I meant to write all of these thoughts down two days ago, but I was lucky enough to catch the crazy bug that has been flying around the Blau house, so my head felt as if it had been run over by a giant truck. I could barely think straight. Who knows what would have come out of my head if I had written anything on that day? But November 7th was the one year anniversary of the day we met our sweet little Eliza (Minsy) for the first time in China. I really, really feel the need to record my thoughts about all of the change I have seen in her and in our family since that amazing day.
I took some time to revisit the blog post I made of that day in China and all of the adventure and wonder of the moments there. It almost seems like a dream as I recall everything. Herman and I still look at ourselves sometimes and think, "What in the world ever convinced us that travelling half-way across the world to find a little girl to add to our already large family was the path we wanted to take in this life?" But even after a year of reflection I can easily say that I wouldn't change any of the decisions we made to get to this point. If you are interested in re-living that fun day with us, you can check out my post HERE. It was a perfect day for us. We had been prepared for a difficult day, expecting that Minsy was going to be terrified of this large American family who scooped her up and took her into a terrifying future. However, Minsy proved to be open to us from the beginning. She laughed and giggled and willingly tagged along with us wherever we went around Wuhan. Seeing her interact with us in those first days gave us such great insight into what to expect in the following year. And now our one year anniversary with Minsy has arrived, and so much has happened. Minsy is not the little girl we met that day, and we are not the family who showed up to greet her. We have all grown a lot in the past year. Hopefully this little post can capture just how much we have learned this year.
1. Minsy's Feet
When we headed to China we expected that the biggest problem we would face outside of the normal adoptive type problems was going to be Minsy's club feet. She definitely has feet that curve inward, and that does affect her in many ways, but the problem has turned out to not be as big of a problem as we anticipated. Once we arrived in the US we started physical therapy with her. In PT she works a lot on strengthening her muscles and stretching her tendons so that her feet will learn to straighten out eventually. She wears special shoes that push her toes outward, straightening them in the process. For awhile she had to wear straps that twisted her hips around and made her feet point forward. But last month I took her to see an orthopedic surgeon in Springfield, and after looking at her he told me that her problems were all growth related. Once she grew older they would disappear. She would not need surgery or the straps. She only needs to wear the shoes for one more year. After that we just depend on PT and nature to take its course. Hurray! This has ended up being a great blessing for us. We went to China expecting that we would bring home a little girl who would need surgeries and braces and lots of medical attention, and we ended up with a little girl who just needs to grow a lot. And speaking of growth ...
2. Minsy's Height
This was a problem that we were not expecting. We knew that Chinese children are naturally smaller than American children. We knew that Chinese children in orphanages were naturally smaller than other Chinese children. But we did not expect to find such a tiny, tiny girl when we entered the room that day. Officially, Minsy is five years old. Five! No one believes that when we say her age, not even the people in China. She looks younger than three. She has been in the early childhood education classes through the Waynesville school district, and they have her in a three year-old class. Even in that class she seems super tiny. We had been seeing a pediatric endocrinologist, and after doing a bone scan he found that she had the bone age of a 2 1/2 to 3 year-old. That isn't always entirely accurate, though, so we have been doing a lot of observing and watching to see what to do. The endocrinologist has told us to just work as if she is five until we know differently. That is SUPER hard to do when she looks and behaves as one so much younger. After a second opinion, our family doctor still thinks that there is no way in the world that Minsy could truly be five. Now we are heading to St. Louis in three weeks to see a pediatrician who specializes in international adoption. She will have seen many children who are from China and will have a better idea of what we need to do as far as hormone growth treatments or changing her age. Although Minsy is still super tiny, she has grown a lot in the last year. She is quite a bit taller and has grown out of the baby look that she had when we met her. Still a long way to go, but every inch counts, right?
3. Minsy's Development
Along with issues surrounding Minsy's height, we have been working on catching Minsy up to what her intellectual, physical, and social development should be. That has been a bit of a challenge and has required me to be a lot more patient than I normally am. So far I have been blessed with children who just get up and go, excelling at almost everything they put their mind to. With Minsy I have had to be a lot more directive and patient as I teach her to figure things out. It has been good for me. Minsy is obviously a smart little girl who soaks up information with enthusiasm. Her preschool teacher LOVES her because she will just sit and listen to everything and gets excited with each new skill she learns. But it is clear that she had not been exposed to much as a child in China, so she has a lot to catch up with. To make matters exponentially more difficult, Minsy has also had to learn this new information in a totally new language, so sometimes we aren't sure if she doesn't know it or if she just doesn't know the right word for it.
