ONE YEAR!

A video to take you through our first year with Claire.

It is unbelievable to me that today marks one full year that we have had Claire as our daughter.  The past year has gone by so incredibly fast compared to the nine months we waited for her.  I initially made this video for Claire; to capture her first year with us, from her first minutes through all of her firsts.  After working on this video for several hours it became therapeutic for me, which I didn't expect and didn't even realize I needed. It brought me back to that initial time one year ago when we were so head over heels in love with a little girl from another country.  Every thing she did was new, or funny, or brilliant.  Somehow that tends to get lost among the teaching to read, sight-word flash cards, math fact practice, numerous "pick up your room," breaking up sister fights, reminding about rude tone when talking, etc. etc. etc.  

Looking back has reminded me that we have been given an incredible gift; a gift straight from the hands of God and we can't mess it up; much in the same way I feel looking back at newborn photos of my first three children.  That feeling of amazement and awe are still there and I will try harder to find them when I'm drained and tired and walk into a bedroom covered with girls' clothes; when I'm knee-deep in sister bickering I will try to approach it with more patience and understanding (although, there are always THOSE days when the patience are gone) and I will try harder on a daily basis to show Claire that she is a gift to us and most certainly not the other way around.

Claire, you are an incredible gift to our family. It is my hope that you will always feel safe, cherished and loved by us, your parents and your siblings.

Claire is 8!

My baby girl is 8 years old today.   It's official, I sound completely crazy when asked what ages my kids are- 12, 10, 8 and 8.  Let me tell you, that raises an eyebrow; especially if I tell them my last two are 8 months apart and my kids aren't with me.  I tell them sometimes just to see their face.

It has been a joy watching Claire enjoy and soak up the special attention her birthday has brought.  She has shared with us that she would have a small cake on her birthday in China but never a birthday present.  She was very loved by her foster family and having a small cake is more than most children waiting for adoption receive but she has definitely been waiting for those presents.
She patiently waited through all the birthdays in the family and commented frequently about "my first birthday in America!"  I was a little worried she was expecting a pony or something with the amount of her excitement, but no, she was just looking very forward to her special day.  I found this t-shirt months ago and tucked it away for today.  Now the whole world will know it's her birthday and I'm sure she will be quick to tell them it's her FIRST birthday in America.

Click here to view these pictures larger

6 months home

This may look like any standard 'ole picture but this picture has taken 6 months to fully mature. See that little girl with 1, ONE ponytail? Claire's hair has been growing since we met her in China. She has had a couple of trims to try and even up the layers she had before but other than those trims she hasn't had any hair cuts. I was able to put her hair into pigtails about 6 weeks ago but today was the first time I got it into one ponytail, successfully. When I finished fixing her hair she reached back to see what I'd done and got very excited.

"Mommy, you one ponytail?! Oh yay, that is cool!"

I guess that sums it up well. We've had our little girl home with us for six months today; I can't believe they have gone by so quickly but at the same time it feels like she's always been here. Now that all of our kids are back in school I'm hoping to write some blog posts/articles on older child adoption; things that I think would have been helpful to know before we traveled. The key word in that sentence is hoping, because keeping up with 4 kids is a full time job.

In one day

Claire got on a bike today for the first time since arriving in the U.S.

I insisted that she start with a bike with training wheels and J insisted that she could do it without. I.was.wrong.

We both insist she should ride the first few times wrapped in bubble wrap because as soon as she falls one time that will be it, owies are the end of the world for this girl and we all know how bad bike owies can be.

the end of kindergarten

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This post is also published on our regular family blog, Living With Chaos. As I try to combine the two blogs I will start publishing regular "kid" stories, pictures and things there if it doesn't directly deal with adoption. To make sure you get all the Claire "fix" you can handle, you can follow that blog too.
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Recently we attended the end of the year program for Claire. They didn't dress the kids up in cap and gowns for the traditional kindergarten graduation but this program was very cute. The kids sang several songs (we now know why she loves the song "My Country Tis of Thee") and then went through the class showing their picture and saying what they want to be when they grow up. Imagine our surprise when Claire said she wanted to be a doctor; what about all that medical anxiety?!

Here is Claire with her teacher who has been amazing and helped Claire adjust with so much patience and understanding.

On the last day of school we pulled into the driveway and as I was helping the kids out of the car I look back and see Claire crying, big crocodile tears running down her face. I asked her what was wrong and she was able to sniff out a "Ms. V..." She doesn't understand yet that Ms. V will get new kindergartners and she will be OK in a new classroom with a new teacher. I anticipate the first week of school to be a bit rough but hopefully nothing like the very first week of kindergarten a couple of months ago.

These two girls are a couple of Claire's friends; we hear their names the most. She is such a social butterfly and loves having fun with her friends.
One of her friends "N" asked me on a recent field trip "does anyone in China have blond hair?" I told her no, mostly everyone has black hair and she said "so is that why Claire loves my hair?" I had to laugh because if a blond haired person visits China you will nearly be assaulted; everyone wants to touch blond hair and have their picture taken with blond haired people.
Claire has become very aware of the American flag; so much so that she points it out every time she sees it. Do you realize how many American flags are flying just on a simple drive to school? We cannot say our country isn't patriotic if you base it solely on number of American flags flying! Claire tells us that she likes the China flag and the American flag and we always tell her that we like them both too. One day she made this picture for me to scan and email to her foster family showing both of the families she loves.

