Tuesday, March 9, 2010
MONTHS NINE AND TEN

In January we got back to school and Lily is doing extremely well. She is reading now and loves to write. She has started writing little notes to me and they are so sweet. The typical note will say: Mommy I Love You then followed by many adjectives such as sweet, good, great, funny etc. She is really helping boost my self esteem! She just loves the attention I give her when she reads and writes so she wants to do it all the time. No arguments here! She continues to have excellent behavior in school and gets a sticker every day.

Her language is good but with such a heavy accent her pronunciation needs work. It is something we work hard on. I have started to make her repronounce a word if she does it poorly. Her most common problem is leaving off the end of a word. But even with that she does remarkably well with English. She still has retained some of her Chinese but refuses to talk or read in Chinese around us. I know she does though because I find written Chinese all over her room and the other night I could hear her singing Chinese songs in her room after I put her to bed.

In February we celebrated her first Valentine’s Day and our first Chinese New Year together. For Valentines we had a special family dinner. Lily had spent a weekend at Papa and Granny’s house and had bought and wrapped little gifts for everyone. The neatest part was that each gift was so personal and it showed she knew exactly what we liked. It was very special; she is such a thoughtful child. For the New Year we got together with some new friends in a nearby town. They all have large families like us and have several adopted children from China. They are truly inspiring families and we had a great time. We did crafts, ate Chinese Food and the kids played outside.

Also in February Lily finally got to see snow. We got the eighth largest snow ever on February 12th and she had a ball. As much as she can’t stand to be cold it didn’t hold her back one bit. She played and played, building a snowman, throwing snowballs and just running around and jumping in it. I was so happy she got to see snow for the first time with us.

At this point I feel like we have reached a true new normal with Lily. She is such a joy to have around and is so bubbly. She is so attached to us and is so thoughtful. We have fallen into a routine with her that rarely gets thrown off. She occasionally has crying spells that prove frustrating but we are trying hard to figure out the best way to handle them. They can last anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. We have really had to pray for patience and guidance on how to handle them. When she decides she’s done she crawls in my lap and lets me rock her until she calms down. For now that is all I can do, I look to her for the cue that she is done. We are learning that the way we handle things with her is very different than the way we handled them with the boys. Her whole family has fallen madly in love with her and as Noah said just the second day she was home “I couldn’t ask for a better sister (and daughter), Lily is awesome.”