Look at me go!

Two posts in one day! Wow, been a loooong time since that's happened!

The reason I'm popping on here again is I wanted to share something with all of you parents of adopted kids from Africa or of dark skin. In the last couple of weeks while watching TV, there'll be a commercial on for say, pampers or whatever, and it will show a little black girl about Ayana's age. And I KID YOU NOT Ayana points to the screen and says as clear as day, "Ayana!" She has done it about a dozen times, and even at the photo studio the other day she pointed to a poster of a black child and said, "Ayana?" And I said, "It does look like you Ayana!" She does not do that for any other skin color but black, and children that are around her age. I for one think this is EXTRAORDINARY! I mean, for her to have such self awareness of how she looks at her age? Am I nuts? Or does this seem like a pretty big deal! Anyway, it just blows me away everytime she does it.

She also has a pretty amazing grasp of some abstract concepts, like for example, saying "Thank you" after someone gives her a compliment. Now I have been teaching her that for ages, when someone says something nice to her I say, "What do you say?" And a couple of weeks ago I was doing her hair and, as always, was telling her how beautiful I thought her hair was, and she said, "Thank you!" I just about fell over! So I experimented. Later on in the day I complimented her on her clothes and "Thank you!" And then I had Ellie do it, and "Thank you!" And her Dad and on and on! It is AMAZING!

Her vocabulary is expanding daily, and not just words, she is totally getting how to USE words too. Knowing that this is our last child I am paying such close attention and am totally fascinated by the process of a child learning to talk and read and everything. I noticed from what I have read and what I did in the past and what I am doing now is I think it's pretty univeral for how parents teach their kids how to talk. Animal sounds are a big one in the beginning. Naming everything of course. Asking a lot of questions. BOOKS are huge. Pointing at things in books and trying the word out for size. And as I am kind of doing/observing all of this I am just amazing with how naturally this all comes to parent and child! Even Ellie just naturally seems to know what to do! I wonder if subconsiously any of us remember how we are taught? I don't know, but it's pretty cool.

Her latest thing is "too. As in, "Ayana too?" "Ellie eat too?" "Mom sit too?" That sort of thing. Today her new word was "news". As in "Mom watch news." She asks about a million and a half times a day "Watch... Elmo?" And then I'll put a very old vhs of Elmo on for her. But sometimes it's Ellie's turn. At first it was like bloody murder or world war 3 when that would happen. S he would have a fit! But she understands very well the concept of "turns" and so once I explained that it was "Ellie's turn" to watch TV then it was fine. So then at 6PM I told her it was "Mommies turn to watch the news" then she kept saying, "Mom watch news.". It was SO CUTE!

She has the funniest sense of humor too. At the zoo yesterday, she does this funny thing which is a standard Ayana thing. Ellie was teasing her and pointing at a tree and saying, "Ayana.. look at the duck!" And Ayana shakes her head and kind of laughs and says, "No duck!" And if she knows the name of the thing she'll say, "No duck! Tree!" And laugh. Sometimes she amuses herself with this banter. It's so adorable. I'll hear her as she is "reading" to herself and she'll say, "Kitty? No kitty". Laugh. Or she'll sit in my chair and look up and say in this hilarious little accented voice, "My chaaair!" To which we tickle and she instantly cracks herself up. She even put her baby in her own fuzzy chair and said to her baby, "My chaaaair!"

A few weeks ago I came in the kitchen and saw her very lifelike black baby doll on the floor face first into the back door. Hmmm.. I thought. That's kind of weird. It was sitting up but face against the door. Coincidentally it happens to be in Ayana's time out spot. Now I must first say that Ayana hardly every goes in time out. Seriously, MAYBE once a month. MAYBE. Not even that much. I usually can use distraction, but she really is a very good listener so far. ANYway, I went up to Ayana and said, "How come your baby is over there?" And she said VERY clearly "Bad girl." I actually almost laughed, it was so funny really. But also thought "Yikes." Okay, so I have heard Ellie use "bad girl" a few times, and a couple of times I may have said it. So I felt bad and instantly went to the baby and said, "All done time out, baby! Do you want to play! What a nice baby!" And kissed her and Ayana took her and put her on the couch and all was good. Baby only went into time out once more after that, now there is no more timeout for baby.

On the flip side of that, her little baby that she sleeps with, which is actually a "sweetpea" stuffed baby doll that is inside a little peapod, "helped" me with laundry the other day. Ayana had the baby's little hands in her hands and I had to give the baby little bits of laundry for the baby to put in the basket. Each time the baby put the laundry in Ayana kissed her and said, "Good job, baby!!" OMG it was SO CUTE! I see her doing all kinds of stuff like that with her baby. She feeds her baby, she takes the baby's little hands out of the pea pod and puts them together so we can PRAY. How cute is that! Now, of course, baby is using the potty. So several times a day we have to take baby and various other toys to the potty. At first she wanted to put diapers on all of them, but I informed her they were all using the potty and didn't need diapers anymore. She thinks this is pretty stinkin' cool.

Okay, wow, carpal tunnel anyone? I better stop now. But I will be posting some pics and videos of the girls in the next few days!

Ciao!