Six Months of Minsy's Merriment

Laney and Minsy -- Best Friends

It seems hard to believe, but six months ago today we finalized our adoption of Minsy in Wuhan, China.  It almost seems like a dream to me that we were really sitting in an office half a world away signing the papers that would make this sweet girl officially a Blau.  I sometimes wonder if Minsy thinks of her time in China as a dream.  We have some ladies who are from China who live in our area, and the other day they sat down with us and spoke to Minsy in Mandarin, and she looked at them like they were crazy.  On the off chance that her family in China had spoken to her in Cantonese, they switched to that, and still Minsy looked at them like they were speaking gibberish.  Oh what I would have given to have some sort of idea what was going through her head at that time!  I wonder if she has already forgotten much of her Chinese.  I hope not, but we don't know enough Mandarin to do any sort of real conversation that would keep her immersed in the language at all.

Minsy pointing to her new siblings after meeting Mama in China
November 7, 2011

Six months have come and gone, and so much has changed.  When we met Minsy we were overwhelmed with how wonderfully pleasant she was.  She smiled and giggled at all of us and seemed to jump right into our family without any problems.  It was like she was always meant to be here.    For those who missed it, here's our account of Gotcha Day! HERE.  And you can see another sweet video of her getting to know us HERE.  It was a perfect day.  So did that perfect day translate into six months of perfection and pure joy?  Well, not exactly.  We have had concerns and things that we have had to work on, and there has been a transition that has had to happen before it felt as if Minsy had fully integrated into Team Blau.  And it is ongoing.  We aren't there yet.  But we keep moving forward, seeing new milestones reached every day -- and isn't that how it is with all our children?  It's just that Minsy got out of the starting gate a little later than the rest of them.

Our first introduction to Minsy's amazing smile
November 7, 2011

So what has changed?  First of all we still don't know how old Minsy is.  That is way weird for us.  I assumed that at this point we would have either a new birthday set up for her or we would have her on some major growth hormones to help her gain back and growth losses she may have suffered due to malnutrition.  But it isn't quite so simple.  She is definitely tiny.  Her official record would make her over four and a half years old.  She has the bone structure and size of a two and a half year old.  Her language skills are about there too, but that's a bit hard to judge because she is still in the process of transitioning from Chinese to English.  Her fine motor skills are closer to a three year-old.  Her gross motor skills are closer to a two year-old, but, again, that is hard to judge because she has had to compensate for many things due to her club feet.  So how old is she?  We have taken to telling people that she is three.  That still makes many eyes bulge because of her small size, but it hasn't sent anyone into apoplexy like might occur if we tell them that she is almost five.  Our pediatric endocrinologist is just going to watch her growth trends and developmental milestones for the next year before making any decisions about age or possible growth hormone therapy.  But we have already noticed that she seems to be growing a bit.  Her hair is definitely getting thicker and less coarse, so hopefully our diet is helping her catch up whatever she is lagging in.

Classic Minsy photo pose!
April 2012

When we met Minsy in November we fell in love with her smile and her giggles.  They were the sort of things that could immediately melt a heart.  I sort of imagined the months ahead being filled with tons of Minsy smiles and giggles.  But it didn't quite work out that way.  She did smile and she did giggle, but we would have to work for those.  They weren't spontaneous.  More often than not Minsy would just sit quietly and watch, letting everything sink in.  She was still a very happy girl and easy to please.  She still would giggle if she found someone hilarious, but these reactions weren't easy to pull out of a hat.  It was especially frustrating whenever we would take a picture.  We noticed when we were in China that the Chinese people do not always smile in their pictures.  Smiles were the exception, not the norm.  Minsy proved to be very Chinese in this respect.  She would never smile for a picture, but she was quick to do her little picture pose which was for her to lean her head to one side while holding her fingers in a peace sign.  No matter what sort of contortions we would put ourselves in or how many times we would say "Smile!" we just couldn't coax it out of her.

This was a typical Minsy expression for our photos in the beginning.
Minsy and Daddy

That was then . . . This is now:

Tony Sexton pushing Minsy on the swings.  She LOVED it!
April 2012

Yesterday as a family we went out for dinner to celebrate the six month anniversary of Minsy's Gotcha Day, and (of course) we headed to Chopstix for some not-so-authentic Chinese food.  We gathered outside the restaurant for a picture, and when Herman prepared to take the shot he yelled out "Smile!", and Minsy immediately broke out into an exaggerated smile, scrunching up her eyes as much as she could while flashing all her teeth at the camera.  I almost broke out into tears at that moment (if I were the type of person who breaks out into tears at a moment's notice).  It was just such a change from the smiles we got at the beginning when we would have to be entertaining Minsy to see one.  Now she breaks out in smiles constantly and without anyone having to prompt her to do it.  I love her smiles!

