She came to us not knowing us, not knowing any English. She has been open with us, brave with us and ready to accept us, our love and our attention. We have lived in each moment, one activity, one meal, one bedtime at a time.
Over the past month she has been learning some song. She sings "mommy shark...do do do do do"; "twinkle twinkle little star"; "ABC's" and the theme song from her favorite show Kate and Mim Mim.
Her favorite phrase is "I know" said with confidence. It is so cute. She has no idea what she is saying, but it makes us all smile and repeat it back to her.
We are working on so many English word, her list is....Dog, Cat, Bird, Duck, Bunny, Elephant, Bee, Butterfly, Tree, Flower, Car, But, Truck, Airplane, Motorcycle.
English sounds can be really hard. She is working on "Up Please Mom" when she wants to be picked up, it comes out sounding like.."uh twee mom". I will take it..she gets an "A" for effort.
All that being said, she still prefers Vietnamese for "wash hands", "I need to pee", "I want to brush teeth", "time for sleep", "time to play"...
We think her favorite colour is Purple.
She has trouble going to sleep. She has been crying quite a bit. When we adopted her, we were told that she woke at 7am, had lunch at 11am and then had a nap. Bedtime was 9pm. This didn't work for her or us. We moved her nap to the afternoon but realized that with both a nap and bedtime, this would mean 2 crying episodes. We have now eliminated her nap in favor of some quiet time and bedtime is 7:30 or 8pm with a good bedtime routine. We had success for the first time last night- off to bed without any tears. This means that we have some time with Natalie in the evening to play games and hang out. Win for everyone!
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