my kind of girl

This little kid knows a lot more than she lets on. Today in the airplane, she said “game,” put on her pouty face and made some whiny noises. I told her to say “please,” because we’re trying to work on manners from the get go. She looks at me and says, “Give me the game, please.” What? That’s maybe the third complete sentence she’s spoken to me. The only other one I remember was “I’m fine, thank you,” in response to our daily “Good Morning, how are you?” routine. She’s going to be speaking like any other American six-year-old real soon, I can tell.

One of her most delightful behaviors is that she acts out our mommy-daughter interactions with her Barbie. If I bathe her, she bathes her Barbie. If I brush her hair, she brushes Barbie’s hair. If I tuck her in, she tucks Barbie in. I love being her mommy!

She’s kind of OCD like me, except not like me, because she can’t seem to tolerate messiness, and I’m MESSY. She always wants everything in it’s proper place. She’s always smoothing down blankets and rearranging things according to her sense of order. She gets very upset if we have trash and have to carry it with us awhile before we can find a trash can. In the Frankfurt airport, she insisted on changing her clothes, since she spilled some powdered creamer on her shirt in the plane.

I bit into a hot pepper on the plane and Tarana, seeing my distress, offered me her cup of yogurt because she’s Indian and she knows that yogurt is the solution to too much spice.

She is way into Disney already, totally mesmerized by the movies Enchanted and Mary Poppins. It made my heart so happy to see her laughing at Bert and friends floating on the ceiling from so much laughter.

She knows a lot of songs! She can sing “If you’re happy and you know it” and “Jingle Bells.” She knows about Santa Claus…he visited the orphanage! We’ve seen pictures!

She’s vegetarian. She’s never had meat, and coke makes her throw up. So we’re going to ease her into the American diet sloooowly. We’re not even going to give her meat broth until after my sister’s wedding in a little over a week. 

oh, and p.s. We are SO thankful to all our friends and family helping us with things like communication, transportation, housesitting, dogsitting, kitchen stocking and child care.  We are so blessed by our family and community!