Four months ago

Four months ago today we walked into an orphanage in China with so much excitement and uncertainty to meet our new seven year old daughter. While the first few minutes of our meeting were happy, Claire eventually realized what was about to happen. She was about to leave with people who don't look like her, don't speak her language and her hope of returning to her foster family wasn't going to happen. This picture is the last one we took at the orphanage before Claire started crying. While I'm smiling, you can see the pain and fear in her eyes. Looking at this picture brings tears to my eyes now; just seeing her emotions written all over her face.

And now, four months later this is what we see. No more fear, no more sadness, her anxiety of being abandoned is starting to diminish, she's speaking nearly fluent English, and she's even beginning to read! Her face looks much happier now, almost relaxed in way. Do we still see some grief? Yes, but it's getting more and more rare that she cries for her China family.
Some big news that I haven't shared yet is that she remembered her phone number in China and we had a contact in the country call it to see if it was indeed her foster family. It was. We have their phone numbers and email address and I've been in contact with her foster aunt (a yi). We have sent them many pictures of YaYa and I've talked on the phone with her a yi. Claire knows that we have contact with them and that she can talk with them if she'd like; she doesn't want to. The one time she thought she did want to call her foster grandfather answered the phone and Claire melted into a puddle of tears on my shoulder; it was too hard for her. We don't know the entire story yet of what her life was like in China. She tells us lots of stuff and we ask her questions but it will probably be a year or two before she can really tell us what her daily life was like with her foster family. One funny story she told me is her two a yis (one big, one little she says) took her at nighttime and they went swimming and came back in the morning. The tone she used made it sound like it was a secret swimming trip. I know her a yis loved her very much. The one I have email contact with has said she will send us photos of Claire when she was little. This would be a priceless gift!

Another long update. You know, I would be able to stop posting such long updates if I did this more often but with 4 kids to raise and a house to manage, the time just seems to slip by so quickly.
School
Wow, Claire loves school! She fits in wonderfully and has made many friends. She's somewhat of a celebrity among the students and has sparked a puppy love crush in many boys. She decided that she'd like to ride the bus so I let her try a couple of days and she liked it. I still pick the kids up in the afternoon but they ride it to school in the morning. She has abandoned sitting with Emily or Matthew on the bus in favor of sitting with a friend from her class.
She has found her independence while at school and will push Emily away in the hall if she feels like Emily is trying to help her (read: control her). Her teacher is amazed at her progress and has been extremely helpful in Claire's transition. At the start of next year I have consented to have Claire assessed for extra reading help. If she qualifies for the help she will get daily sessions with the reading intervention teacher. This extra help has made me feel secure that declining the ESL services was the right decision. With the work I am doing with her at home and daily reading intervention at school I am confident that she will be caught up and achieving grade level skills by the end of 1st grade, if not before.

All things medical
Claire has a huge amount of anxiety when it comes to doctors or dentists. It took us 20 minutes just to get her to open her mouth at a recent dentist appointment, and that was after I reassured her over and over that it would not hurt.

A bit of advice for parents adopting older children- if any way possible, try to get both parents to attend medical and/or dental appointments. If you both can't attend then try and split them between mom and dad. With J's job it isn't feasible for him to attend appointments during the day and I understand that. After a few appointments where blood was taken or dental work scared her it really started to impact other areas of her attachment with me. I was the bad guy. I was the one picking her up from school and driving her to appointments and I'm sure in her eyes, I was the one allowing others to cause her pain even though I know it's actually to help her. She doesn't understand that we're trying to help her, trying to treat her teeth to make them better; right now she only sees it as pain and I'm allowing it. Not only would splitting up appointments between mom and dad help with the attachment stuff, I have to admit that it is emotionally exhausting on me. I feel selfish even saying that because I know it's 10 times worse for her but it's the truth. For over an hour recently at the dentist I reassured her, stayed positive, gave her choices, tried rewards, tried bribes, got a little irritated and said she needed to open her mouth, felt bad for telling her that and went back to being happy and positive, etc. Then I gave up. THEN, that night she said it didn't hurt. grrrr

The other bit of advice is start out with a dentist who will do sedation dentistry. Claire did so well with her first dental appointment and let them clean her teeth and do x-rays so we stuck with our family dentist to start treatment of her many dental problems. I would count on any child adopted from China over age 2 or 3 to need fairly extensive dental work. Claire needed 4 extractions and 4 fillings. The first treatment visit started out very well but when one tool popped on her tooth and made a loud noise she freaked out. I really don't think it hurt as much as it scared her. From then on getting her into a dentist chair willingly has been difficult. We had an oral surgeon sedate her for the extractions and now we just need to get her fillings complete and her space maintainers in. She won't do it so in June we have an appointment with a pediatric dentist who will do conscious sedation for treatment. If I knew then what I know now, I would have started out with that route to begin with. I do not want to scar her forever with dental anxiety but I think it has already happened.

