10 days home

We've been home for 10 days now and Lucy's beginning to get into the routine of life with a family, life with her own "stuff" and living Boulder. She really has done so well that I sometimes forget that she spent her first 3 years in an orphanage with minimal food, stimulation and one caregiver for 22 kids.

In pictures of Lucy's orphanage and in Will's observation, Lucy has been exposed to so little nature. Everything at the orphanage was tiled, the outdoor play area, which was very small, was concrete and there were just a few landscaping shrubs. In these ten days, I've been watching a child learn about the natural world. She's becoming more curious in the garden, is fascinated by dandelion poufs, and is becoming daily more confident walking through tall grasses down at the neighborhood schoolyard where we walk and sometimes build fairy houses. For the past three days she has come with me to drop Lorna at horse camp where she has seen huge horses, goats, donkeys, wild rabbits and big open spaces of horse country. We had a baby deer in our yard one morning and she saw a fox who went right in front of the card yesterday. Her new words this week include, tree, mountain, goat, bunny, deer (and "I love you"). What must this new relationship to the natural world mean for a child? Is it causing paradigm shifts in her world view already? What would it mean for her peers at the orphanage to never know this?

We've also been seeing some of the food issues we'd been warned about. She sometimes eats and eats and eats and I know she doesn't feel well at the end of it. Sunday, she was clutching this sesame ball thing that I got for her at the Asian market for about an hour without taking a bite. It was getting pretty gross so I took it from her gently. Big tantrum. The first one, and it was a gut - wrenching yell. I quickly put the ball in a baggie and gave it back to her to hold. In about 5 minutes, she was ok. But again an important reminder of where this amazing child lived for her first three years. I hope she learns soon that there will always be enough food and as her language improves we can show her where there will always be healthy snacks for her. It just breaks my heart!

One of the biggest challenges has been her fear of the dogs. Just today, I noticed that she walked right by both of them without a second thought - she's probably never petted a dog before and, if it's like Thailand, many dogs were rabid and children were told they were dangerous.

Kai is picking up some of Lucy's Cantonese expressions. No is something like "may-o" and Kai has switched from "no" to "may-o". Lucy says "car", like Kai's Bostonian accent, "Kai". They're creating their own language!

Tonight she kissed and hugged each family member and said "i love you". She's just a gem!