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Tuesday, September 15, 2009
HOME FOR 10 MONTHS

It’s hard to believe that Maili has already been a part of our family for 10 months, although in many ways it seems as though she’s been with us forever. This past month has been another busy one, with a lot of new firsts for Maili. She experienced her first day of kindergarten, losing her first tooth, and her first carnival, to name a few. All of these milestones were met with her usual enthusiasm for life, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. She is truly one of the happiest, most easygoing children I have ever been around, and she continues to take joy in the simplest of things.

She adapted quickly to kindergarten and looks forward to going to school every day. Surprisingly enough, she has been able to keep up with her peers academically and has mastered many of the skills she will need in order to be successful in school. She is now able to spell her first and last name, name the days of the week and months of the year, recognize numbers to 10 and count to 100, in addition to recognizing about 15 sight words consistently. Her social skills continue to lag behind, due in part to the language barrier but also to her obvious lack of experience in social situations. We have discovered that appropriate behaviors have to be specifically taught, and we learned rather quickly not to assume she would just pick them up by being around other kids. Concepts such as turn taking and sharing were simply not in her repertoire when she first came home, but she is learning new skills daily and is eager to please. She continues to have issues at school with wanting to touch and grab everything within her reach, but she is slowly learning that it is not appropriate to do so without asking and that she needs to respect others and their belongings. Because she most likely was unable to hear much at all for the first few years of her life due to constant fluid in her ears, we assume that she relied heavily on her sense of touch in order to learn about the world around her, and she continues to be a very visual and tactile learner. We have noticed that she closely watches people’s body language and their actions and imitates them flawlessly because she is so observant. It is obvious that she wants to blend in with her peers and do exactly what everyone else is doing, she just hasn’t quite figured out how to do so yet. Hopefully this will come with time and patience. LOTS of patience.

About a week after she started kindergarten, Maili lost her first tooth. Wanting to celebrate this milestone with her in typical American fashion, Jamie and I tried to explain to her that when she went to sleep that night we would put the tooth under her pillow and that while she slept, the tooth fairy would leave her some money in its place. She immediately proceeded to burst into uncontrollable sobs. We looked at each other in puzzlement, wondering what on earth we could have said that upset her so much. We began to question her to find out what was wrong, and with tears running down her face she was finally able to exclaim “ I no WANT the tooth fairy to put money in dere!”, pointing to her mouth. Sometimes things get lost in the translation, I guess.

Along with her ever-increasing vocabulary has come the inevitable development of American slang, which has proven to be quite amusing at times. While riding in the car recently, Jamie was being, shall we say, less than patient with another driver on the road. After quite a few minutes of this, a little voice piped up from the back seat “ Daddy WUDE.. Chill OUT, Daddy!” From the mouths of babes…

Polka dot princess

Maili and Holt

Tooth fairy special

First day of school

Feeding the goats

Up to no good

China dolls

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