Siblings
Claire bonded very quickly to Emily and Jacob but Matthew took a bit more time. I don't know if it's because they are the closest in age or something else but Matthew really had to try to win Claire's affection. If he did something wrong she was right there to dime him out and he really couldn't do anything right according to her. Once she got over whatever it was that she didn't like about Matthew she realized he is actually a good big brother. She even chose to sit with Matthew on the bus at first, which really irritated Emily. Look at this picture taken in the airport when we returned home. I love how Matthew and Claire are checking each other out. He was so happy to meet her and she's thinking "yea, who are you and why is MY mommy so happy to see you?"

Now we hear and see this around the house a lot between the two of them.

Sight Words

Wow, Claire is learning amazingly fast! About a month ago I asked her teacher to send us home a list of sight words for the entire year. I had planned to work with her over the next few months so she knows all 57 kindergarten sight words before starting 1st grade in July. At the rate she is going I'm fairly certain she will know all 57 of them before school is out in 3 weeks.

On the official kindergarten list she knows 39/57. I have also added words to her flash cards that I thought we should work on as well; they include the written word for numbers 1-10 and the word of the most common shapes (circle, triangle, etc.). I printed those off on Monday of this week and she can already tell me what they are without any clues.

She's also taking her known sight words coupled with phonics to read! To say she's blown away any expectations I had for one quarter of school is an understatement.

Here is a picture I took of Claire earlier this week. The cards on the right of the picture are words can recognize by sight; the words on the left were the ones she didn't know that day. She learns so much every day that some of those words have already moved across the table!

Climbing the Wall

Here is Claire, climbing the Great Wall of China in January. I love this picture and plan to frame it for her eventually.

We originally took the picture to show how the stones are wore down close to the handrail but now I love having a picture of Claire on the wall without anyone around her.

Flower Child

Two months home

I've put this off for some time; always coming up with something else to do because putting up these posts usually takes quite a long time. I tell myself that I'll do it once the kids are in bed but then I just want to sit. So, here we are; one week? Two weeks without a post? I've lost track.

Language
Claire pretty much refuses to talk in Chinese to us. I think she still understands some but when we say something in Chinese that we know she understands she looks at us, shrugs her shoulder and hands and says "I don't know?" in her cute accent and inflection. Today I asked her if she wanted bing jiling (ice cream) and she tried to act like she didn't know what I was talking about but then after some prompting I asked her what it was and she said "ice-uh cream." So, it's in there. She doesn't point and grunt so much anymore; she asks for everything in English. You'd probably never guess that she's only been home two months if you didn't know already. She is starting to use pronouns and talk in 3rd person a little bit less.

Family life
Imagine children when they are about 2-3 years old. In their mind they think "what's mine is mine and what's yours is mine" and when they want something they just take it. The idea of sharing hasn't formed in their thought process yet. Well, even though Claire is 7 and has the mental aptitude to understand sharing, I think she is almost like a 2-3 year old level with her siblings. Remember when I said it was very much like bringing home a newborn when we first arrived home? Well, she's aging fast and we have issues occasionally with sharing or not sharing I should say. She wants to play with the toys that belong to the other kids but no one can touch her toys and if one of them has something that she wants, she will just grab it sometimes and try to take it away from them. She's gotten upset and cried because she wanted to play with a toy of Emily's that she'd just gotten and was a bit more protective of. I let Emily have her space and didn't make her share with Claire (she had already shared that toy several times) and Claire got upset. I let her pout it out and didn't over talk the situation. We've always let our kids have some toys that are only theirs and if they don't want to share them they don't have to. Claire gets the same treatment with her things but doesn't fully understand yet that the rule goes both ways.
Other than the younger than age appropriate sharing issues, the kids all seem as though they've lived together forever.

School
Claire really likes school now that she knows I am returning each day. I took her some medicine in the middle of the day this week and asked Emily to walk her back to class. I looked down the hallway and saw Claire telling Emily to stay away because she could walk on her own. I had to laugh and it made me realize that she is really comfortable at school now.

Stories from China
We learned last night that the story of Claire attending school in China is not what we thought. When looking at a photo album I had kept with the pictures we received during our wait she said "school" when she saw the orphanage pictures. I said "Beijing?" (what she called the orphanage before) and she said "yes, big big school." Well, now that ALL makes sense. Other families who adopted older children shared stories that their children were taken back to the orphanage much earlier than Claire was and were told it was so they could attend school. Her "really big school" was the orphanage which would also give a lot of insight into why she really freaked out when I told her she was going to school. I also think it has something to do with the melt down when we walked into the Sunday school class a few weeks ago. In her mind, school is where she was taken to when she left her nai nai.
Claire has also started talking more and more about her house in China. She calls it "China house" or "China home." She says it was a little house with three beds. The harder things for me to hear are that her older brother cried "where is my sister" when she left. I asked her if nai nai cried and she said yes and Claire said she cried too. These tid-bits have made it hard for me because it makes me question if bringing Claire here to the US really was the best thing for her. What would have happened if nobody selected her from the list? Would she have stayed with her foster family forever? When she aged out of the orphanage at 14 years old would her foster family allowed her to stay and keep her in their family? So many questions which simply have unknown answers but it makes my heart question if taking her from her China home was best. I know we love her, I know she will have a good life in the US, I know there have been so many times in this journey when I know we are experiencing the hand of God and it makes me think this is the best thing for Claire. But, the lingering questions are still there.

