a nice holiday. Sorry I've been such a bad blogger lately. I've had several posts started, but just haven't had the uninterrupted time to finish them. So please excuse me if this post is sort of scatter brained and disorganized. I'm just going to dive in and get caught up and not worry about how polished this is.
Miss L is 17 months old today and let me tell you, she is really coming into her own. My laid back, mellow, quiet baby has turned into a full fledged sassy, melodramatic, strong willed, tantrum throwing drama queen! If she wants something and she can't have it - WATCH OUT! She throws herself down on the floor and screams bloody murder. I completely ignore this behavior (which gets her even angrier) and out of the corner of my eye I can see that she looks up every now and again to see if I'm paying attention. Finally, when she gets frustrated that I'm not falling for her 'act', she gets up and then pretends to fake fall down and hurt herself to see if that will get a rise out of me! She's one funny chick!
Her attachment has really grown by leaps and bounds in the past month, and I am feeling so good about where we are now. I knew that there would be challenges initially with attachment, but (naively) I never thought that we would still be struggling so much after 6, 7, 8 months home. I now realize that attachment is truly an ongoing, constantly developing and changing thing and you can't lose hope if it does not 'click' as easily for you as it seems to for other families/children. If there is anyone out there reading who is still struggling with attachment after several months home and feeling down, don't lose hope - just keep on persevering and doing those attachment activities. There were so many times where I felt like all of the emotional and physical energy I was putting into the attachment work would never pay off, and as horrible as it sounds, I really resented L at times. I felt like I was giving everything of myself and getting nothing from her in return, and that is hard to do day in and day out. It is like going to job every day and no matter how hard you work or what you do, all your boss does is yell at and berate you all day long and tell you what a horrible employee you are - totally unrewarding and demoralizing. That is how I felt at times.
But now I'm finally starting to see the payoffs for all of my hard work. I started using a babysitter one day/week for two hours a few months ago. Right now, I use her so that I can volunteer at the boys' school, with the hope that I can increase her days/ hours eventually so that I can return to work part time. The first couple of times the babysitter came, L went straight to her and sat in her lap. She didn't care when I left and barely acknowledged me when I came home. She would even sometimes whimper or even cry when I took her back from the sitter (you can imagine how crappy that made me feel). But L has now done a complete 180 over the past couple of months. As soon as she sees the sitter now, she starts crying and holds on to me for dear life, and she screams bloody murder when I leave (other adoptive parents out there will relate to how excited I was the first time she screamed when I left!). And the best part is that when I come home, she is ECSTATIC. She RUNS right into my arms with a huge smile on her face and wants nothing to do with the sitter once I'm home (in fact, she starts waving goodbye to the sitter as soon as I pick her up!). And even better, she does this (crying when I leave and happy when I come back) even when I leave her with daddy!! She has always preferred dad, so this is HUGE. She is now showing a clear preference for both dad and mom - she misses us when we're gone and is happy when we return; she will go to others that she knows, but when she wants something or gets hurt, it is mom and dad that she turns to. In other words, she seems to finally 'get' that we're mom and dad - that we're not just people meeting her needs that could be replaced with any old person.
Okay, so now on to catch up from the past couple of weeks. Here are a couple of pictures from B's Kindergarten Thanksgiving feast at school. His class dressed up as Native Americans and the other Kindergarten class dressed up as pilgrims and they had a friendship feast in the school cafeteria.
Here is B walking in holding hands with his pilgrim buddy.
And here he is chowing down on his Thanksgiving grub.
The Saturday before Thanksgiving, Santa paid a visit to our credit union. As you can see, L is not a big fan of the man in red....
The next day, we went on a family hike at a National park that is about 20 minutes from our house. We had an awesome time and we definitely need to do family hikes more often.
As is tradition, we drove to my in laws' in Ohio for Thanksgiving. The boys enjoyed watching football with pop pop.
Here we are getting ready to eat the huge Thanksgiving spread that mom mom always puts out. She's never in any of the pictures because she is always too busy in the kitchen! It was a wonderful dinner, as usual, and a nice time to reflect on how truly blessed we are.
The next day, my MIL and I headed out early to shop, while the boys and L took a little nature walk around my in laws' property. They live on 100+ acres and the boys love to go exploring, though B was apparently complaining the whole time that he was cold (and I really can't say I blame him. It WAS cold there! We even had some snow flurries). My FIL took these pictures. He always takes great shots.
On Saturday, we drove to Cleveland to visit with my SIL and family and see their new house. They recently moved back to Ohio from Northern CA. This is the best we could do for a picture of the kids with their cousin. L wasn't in the picture taking mood, so we're just happy she actually sat there long enough to get a picture of all of them together.
And that about wraps up our last couple of weeks. I hope everyone had a blessed and joyous Thanksgiving celebration!
