such a smartie pants

Wow, what a great three days we’ve had being mom and dad to our sweet, spunky little Tarana. She’s a trip, y’all. On the first day, she just waltzed right into the office, looked at both of us and said, “Hello! Mom! Dad!” And just stood there looking at us. We didn’t know what to do! Should we hug her? Kiss her? Shake her hand? So we just stared back at her. There went my fantasy of video recording our first meeting, like it was supposed to play out like some silly Lifetime movie or something, but that was OK. It was just right the way it happened. She is full of life and eager to show off. We love her.

She likes to color in the Veggie Tales coloring book we brought. She was frustrated that none of the crayons looked properly black to her. She has a vision for her artwork, and the choices of colors we provided just weren’t cutting it. Oh, and the other color she requested again and again was “sky blue.” Lucky her, we had that one.

She loves our camera. She has learned to use it, mostly teaching herself, but also coming to us for help.

We communicate well enough. She has enough English vocabulary to let us know what she wants with single words or short phrases. Mostly we communicate with facial expressions and body language. She loves the word “no,” and is a pro with the pouty face. We’ll have to work on that.

She can tell us if she’s hot, tired or hungry. She can say “water” when she’s thirsty. She knows her colors and animals…she even identified a sparrow and a penguin! (She has a stuffed animal sparrow we brought, and there was a penguin in one of the photos we showed her.)

She loves to demonstrate her understanding of the alphabet and counting. She begs to use the computer, just so she can type. Kyle introduced her to a game on his iphone today while we were waiting at the clinic, and she’s way into that.

Tomorrow is visa day! We have an appointment with the embassy, but there is still a form missing from the government. It’s supposed to go straight to the embassy when it’s ready, so please pray that it does! When we left the orphanage today, I told Tarana we would be back tomorrow, and she said, “yes, Thursday”…except she pronounced it “Terzday.” She’s so cute.