Dentist
This week was long and I'm sure very scary for Claire. She had her first visit at the dentist on Monday and it was to extract one of her upper teeth. The dentist told me it was the easiest and quickest thing to do so that is why we started with it. It didn't go as planned. The dentist was able to get one tooth filled but when she attempted to extract the tooth it cracked and the noise freaked Claire out. After that she was done and would not open her mouth to allow a second try. We left there with her in tears saying "I no like the dentist" and half of the tooth still in her mouth.
Two days later I took her to oral surgeon to have that tooth removed and three others. She was very nervous and repeatedly told me "I no like the dentist" and I just told her "I know" each time. They put her to sleep to do the extractions and thankfully, she doesn't remember any of it. She was groggy and grumpy for a few hours afterward but was running around the back yard by evening time. She's rebounded quite well but knows we have to return to the dentist to get her "new teeth" (space maintainers). She tries to tell me no but I keep a happy face and attitude and tell her "Yes! You'll have new teeth to eat hard things!" I'm going to win an Emmy yet, even if it is just for the Mommy Red Carpet Club.

And, I know you love reading and all but what you're really checking here everyday for is pictures. So, without further ado, here are pictures of Claire.
I saved very few of Emily's clothes from this size. Emily wore this when she was around 4-5 years old so that means this dress was in a tote for nearly 5 years. Claire loved it when I pulled out of the closet and insisted on wearing it to school. It is actually too big on her but thankfully it has a tie around the waist so I could cinch it down a couple of inches.
Claire has learned how to spell quite a few words. First was her name, then mom, dad and few other easy ones but the first word outside of family relations she started spelling and recognizing is stop. I had no idea what she was writing on her easter egg before dyeing it so we got a good laugh to see she very proudly wrote "STOP" on her egg.
Claire's first Easter with us; isn't she a doll?

School

The first time I took Claire to the school to drop something off for Matthew she shut down so it made me realize that we needed to start talking about the fact that she would be going to school and it is a lot of fun. From that night forward she was excited about school and would tell everyone how many days were left in the school countdown. The night before her first day she realized that she was, in fact, going to school when she saw me picking out her clothes for the next day. She started telling me that she didn't want to go to school but I told her how much fun it was. Yea, that tactic didn't work all that well.

Day 1
The next morning she woke up happy and was excited to get dressed and eat breakfast and was even excited to see the school saying "Claire, school!" when we pulled up. We dropped off her enrollment paperwork and I took her down to the classroom. We met her teacher who showed her around the classroom and was more than accommodating to let me stay in the classroom for as long as needed. Claire settled in and started her morning worksheet and then joined the class on the carpet to do calendar and story time. Just as I was thinking ‘this was too easy, she’s doing great!” I could hear her sniffling. When she sat down for story time I was no longer in her line of sight and she thought I’d left. This set the tone for the rest of the day. I joined her on the carpet and reassured her that I was not leaving; she got better but remained very quiet. I stayed with her through lunch and recess but once they got started on new activities in the classroom I decided it was time that I leave. I could stay all day but that wouldn’t make the next day any easier; eventually I had to leave and see how she did.

From what I hear she was pretty upset all afternoon. She cried and refused to do much of anything. They brought Emily down to her room who initially helped comfort her but then when Claire got upset again Emily did so as well. Emily is very protective and has taken her sister role very seriously so having Claire be upset made her upset as well. The counselor came and took her on a walk around the school and I think that helped a lot. She was very happy to see me when I returned and even jumped up and down saying "Claire happy happy!" but I noticed something throughout the evening. Claire will usually say "I love you" many times a day and that day she would not. Even when I would tell her that I loved her she responded with silence; that just broke my heart.
Later that evening she got quiet and said "school tomorrow?" and responded back very excited "yes, it will be fun!" and she said no, followed by "Claire no happy."

Day 2
Before school I had Claire pick out a necklace to wear and she picked one with hearts on it. I pointed to each heart and said "Mommy loves you" and told her she could look at her necklace when she got sad. She fully understood that because once we were at school she pointed to her necklace and repeated "mommy loves you.' I didn't plan on staying in her classroom because I had an appointment to be at. I went in her room with her and helped her get her stuff put away but when she got seated and I told her I was going to go she started crying. I told her many times that I would be back and then I left. The counselor checked in on her several times and then called to give me an update after lunch. She said Claire calmed down but didn't engage for awhile but then decided to participate and from then on she had a great day. When I arrived to bring her home she was happy and told me "mommy, me playground 3 times!" and then showed me her good character stickers for the day. Later that evening she again said she didn't want to go to school the next day.

Day 3
I did the same thing as the day before- walk her in and help her get settled before leaving. She held onto my coat this time and got a little more upset than the day before. It sounds like she didn't engage any quicker than the day before but once she joined in she had a great day.

