To regress, or not regress, that is the question...

So, here is what I think. Not only is Ayana cutting one or more teeth, ever since Regan started this job (on Sunday) Ayana has been more like her old clingy whiny self. I think she is really missing him. But oddly enough when she has seen him briefly in the AM after she wakes up she makes major strange like she used to in Ethiopia! So I think we have a bit of a regression going on. I think it is pretty common in adopted little ones to do a bit of a backslide and regress to their clinginess... hey, even bio kids do sometimes!!! So, once I clued into that theory I was much more patient with her. Today has been better, not in terms of her clinginess, but I am responding to it better and therefore there are less tears. We did a bit of walking practice, which she just loved! I sat on the floor, to which she always throws her little arms around me and buries her face in my chest. It always makes my heart just melt! And then I would put her 2 feet away and steady her and she would walk the 2 to 3 to 4 steps to me and I would hoick her up in the air. She just LOVED it! She even made the sign for "more" after we finished! She is very clever. So of course we had to do it some "more". She was testing the face gouging manoeuver on me today, and this time I chose to just say very softly with a smile, "Gentle". To which she did not melt into tears. (Even when you remind her calmly to "gently" do this or that, she always breaks into sobbing.) She reaches up to my face with this look of, "Hmmm... I am going to do THIS." As she violently scratches my face. This look in her eyes is like after we tell her not to touch something and she looks defiantly and touches it again, testing what we will do. All very very normal stuff. Gouging faces? Not such a nice thing for a baby to get into doing. So after yesterday of very firmly saying, "NO SCRATCHING!" and then taking her hand and gently stroking my cheek and saying, "Like this." And her crying hysterically and then immediatly doing it again, and me getting frustrated and putting her on the floor and saying again, "No scratching!" and then her completely crying like I had just ended her world. Clearly that wasn't working. So like I said I tried a different approach, and the next time she went for my face she just tapped it lightly. We shall see what happens. Sometimes the first reaction you have, which like a face scratching or sudden hitting, is you are startled and mad, but once they have a reaction, likely they will continue to do whatever it is that caused the reaction. She does not scratch Ellie's face, she just always touches it gently, so I think she is doing it for my reaction even if it is a firm "no". Blah blah blah. I didn't think I would write much, but here I am . Blah blah blah. Ellie is shopping with her Grandma this afternoon just for fun. It is so nice that they can do something nice together. Ayana is now having her afternoon nap and i am going to resume my knitting and watching my Frasier DVD's.

Have a great day, peace, love, chocolate.