As you may recall, yesterday ended in some tears. Totally normal and certainly not unexpected. Lin was awake in the night from about 2:30 to 4:30am. I'm pretty sure Ruby woke her up. Ruby has a tendency to cry out in her sleep (aka Sleep Terror, although I think "terror" is a pretty strong word) and it can be pretty loud at times. So I think that's what woke Lin out of bed. Hopefully either Ruby's sleep terrors settle down soon, or Lin learns to sleep through them, or a combination of the two.
Anyways, we were up. We spent the time quietly putting index-card labels on much of the furniture and the doors of the different rooms. She needs to get used to seeing English-language words so that she can learn to read them. Then I made some index-card flash cards with the words for different feelings: Happy, Sad, Mad, Scared, and Tired. We went through them, and after each one I told her it was OK to feel that way. I think she understood me. Then, after a couple games of Go Fish she told me she was tired and wanted to go back to sleep.
This morning when the whole household was up, and after a breakfast of Ramen noodles, we headed out to both the grocery store and the Asian grocery store around the corner. Mostly we just got stuff for our dinner tonight, but we did pick up a few snacks as well. Lin was pretty quiet, even in the Asian store, and after a quick snack back at home she took a nap.
I had to wake up the poor girl to take her to a doctor's appointment at 3:00. From 3:00 - 5:00 was the low point of the day. Lin was completely exhausted but had to endure the exam plus a trip to the lab to have blood drawn, all without understanding a word of what was being said around her. By the times we left she seemed to be either on the verge of tears or sleep, whichever came first. I felt so awful for her, and there was very little I could do to communicate this except to put my arm around her and say "I'm your mother and I love you" in Chinese. I at least got a smile out of her when I said this.
And then we got home and it was dinnertime and this was when the day really turned around! She helped Dave cook and man, what a treat! As I sat at the table, with Ruby on my lap, watching my new daughter cook dinner with my husband, it just really felt right. And she seemed to really enjoy herself. She could easily have walked through the door, gone straight to her room and shut us out for the rest of the day. But she didn't. This girl is truly amazing. As we sat down to dinner I pointed around the table at all of us, looked Lin in the eye, and said "Family."
Cooking with Dad. The droplets you see is evidence of all the steam in the air!
First family dinner
Being goofy, cleaning up the dishes.
Lin and Dave, mugging for the camera here, enjoyed playing Connect 4 after dinner. Ruby enjoyed drinking her Jelly Juice.
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