Day 4
I was hoping to walk Claire to her classroom and let her go into the room and put her stuff away without me because starting on Monday I plan on using the drop off lane instead of walking her to her room. This didn't quite go as planned. Instead of putting her stuff away, getting seated and then starting to cry she latched onto my arm immediately and refused to do anything. I kissed her several times, told her I would not leave her and that I will be back, and then I left. When I came back at the end of the day her teacher said she had a great day. The counselor reassured me that even though it seems like it is getting harder for her to separate from me that it is actually normal. She said most kids get a little bit worse before getting better because after a day or two they realize how long the day is. Today she brought home artwork and papers and was very excited to show us her work. When J asked her today if she had fun at school she said yes.

Misc. Tib-bits
*We made the decision to put Claire in kindergarten. Age wise she would be in 1st grade if she started kindergarten at 5 years old. If we had half the school year left I probably would have put her in first grade but with only one quarter left in the year we really had to think ahead and having her ready for 2nd grade in only 3 months (they start school in July here) seemed like a much bigger jump than ready for 1st grade. I homeschooled her for a month and was able to bring her to the equivalent level of 4th quarter kindergartners so I am a bit worried that once she is fluent in English and reading she might be bored. But, a bigger worry was that she'll always be behind and struggling. Before enrolling her I spoke with the principal who reassured me that moving Claire up a grade would not be a problem if it appears that we didn't make the right decision. With that peace of mind I decided that kindergarten would be the best place for her now.

*The school has been absolutely amazing with Claire's transition. The counselor even took the time to visit with me and ask for tips because she wanted to handle Claire differently than normal separation anxiety. She understood that her situation was different because Claire truly thinks I am leaving her there and not coming back since that it is her history. Everyone at the school has gone above and beyond to make Claire feel safe and welcomed and reassured her that Mommy is coming back. Since we move often we have been in several schools and I know beyond a shadow of doubt things would not have been handled so well in past schools; another visible God moment in our journey.

*I've packed Claire's lunch each day because I'm not ready to have her tackle the lunch line and choices yet. I have packed her thermos a couple of days, one day was fried rice and today I put vegetable lo mein. She was excited to see that I packed noodles for her. My hope is that she has something familiar and comforting at lunch to help with all the different things in her day right now.

*We had to make a decision of putting Claire in a different school within our district to receive ELL (English language learners) classes or put her in our school with Emily and Matthew and forgo the ELL. We made the decision, along with the principal's support, that she would be better served in our school with her siblings than in a different school with ELL. In the first few days at school this has proved to be the right decision. Claire has seen Matthew and Emily several times during the day and tells me after school that she saw them. She's seen Matthew after lunch and on the playground and she spotted Emily outside during a fire drill. I told the counselor that walking Claire by their classroom to show her that they are still there might be comforting to her so she has done that. I know this has helped Claire because she knows she's not alone in the school. Today Emily came out of her classroom and talked with her in the hall and reassured her that I would be coming back.

*With the increase in English that Claire is speaking we have noticed a sharp decrease in her mandarin. Last night she could only write the characters for 1-5 whereas before she could write up to 10. When we asked her to count to ten in mandarin (we started with e, er, sahn 123) she counted up to 5 and then stopped and looked around. My heart broke. We counted to ten in mandarin and after a couple of times she spit it out just as quickly as she did in China. I know it's too much to expect her to maintain both, especially when she isn't with mandarin speaking people every day but it is still sad not hearing her talking freely in mandarin. My hope is that having 7 years of mandarin in her brain before learning English she will be able to pick it up later in life if she chooses. Most children stop speaking mandarin all together and won't even talk to other Chinese people after being home for awhile. We still use mandarin words for quite a few things mixed in with our normal speech. She knows the English word and Chinese word for many things now, so if we say beeng jee leeng she knows we are talking about ice cream. When we say the mandarin words for the colors she usually responds back in English. I think it's amazing that she can translate in her head at only 7 years old.

*One cute thing- Thursday was library day so Claire came home with two books that she checked out. When I took them out of her backpack she was excited to show me the front cover. It had an illustration with an Asian man and Claire pointed to him and said "something something China!" Then she flipped to the back and showed me that it had instructions for making origami birds. I asked her if the teacher helped her find the book of if she found it and she said she had found it by herself. We want to maintain her Chinese heritage and raise her to be proud of being Chinese so it made me happy to see she sought out a book with an Asian subject and illustrations.

Once again, I got bit by the blogger bug and posted a bunch in one day. Keep scrolling down until things start looking familiar.


Claire, hard at work figuring up how much my groceries are going to cost.

It's going to cost you an arm, leg and everything between, but no worries; I have a credit card!

This is the look I get many times when I point a camera in her direction. She is quick too, I'll try to act like I'm not taking her picture and she'll smile and then bam, I push the button and get this.

Princess YaYa

All the little girly things that we saved from Emily's younger days are being put to great use. Here is Princess YaYa taking a break from her princess work to play a little Dora on the Leapster.

