Cow, Car, Cat

Or, to be complete, "Cow - Moo Moo! Car - Voom Voom! Cat - Yeow!"

Dalia is talking up a storm. From the instant she wakes, she makes words and sounds. Every morning, the first sounds I hear could be:
"Foot"
"Eye"
"Hi"
"Ge Ge (pronounced "Guh Guh") - which means "older brother." Usually, she says "Ge Ge, HehYee" (Henry) all at once.
"Gar?" asking for Garfield, our cat
"Chahk" (sock)
Or, whispering, "Ba Ba" or "Gah Gah" (Daddy)

Tonight, when she was having her bottle before falling asleep, she had several glugs, then, "Owl - Hoo Hoo" every 3 minutes or so til the bottle fell out of her mouth and she conked out.

What's amazing is she can also now see pictures of the things she has words for and say the words in the book.

This morning, we read the book "The Kissing Hand" about a Mama and a baby raccoon. Yesterday, I wore a t-shirt with a cartoonish raccoon on it. As we read the book today, she perfected her version of the word, "HaaCooo(n)".

Sometimes I use words in English and then use the Chinese word. Tonight, I said, "those flowers are so pretty." She said, "Kai Yah", which is her version for the Chinese word for "pretty," "piao liang." My bilingual baby. Maybe it was an accident; I don't think so.

This afternoon while walking around the many soccer fields at the Tree Farm in Essex, with Dalia in the backpack, where Calder had a game and Tal was coaching, out of the blue I hear "Haacoo(n)!" Over and over. Not sure why she was thinking about raccoons -- or she just felt like making the sound.

As Calder played his game and I and others cheered for him, she became more adept with his name and yelled it out very loudly, "Cah Guh!"

I could go on and on, obviously!

Calder plays soccer on a club team called Synergy that practices up in Shelburne. He is #6 on the U13 team (i.e. 13 and under) with mostly 13 year olds even though he is 12. Since he's been with the club for 3 years, we know the families and the kids well. Tal, especially, since he helps coach. Today after the game, the Synergy U13 parents brought a beautiful chocolate cake with white frosting, and "Welcome Dalia" on the top -- to officially welcome our little treasure to the U.S. and the "Synergy Nation." They also gave her an adorable sherbert colored (white with pastel pink, blue, yellow, green arms, legs, and hands with white paws) bear from the Vermont Teddy Bear Company. The bear is wearing a white t-shirt with a Synergy patch on the front, and on the back is stitched "Dalia - U2". We named Dalia captain of the Synergy 2 and under team!! This box that her brothers are carrying her in the photo is the teddy bear box. Thanks, Synergy!

She is doing well. I haven't written recently as time has been limited, playing with her and watching her all day -- a joy -- doing 1-2 hours of work a day, and the other stuff of home. Just exhausted. Two weeks ago she had a very high fever which turned out to be related to an ear infection. She had been tugging at her ears for weeks. She was prescribed Amoxycillin. 24 hours later she was covered in spots and huge red blotches. We are learning about which class of antibiotics she can take; and yes, I am keeping a list. Thank you Cousin/Doctor Susan for taking a look at the spot photos over the internet on Saturday night!

Tal and Henry completed the 9th grade hiking trip on the Long Trail for 3 days and had glorious weather almost the whole time; no snow this year. Ralph and Ginger return to Vermont on Tuesday, which will allow me to return to work part-time until Tal finishes school.

Oh, our other news is that a beaver has moved into our lower pond. While extremely cute, and huge, he has also already taken large chunks out of one of the beautiful birch trees. . . Hopefully by next posting, Mr. Beaver will have moved.

country girl, city girl

Dalia, Grandma Patty and I went to Boston last weekend to attend a workshop for people considering adopting Special Needs/Waiting Children from China sponsored by China Adoption With Love, our adoption agency in Brookline. Even though I would be one of a few parents who had adopted a special needs child, and it was a long way to drive... I really wanted to give back to our agency in this way and at least try to provide -- through sharing my story, our story, and dalia's story, not to mention bringing her along in person! I also just wanted Lillian, the woman who founded CAWLI (and is in the photo) to meet Dalia. And I wanted Dalia to hear some "real Chinese" from Lillian. Indeed, Lillian saw Dalia, called her Dong Ling, and said, "Guai Guai" - which means something like "Oh, good little girl." (lit. "obedient"). And then when we were taking photos, Lillian told Dong Ling to look at Mama, which she did (in another photo) -- hearing Lillian speak sounded so clear and beautiful to me, and, I imagine to Dalia. I wish that Dalia could be hearing "real" Chinese every day rather than mine.

Before traveling to China, I drove to CAWLI to go over our paperwork with Lillian. She came into the room, sat down, looked at me very seriously and said, "Dong Ling. Very smart." I thought, oh, yeah, that's what she tells everyone. But, Lillian said that the orphanage director in Tianshui had told her this. And when we met Dong Ling/ Dalia, we agreed!

At the workshop, there was a little girl, aged 3, who was brought home with hepatitis B who now shows no signs of the disease. She is definately thriving. There was another little girl aged 5 who was only brought back to the U.S. 3 months ago. This girl has cleft lip and palate. Her speech is obviously challenged. At one point, her Mom said her Chinese name, and she happily repeated her name out loud a few times and pointed to herself. She also spoke some English words. Like Dalia, she hasn't had her palate repaired yet. Another little boy was adopted 3 years ago at 3 years of age. He walked into the workshop wearing a white Tae Kwon Do uniform with a sash and patches. The attendees were in all stages of the process -- one couple had accepted a referral of a 6 year old girl and will be traveling to China soon; another couple have a Chinese daughter already and would like to adopt a second child, and others considering a Special Needs/waiting Child. One woman asked me who stayed with my boys when Dalia had her surgery.... I said, "well, they are my stepsons, so they were probably at their Mom's." She has a five-year-old son. An appropriate question.

All the while Dalia was either standing in front of the group, looking at everyone and tossing back her water out of a bottle, walking over to the other kids and getting real close, playing with their toys or offering hers, talking, or running up and down the hall with Grandma Patty. It was a joy to be there. My heart and mind hurt for the families sitting in those chairs.

The day before, Grandma Patty, Dalia and I spent the afternoon in the Boston Public Garden, walking around, looking at the flowers, listening to the fiddle players, the saxophonists, dancing, and riding on the Swan Boats. Dalia was absolutely ecstatic about the live ducks and would exclaim, loudly, "ohhhhhh!" whenever she saw one. Followed by her version of "quack quack" and waddling around on the ground. Spent a lot of time at the "make way for ducklings" sculpture of the mama duck (which Grandma sat on top of) and the 8 baby ducks. Visited our friends and their two new beautiful twin daughters. Dalia was the big girl!

We came home Saturday afternoon to Baba and Ge Ge (daddy and brothers). Sunday we went hiking -- Dalia in the pack -- to Lake Pleiad in the Green Mountains at the Snow Bowl. Dalia stripped down and played in the water; brother Henry found a red epht, brother Calder fished a newt out of the Lake. She does love being in nature and running around. Welcome, Summer for Dalia!

snowy april 28

Last Tuesday and Wednesday, we had 10-12 inches of beautiful, thick white snow!! It was beautiful to see the bright green leaves and grass (eventually totally covered by snow) contrasted with the white, to hear the springtime birds still singing in a winter setting. We lost power on Wednesday but had great time. I made a fire, boiled water on the woodstove and made Dalia's soup on the wood stove. I dressed her in her thick, padded Chinese "OK" pants and red padded sweatshirt with the Russian writing on it, and a hat. I made a snow man, she ate a lot of snow. Here are some photos.