Our daughter of FOUR months...

4 months.
Can it be?
The anniversaries seem to come faster and faster.
I look at other people's blogs who are adopting from the Hunan province, and when I see that room at the Civil Affairs office, the familiar wooden benches with the narrow slats, the room off to the side with its circular table, I feel...hmmmmm..... longing and a sense of entitlement. It is MY room. Where I met MY daughter. Where MY life changed. Where our FAMILY changed. A lot. It compares to laying in that hospital bed cradling my newborn sons and daughter, and that moment is forever etched into my memory.
But life doesn't happen in a hospital room or in a Civil Affairs office.
Life with Nina happens HERE, every day.
Some days are so fun, so fulfilling, and I'm happy to have followed the Lord's leading to China.
Others are draining, I'm impatient, and I'm wondering if I'm really cut out to parent five young children.
Welcome to parenthood.
And to grace.
Adopting Nina has been a dream come true. Not in a sense of it being more valuable than having had our biological children. Far from that. But in a sense of something coming to fullfillment that the Lord planted in my heart more than 20 years ago. A sense of HIM completing his work in our family. And that gets me excited.. - most days. Thankful... - all the time.

Nina continues to do amazingly well. She has settled into our family routines very well (I love routine, and all the kids do so well with it), but remains flexible at the same time. There are certain things she HAS to have, otherwise it isn't right... like I HAVE to sing the Swiss German bedtime song I posted a few days ago (which basically says "I hear a little bell, the day has passed and it's time for bed. In bed I pray and then I go to sleep, knowing that the Lord in heaven will be with me"), or she HAS to have her favorite silverware - either the Panda one from her Swiss Grandparents, the Thomas one or the Disney princess spoon. Oh, she is particular about that! Heaven forbid they are all in the dishwasher at the same time!
She has learned to rely on us when she is hurt, and she is accepting our gentle discipline. Not with joy, by any means :-)). I started giving her time-outs (mostly for hurting her brothers.... ohh, those fingernails!), where she has to sit at one end of the couch, and I sit at the other. That seems to work well for us right now. She usually does well with her siblings, but certain behaviors are just not acceptable, not from any of them. And hurting someone would fall under that category.
She is pretty independent in a sense that she likes to stay close by, but can play independently for quite some time. This is very helpful while I do schoolwork with Nico. She enjoys playing with Legos and Playdoh, doing puzzles, coloring or stringing beads. I think she is very creative.
She continues to be very interested in numbers and letters, and she is just starting to catch on to some of the basic colors. I know she would love to go to preschool, but I don't think it's the right time just yet.
Her language is coming along nicely, too. She pretty much understands everything we say, and she is able to express herself better to us all the time. What is really cool is when she looks at the pictures she brought with her, because she starting to tell us more details about them. Can't wait to hear the whole story. Just an example: There is one picture that shows her in the kitchen. Now she looks at it and says "Jeyeh, Nona eat in here, kitchen" (this is what she calls her Foster parents). I believe that she has strong memories of them, and she often time calls them "My Yeyeh, Nona". A while ago she said she wanted to go home. We were unable to get her to tell us exactly where she wanted to go. She may not have known for sure herself...
She says some funny stuff. Her signature line is "I don't wanna wike it". She uses it when she doesn't like something, or when she doesn't want anymore, mostly when it comes to food. It's so funny, and her siblings are saying it all the time too, sometimes I can't stand hearing it anymore!!
We're struggling with some "ordinary" parenting stuff, like the above mentioned scratching and hitting incidents, the No's I wrote about earlier and so on. She is pretty stubborn, and sometimes downright defiant. Some things I believe are more adoption related issues, like her need to control and to possess. That gets exhausting some days, but I'm hopeful that it will let up as time goes by. I realized that I have been letting up a bit on the more intense nurturing like holding and cuddling and feeding her her milk, or carrying her in the sling. I'm trying to do that more often again, as I feel that it has a positive effect on her.
Her health has been good, except for her Asthma, which she is being treated for. It is very manageable at this time, and hopefully it won't limit her too much going into the future.
The sibling relationships are going well for the most part. Nico likes to tease her and roughhouse with her, Anya is affectionate and caring, Alex likes to take care of her too, boss her around, and act as her spokesman (Nina : "Mama, can I have a dwink, pweese?" Alex: "Mama, Nina needs a drink!" - you get the picture...), and to Elia she is a good, but kinda annoying playmate. He gets so frustrated when she breaks his stuff, and him and her fight a lot over my attention. If one of them sits on my lap, the other one just HAS to be there too. They are only 15 months apart, and that causes some intense sibling rivalry. Overall though, I think Elia has found his inner balance again, and the other issues are a matter of time (I hope).

Wow, this turned out to be a much longer summary than I had anticipated, but there you have it.

The pattern in our family has definitely changed, but more and more I see how Nina's threads become entwined with all of ours, and I like the vibrant colors she is adding to the fabric that is US. She is an amazingly strong, at the same time vulnerable little girl, and I'm so glad she is here.
She is home.

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