Dora

Claire loves Dora the Explorer. We ordered Dora in Chinese off of eBay before our travels but unfortunately they did not arrive before we left due to a lost shipment. We made it through China fine without them but I would recommend getting them and taking them with you because Dora is a big deal in China. Claire knew the theme song and every thing so having Dora in Chinese was very familiar to her at home. The words that would be in Spanish are in English in the Chinese version. In fact, we've figured out that the phrases that Claire could say when we arrived weren't from any tutoring but rather from Dora. We aren't even sure if she had any tutoring at all and they probably had fun with our $150 and just made up the spreadsheet of "lessons" to make us feel better.

We had saved this Dora dollhouse for many years, in fact probably 5 or 6 years. Nobody has played with it and J has urged me many times to sell it in a yard sale but I held onto it for some reason. Maybe it was God working long ago to keep that Dora dollhouse in our house because Claire absolutely loves it. It has been great watching her play "house" and seeing that she knows how houses are set up and how family members interact.
Ignore that laundry basket in the first photo; I was trying to accomplish chores while she played!

Bits of randomness

Yesterday I took Claire to a doctor who specializes in foreign adoption medicine. She will do a very thorough post-placement exam and then pass the recommendations onto your regular pediatrician who usually isn't up to par on issues seen in children adopted internationally. The doctor was wonderful and spent nearly two hours with us going over every.little.thing. The end of the visit brought tears though because Claire needed to have blood drawn to check her immunity levels for vaccinations given to her in China and many other tests to check her overall health. Thankfully the phlebotomist was very quick and accurate and it only took one stick. Still though, she was public enemy #1 and I was #2.

One concern from the visit was Claire has lost 3 lbs since coming home. On a child who only started out at 42 lbs that is nearly 10% of her body weight. She is constantly hungry and I am constantly feeding her so I was very surprised to see that she not only didn't gain any weight but actually lost so much. We will continue to feed her every time she says she is hungry and monitor her weight. The doctor said she sounded like a child with a high metabolism (she never stops moving!) so that combined with the stress of this transition probably has her body in overdrive. With time it should get better and until then we will shovel as much high calorie, healthy food as we can into this tiny girl.

Claire is pretty used to Toby now; I've even heard her say several times "I love you, Toby." When we leave the house she is person that locks Toby into his bed. At first I laughed because I think she enjoyed it a bit too much but now she blows him a kiss and tells him he's a "good boy." She has to be the person that runs upstairs and unlocks his crate when we get home too; although she doesn't have much competition for this job because the other three kids usually fight over who has to do it. The neighbor has a big dog who ran over here over the weekend when we were outside. She completely freaked out and started screaming so she definitely has a fear of dogs still.; J jokes that she just tolerates Toby because he doesn't go away.

She is learning so much English every day. Today I heard her say "mommy, come here!" and I followed it up with "please?" so she repeated it with a please. Now I've heard "mommy, come here please!" all day. I guess she's making sure I get the exercise I keep saying I need.
The doctor yesterday told us that most kids are age appropriate in conversational English in 6 months. That just shows how incredibly resilient and amazing children are!

After the trip to the school that upset Claire I realized that we needed to start talking about Claire going to school in the near future. She needed to know (in her limited understanding) that she wasn't going to stay home with mom forever and that she would be going to school with Emily and Matthew. So, that day after the kids were home from school we got out the calendar and wrote "Claire School!" on March 23rd. She's been counting down the days since then with excitement and when we went to the school this morning to check out the book fair she said "Claire school?" so I think she understands and she seems excited.

Homeschooling-
I have spent many hours with Claire working on ABCs, numbers, shapes, colors, phonics, etc. She is doing remarkably well. She can now say the entire alphabet and can recognize almost half of them visually. We work on the sound of the letters and with the help of catchy Leap Frog songs she's starting to catch onto phonics. We count to 30 a lot but she also knows the numbers by recognition up to 100 and I've heard her count on her own into the 60's. She knows and can recall the shapes circle, square, oval, triangle, rectangle and sometimes diamond. She can do addition up to 10 but I haven't tried subtraction. She can write her name without being told the letters and she can recognize that 'Claire' is her name and will say it out loud. She knows the seasons winter and summer and we're working on spring and fall. She knows that winter is cold and summer is hot. When we ask her what is winter she wrap her arms around herself and say "I'ma cold" and then fan herself saying "I'ma hot" when we say summer; she is such a ham!

A funny from today:
We ran to Walgreens to get more lotion for her skin. The doctor thinks the itchiness of her skin is related to allergies of some kind and recommended that we lotion her up twice a day to keep it hydrated. While there she found a cash register in the toy aisle and did her "Claire?" and point the cart. I told her no and then saw it was clearanced to $5 and thought it would help me teach her about money so I changed my mind and let her get it. We've played with it a lot today but the funniest thing was when she showed me the total and it was something like 193828192 and I responded with "Oh my goodness, I don't have that much money!" She excitedly ran back to the cash register, pulled out the credit card and smiled. One swipe of the card and the total was 0. What a great teaching...not! So I told her "oh honey, we don't use credit cards in this house, unless it involves a trip to China."

When we first got home I had intentions of posting a picture of Claire every day so we could look back and see her changes in the first year. Yea, that lasted all of about 4 days and then Meme went home and real life took hold. I do have pictures from most days so I'm really going to try and get them uploaded.