Minsy receptive language is phenomenal, meaning that she understands almost everything that she hears. She picked up the language very quickly. However, her little mouth just doesn't know how to make English phonetics work. She will sometimes come to me all excited and rattle off a sentence. I can tell that she is trying to speak in English, and I can pick out many of the words, but I can also tell that she is not pronouncing most of them clearly. There are just so many sounds in our language that they do not use in Mandarin, so her tongue and lips just don't quite know how to work. For instance, in China they don't really make the "L" sound, so she can't say words that have L in them ... Laney becomes "Mamie", Look becomes "ook." Hopefully that will change as she starts speech therapy later this year.
Outside of language, she still behaves much younger than a five year-old should. She was potty-trained when we met her. Hurray! But for the longest time if she ever needed to use the bathroom she would ask permission first and then stand and wait for someone to help her do everything. She knew how to do it. She was capable of doing it. But she just didn't feel like she had the right to do it on her own, I guess. That took many months of practice, but we finally got her to do it all on her own. She still has to announce to the world when she has to go, but at least she does it on her own after we tell her that it is okay to go. She has fairly good small motor skills and can eat food much better than an average three year-old, but when she draws things she still only scribbles, not making shapes or things like that. That puts her behind developmentally, even where she should be as a three year-old. In her preschool class she is significantly behind the other students, but she is learning so much each day. I am noticing a big improvement in her abilities in the last two months that she has attended, so I do hold out high hope that she will eventually catch up to the average. The big question for now is what age she really is because the expectations for a three year-old are WAY different than the expectations for a five year-old. We do know that even if she ends up staying five officially, we are not entering her into kindergarten next year. There is no way she could thrive in that environment yet.
4. Minsy's Place in Team Blau
From the very beginning Minsy has jumped right into our raucous family and held her own. I thought that she would be intimidated by all the active people, but she seems to do wonderfully with us. She has bonded well with all of us, but she definitely has her favorites. Lately she has been on a Daddy kick. She loves to scream out "Daddy!" whenever he comes home from work or church. It comes out sounding like "Dadjie!" which is super cute. She has also taken to calling him Papa as well. I don't know where that came from. Laney has also been a special companion to Minsy, and they formed a super bond last year while Laney was taking her high school classes online. She adores Laney, but she also has higher expectations for Laney, so sometimes she gets super frustrated when Laney has other obligations and can't hang out with her all the time. Minsy has gotten very good at making demands ... sometimes a little too good. We are now working on getting her to be a bit more self sufficient. It is a bit too easy to spoil her.
Minsy has a great desire to be accepted and loved. She gets terribly unhappy if she ever gets in trouble. She is also very obedient once she understands the expectations. We have been careful in how we discipline her because she is so concerned about doing things right for us, but so far things have been a breeze. Hopefully that will continue into the future. Her greatest desire is often to just be wherever Herman and I are. She will do her own thing often, but if we are around she feels most comfortable.
5. Team Blau's Dynamics
We expected there to be a lot of changes for us after the adoption, but things haven't changed too much for us. The past year has been full of challenges that we weren't expecting, but these haven't been emotional challenges for us. Instead, they have been challenges of the addition of an extra girl who simply needs lots and lots of love. We want to do this right. Sometimes we do. Sometimes we don't. In some ways it is like a young toddler just dropped right into the family, so we have had to relearn what it is like to have a little one around. I think that overall it has been a huge blessing to have Minsy in our family. All of us have had to learn to be more loving and more patient. We have gained understanding of another culture that has been invaluable. I've said this before, but Minsy jumped right into our family as if she was always meant to be there. She fits right in in every which way. I hope that she feels that as well, especially as she gets older and faces the identity issues that come about as an adoptive child. I hope that she knows that although she is not a child of my womb she is still as much a child of my heart as any other of my children. I hope that as a mother I can help her to feel that. It will be a challenge, I know. But Minsy seems to have such an open and loving personality, that I know that she will take all the love I offer and make the best of it. This past year was not one that I ever thought was in the cards for us as a family, but I know that it is exactly the year that we were meant to have. I am grateful for the opportunity we have had to allow this little girl into our family, and I am more grateful that she has taken that opportunity and offered us all of her love, her smiles, and her laughter. Here's to many, many more joyful years for Team Blau and our sweet Minsy! One year down and ETERNITY to go!
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