Six Months!

Lucy has been living with us for six months as of today, December 5. To celebrate, I got gobs of take out Chinese food for all of us. Her fortune cookie read, "Your greatest traits are your courage and eagerness." How true that cookie is! She astounds me sometimes with both her courage and eagerness. She loves going to mom-tot gymnastics and so many so many new tasks she has been asked to do, she did with caution the first day and now she is fearless, enthusiastic and very successful - like jumping on a trampoline or into a foam pit or even swinging on a trapeze. Even her understanding of the teacher's words were limited, but now she's raising her hand when asked for volunteers to go first, or explaining to a boy that he has cut in line.

Her English is 80% of what Lorna's was at the same age. Yesterday, she asked, "did you like that, mommy?" Now, the ESL teacher in me recognizes her ability to use helping verbs to form a question - very advanced, the ability to put the question into the past tense and the social ability to ask someone's preferences. She knows the abc song, can sing twinkle, twinkle, can count and is starting to recognize letters. On the flip side, her Chinese is vanishing. We've started listening to some Chinese language tapes while driving around town. Every once in a while she will repeat after the tape with obvious fluency and perfect mandarin tones, but mostly it's Kai who's most vocal in the back seat. (Lorna says it's too hard, but I gotta say that Kai is pretty good!) I'd love to try to find a kid-friendly Mandarin tutor, but will watch how it affects her emotionally. I just want her to keep some of her birth culture if she's up for it too!

But the biggest change for Miss Lucy has probably been to adjust to living with a family. She knows how to be heard - that's a polite way of saying that she can be a very loud 25 pounds - but she must have had to be pretty scrappy in the orphanage. She sometimes comes to me whining and I ask what she needs, she now say's, "just lovin', momma." That I can do! She's been easy to fall in love with. We are so lucky!