Grief

Imagine having the same caregiver for over 6 years and then suddenly being taken from them, given to people who do not speak your language, being told you have a new mom and dad and then leaving your country with people who are basically strangers. I think it's safe to assume that none of us would be cool with the idea. Everything that has happened to Claire is equivalent to someone dying and that person would be like her mom; grief is sure to follow.

We only saw Claire get upset and ask for her nai nai (grandma) once, after that initial day, while we were in China. This was the afternoon of her vaccinations when she was tired and not feeling well. It didn't last long but it was a window into what we would probably see more of at home, and we have.

A few days ago Emily printed out a dot-to-dot for each of them to complete. Claire finished hers and I asked her if she wanted to color it; she told me no. I didn't push the issue and went upstairs to get ready. I came back down and the pictures were colored and I told her how great it looked. She was mad, very grumpy and pouty so I asked what was wrong. She didn't say anything and then went upstairs and sat on her bed crying. I followed her and held her on my lap. She eventually stopped crying but was still very withdrawn. Then Emily came upstairs and she was very upset as well. It seems that Claire got upset when Emily tried to show her what color the giraffe should be colored. I tried to tell Emily that it probably had nothing to do with her coloring on Claire's paper but something else. It could have been that she colored with her grandma or she saw giraffes at the zoo with her grandma and this brought back the memory, or it might have been as the oldest child in her foster family she was in charge and never had someone else show her how to do something. We will probably never know but I think it's safe to assume that it was definitely grief.

Today, Claire and I ran some errands. Our first stop was the school because Matthew forgot his lunch. On the way there I stopped rather quickly when a light changed red. I looked back at Claire and she gave me a very dirty look and was not happy with me. Then at the school I asked her if she wanted to go to school and she told me no. I stayed excited and told her she gets to go here in 20something days and again she said no.
After that we needed to run to Sams Club. Before leaving the house I fed her a banana because she told me she was hungry but after the school she told me she was hungry again. I found some goldfish in a baggy from a few days earlier and gave those to her. She didn't say anything or eat them before getting to Sams Club (she likes them because she has eaten before). When we got there and I opened the door she burst out in tears, just sobbing and uttered one word- nai nai.
I unbuckled her, held onto her and let her cry; there isn't really much you can say but I told her I loved her and "I know." She withdrew so much that she took off the crocheted hat that she had on. I gave it to her yesterday after Emily had one on and told her I made it. Yesterday her eyes lit up when she realized I made it for her but today she didn't want it on, at all. That was her way of putting up a wall, I think.

We perused around Sams Club; I got her a pretzel because she was hungry and she perked up a bit. Then, when almost home she started singing songs in Chinese. If she's happy when she's singing she enjoys entertaining people but if she starts singing when she's quiet and withdrawing it means she's about to start crying. I'm not sure if singing when she's sad brings China back to her or if she is trying to win our love or approval by singing because maybe she was told to? I don't know. Upon pulling into the driveway she started to get upset and I looked back to see the "I'm about to vomit" face. I hurriedly got her out of the van and she proceeded to vomit in the yard. I'm still not 100% convinced that her vomiting is motion sickness. We've given her medicine a few times since getting home but we've driven almost every day. She's only vomited twice in the car and today and both times were when she got quiet; today was worse though. I don't know if the vomiting is something she does when she's upset or if the stress brings on the motion sickness.

One thing I do know is that it will get better. This time she went 5 days in between grief episodes and from reading stories of other older adopted children the episodes should get spaced farther and farther apart the longer she is home. Right now when thinking about her grandma she gets sad and just like grieving the death of a loved one, eventually she will remember China and her grandma with a good feeling rather than a sad feeling.

Pizza

She loves pizza and gets very excited when she sees it. She even calls it by the English name, although it sounds more like peesa when she says it.

dolls

Big, long update on the post before this one.

She plays with dolls much more than Emily did. Here is she is trying to keep her baby happy with toys and then strapping them onto her back; something she probably saw often in China. It is a very good sign that she knows how to play with dolls. This means she saw babies cared for in a loving way and was hopefully she was cared for in the same manner when she was a baby.

so, how is she doing?

Question of my life right now, but I understand because everyone does want to know how she is doing. So here is an update in random thought form to fill all of you in.

Sleeping-
She slept with us while we were in China which we were supportive of and really hoped she's be open to because it helps promote attachment. The first night with us she crawled up in the middle of the bed, parked herself there and stayed there for the next two weeks. But, she's a bed hog and in a king size bed she took up over half of it. Before our trip I had planned to have her sleep with us at home as well and then transition her to a bed in our room before moving her to her shared room with Emily. After two weeks with Miss Bed Hog I began to rethink that idea. The first two nights at home she slept on an elevated twin mattress next to our bed and then the third night she wanted to sleep in her room with Emily so we moved the mattress in there. She slept on the mattress next to Emily's bed (the bottom bunk) for 4 nights and then last night she wanted to sleep on the top bunk. She slept there all night without any issues so I think we'll put the air mattress away today. I was a bit worried about bedtime at home because in China she got upset if we weren't both in bed with her to fall asleep. But, having the other kids with a set bedtime routine has helped and we haven't had any problems.