That's not all.  Minsy has always been fairly quick to trust us.  She always let us kiss her and hug her, and she would even kiss and hug us back a little bit.  But you could tell that her heart wasn't quite in it.  It was more as if she was performing a duty than because she was outwardly expressing any inward emotion.  I knew she knew who I was and cared about me.  I knew that she trusted me.  But all of this was just on the surface.  It hadn't gotten to the very essence of her soul yet.  I don't know when things changed, but now she'll come racing to find Herman or me sometimes, and while she is running I'll hear her making kissing noises.  She feels the need to give her Mommy or Daddy a kiss, and she can't wait to start.  I love those kisses!  And her hugs?  Amazing!  She grabs on and holds us for dear life.  Sometimes she'll even pat our backs to make sure the hug gets all the way through our skins.  I love her hugs!

Minsy getting ready for some garden work.
March 2012

We were super impressed with Minsy because she could say the word 'bubbles' on the first day that we met her.  Very impressive!  Since then her language acquisition has been steady but very slow.  Part of this may be because we aren't pushing her too much.  I just figure that it'll come when it comes, and I'm not going to worry about it too much for this first year.  But still, after several months Minsy was still communicating in more non-verbal ways than she was verbally.  I wrote about that in this post HERE.  Although I tried not to, I still worried a bit that her communication skills were lagging.  But it seems as if Minsy is progressively picking things up faster and faster.  It's like a snowball rolling down a hill, picking up momentum more and more as it barrels down the hill.  Each day Minsy seems to say a handful of new things.  A few times she has managed to even put together full sentences.  Her most frequent words?  Chicken, Cheese, Look, Laney, Daddy, Mama, Blue (as in Blue's Clues), Puppy, Stop, and JoJo.  She still struggles with making some of the English sounds -- particularly the "L" sound.  We'll probably have to start her in speech therapy next year, but that'll be just fine.  And that will just cement her role in Team Blau since every one of our kids has had to start out school in speech therapy.  And I probably need it too, but it is a bit too hard to teach an old dog like me new tricks. I'm doomed to have a lisp until the eternities it seems. 

I love this picture!
. . . even though it isn't Minsy at her happiest.

And Minsy's personality?  It is perfect.  She can be a bit shy in new situations.  In those cases she is quick to offer a handshake to any new face, but she is slow to say a word or to offer a smile.  She can be extremely outgoing in other situations.  She has no problem letting her siblings know exactly what she wants.  She can express her needs quite firmly, and although she has been known to throw a tantrum or two (especially toward Laney for some reason) she is generally easy to please.  She has developed a love of the iPhones and can already manipulate them to bring up her favorite apps and videos.  Scary!  Her favorite thing to do is to play whatever her older brothers and sisters are playing.  She still loves bubbles, and those are the best motivations for her when she goes to physical therapy each week.  She also loves shoes.  It is sort of a shame that she loves shoes so much because she has to wear therapeutic shoes almost all the time in order to correct the curvature of her toes.  These shoes look like old fashioned baby boots.  They are big and clunky and not necessarily the cutest shoes on the planet.  But she lets us put them on her each day.  I just know that she would prefer to wear her pink Converses or black Mary Janes.  Oh well!  She'll thank us for this later -- I hope.

Minsy loves to share most things -- generally not toys, but she does love to share her food.  This is a trait that she had in China.  It was one of the things listed in the biography they sent her from the orphanage, and it continues to this day.  I think it is sweet.  She is also super concerned if anyone is upset for any reason, and she is quick to go up and pat that person on the back to help them feel better.  She isn't a big fan of long car trips or large animals.  She makes an adorable monster growl whenever she sees any animal that looks like a monster to her -- giraffe, lions, elephants, and such.  Too cute!

So six months completed.  I wouldn't change any of it for any reason.  It has been better than we could have hoped for.  We still have a ways to go on this journey, and probably the hardest part is yet to come.  But we have headed off on the right foot.  Minsy is a Blau, no doubt about it.  It is hard to remember a time when she wasn't a Blau.  This adoption journey for us has been amazing and well worth every sacrifice we have made in the process.

Team Blau Complete
April 2012