Food-
She eats all.the.time. I'm trying to figure out if she is truly hungry or just likes to snack all the time. I know they eat smaller meals more frequently in China so I'm trying to keep that in mind. I'm also trying to feed her snacks that are more protein instead of carbs so I know she's getting food that should hold her for a longer period of time.
She's an adventurous eater; much more so than I would be, or was in China. She will try anything we give her but if she doesn't like it she'll wave her hands in front of her plate and say "all done." She tried goulash and didn't like it but then last night ate an entire plate of mini ravioli and sauce which is basically the same thing. We have frozen fried rice and dumplings in the freezer as a back-up but we haven't had to use them all that much. I will still make her some egg fried rice at breakfast because that is her favorite.

School-
Our school is year round so after every quarter they have a 3 week break. 9 weeks on, 3 weeks off and then a 6 week summer. The next cycle breaks starts in 2 weeks so it is silly for us to enroll her in school only to have a break right after starting. If there wasn't the cycle break coming up so soon I would rethink my 5-8 weeks of home time before enrolling in school. This would be very dependent on each child but for Claire I think school would be a very good thing. She is wearing me out with her eagerness to learn. It is wonderful and I'm really not complaining but she wants to do the home school stuff all day and I want to take it a bit slower so she actually processes what I'm teaching and doesn't get overwhelmed. I think the challenge of school and changing of activities will be good for her. If she sits too long she starts to get a grumpy attitude so I've found occasional trips to Target to be therapeutic, for me and her but probably more for me.
So far she's learned:
number recognition up to 25 (thank you dot-to-dot!) I'm also working on the word recognition of the numbers up to ten so she knows that 'one' is the number 1, etc.
counting up to 30
primary and secondary colors
ABC's- she can almost sing the whole song and we're working on letter recognition right now. She can recognize some of the letters but I want her to be able to recognize the letters before moving into phonics.
shapes- we started shapes today. She remembered a few them right away but it is something we'll continue to work on for immediate recognition. I'm working on the word for the shapes at the same time so she'll recognize 'circle' as the shape of a circle.
addition- She can add every thing in the 1's family (1+2, 1+3, etc.) and I even started on mixed numbers up to 10 (2+3. 5+2, etc.). She has to think about it but she usually gets them right.
names for the basic body parts


English-
I'm not sure if she really comprehends the words she's using but she is using more and more English every day. She is like a parrot and repeats most of what we say. Once she's heard or said the word for an object a few times she remembers it and will usually call it by its English name after that. She understand a lot of what we say and what she doesn't we will show her or motion with our hands. She still talks in mandarin to us (but not as much as in China) and it's really not too difficult to figure out what she's talking about. We can pick out mandarin words from what she's saying and can piece it together with her hand motions. She'll answer questions with yes or no now but in conversation will still say "boo sure" which is no. The Memory game has been great for language because I say, and she repeats, the name of all the cards when we flip them over. She's come up to me several times today with a memory card and told me what it is in English.
A couple of days ago she was being funny so I said "You're a silly girl" and she said "no, Mommy's a silly girl." She thinks that is funny because we laugh so she now interchanges the name for whoever she's talking to. She later said "Daddy's a silly girl" so we then had a lesson on boy and girl. We used the mandarin for boy and girl (nahn-wren and new-wren) and then the English- boy and girl. She understood very quickly and now calls everyone by the correct gender in English.
She loves Skype and asks to call people. Yesterday and today she looked at me and said "Nana, telephone?" so we had to call Nana. J's mom graciously agreed to stay with us a couple days after we got home and Claire took right to her. She's asked for Meme several times since she left.

The dog-
She has come a long way from that first night home and introduction to Toby. She doesn't like to be startled by him and she's not real cool with him being right next to her but she's a lot better and doesn't want him in his crate all day. He's been so good with her too. It's like he knows she's scared and he treats her differently than every one else. He's never jumped up on her or gotten close to her without one of us right there. He won't go up or down the steps if she's on them (one thing she really doesn't like) and has never been hyper around her. She has pet him a few times while I hold him and she loves to throw his toys for him to fetch. I think she'll eventually grow to love him as much as the other kids but it is just going to take some time.

The other kids-
Just like bringing home a newborn, this is an adjustment. They have handled it with great love and patience (for the most part) and accepted her beautifully. They love to teach her words in English. I think they might be experiencing a little bit of attention overwhelmness (is that a word? spellcheck says no) like I have. You go from doing your own thing for the most part to someone needing/wanting your attention all the time and it's a bit of an adjustment.

Really, it is very much like bringing a newborn into the house. I know she's 7 and has different needs than a newborn but it is a very constant need for caring and attention. It is an adjustment for all; not necessarily in a bad way but just an adjustment. We'll get into a groove soon and just like with a newborn, we can't imagine our life without her now that she's here.

6 Days home

And she's already completing addition worksheets! I got some Fruit Loops out to use as manipulatives but she didn't need them much. She does have a hard time with 0 but J told me they don't use 0 in China so that makes sense that she seems very confused on that.