Life Keeps Rolling

Have we really only been home for three weeks?? It seems much longer than that! Tian (or Esther) continues to do well in her new life and family. She is a very normal three year old little girl. When you watch Emma & Tian together you can tell how different the two girls are. Tian seems much more mature for a 3 year old than Emma does. She is much more protective, cautious and wants to be the leader. Emma really doesn't care and when she gets mad at Tian, she hits her.. simple as that. A lot of this week has been "Emma.. do not hit Tian" sorta stuff. My philosophy is to teach Tian to hit Emma back, therefore Emma will get a taste of what she's doing to Tian. My mom disagrees- she doesn't want the girls to start hitting each other. Anytime Emma hits or slaps (or bites.. yikes!) Tian, she comes up to some person, and yells and points at Emma.. like "It's her fault!" I've tried to tell Tian that she just needs to hit Emma back, and she seems to understand, but has yet to carry through with it.

Tian still does not skip a meal. She gets very annoyed with Emma, because Em takes her sweet old time eating. Usually, she never finishes her plate anyways. Tian eats everything and then some more, and then usually Emma's. This is classic orphanage behaviour because I'm sure she had a limited amount of food to eat.

As far as bedtime, it's getting better. This week, almost every night she went to sleep without crying. But it has to be on Tian's terms.. you can't put her down to sleep without asking her first. Surprisingly, she has asked several times to be put to bed and goes to sleep!! She's a very laid back child, just sometimes hard to deal with because at the littlest thing, she freaks out.

For instance- she HATES to be dirty!! If any little speck of food, dirt, juice-or anyone touches her without asking- gets on her, she completely flips out! It must have been a no-no in the orphanage for her to be dirty, because she cannot stand it. We'll have to work on her because in this family.. you do get dirty!!

On Saturday, my parents took Tian to get her ears pierced. No we're not a cruel terrible family.. it's just that it's a tradition to have the girls' ears pierced. We had Emma's done a week after she got home, but we waited a little longer for Tian. She really wanted them too and kept pointing to her ears because all of the girls in our family have them done. I knew she would probably scream, and I'm not stupid.. so I declined in going. Surprisingly, she did very well and didn't really cry. This kid has a HUGE tolerance for pain! She loves her earings though and wants to show them to EVERYONE!!

Tian's doing really well with learning English. In the last few days I've noticed that she repeats a lot of what we say and is starting to put things toether. I think she understands almost everything we say to her, and whatever she doesn't, we use pointing & hand motions to show her. Today, I got her to repeat some things and then said "I Love You" and she said "I Love You" back!! It sounded sooo sweet!!! I got it on video, so I'll try to upload it later! But it was so sweet and my mom-again- started to cry.

She's doing incredibly well for only being with us 4 1/2 weeks. I'm surprised at how well her transition has gone. It's crazy and chaotic around our house right now.. but if this is what the worst of it is supposed to be like, then boy are we blessed! Two is definitely much harder than only having one. They get into trouble together like sneaking into the pantry & stealing oreo's, and drawing all over their bodies with markers. But they're really cute together.

A lot of new pictures are up on my photo website;
http://www.homepage.mac.com/jiejie4china/jiejie4chinapics/
Password: fampics

So that's pretty much how Tian's doing in a nutshell. As far as her name.. is it Tian or Esther? Her name is Esther.. but we call her Tian like a nickname. She doesn't respond to Esther, although she will sometimes refer to herself as Esther. If she sees a picture of her, she immeadiatley says "Xiao Tian." Tian is just easier because Emma & Esther get too confusing after awhile. I think Tian will probably stick and we will end up calling her that.. but who knows. Esther is her legal American name, and Tian is her middle name.. so it really doesn't matter what she wants to go by. We have their Chinese Names as part of their middle name so that if they want to-when they're older- they can call themselves by either their American name or Chinese name. "Esther" wasn't really my favorite name.. so I kinda like Tian a little better. When people ask, I usually just tell them her name is Tian because it's too hard to explain that she doesn't respond to Esther. =)

POOR TIAN!!!!

First, she started throwing up on the way home from a shopping trip to the mall. Good thing we were turning onto our street, because I was driving and throw-up is NOT something I can handle well!! (Guess we won't be giving her ANY more frappachino's)

We've been home an hour and she was playing with the lego's behind me, when I heard her fall and start screaming! I knew she had hit her head and my first instinct was to grab her and check her head. I wasn't prepared for the blood to start POURING down her face!! Good thing both my mom and her best friend were in the kitchen as they are both nurses. Dad was (and still is) on the phone, but came in real quick and said it was fine. Mom's rocking Tian right now and the bleeding has stopped, but boy did she get it good!! Don't think she'll be in need of stitches, but she'll have a little scar. Apparently, the head always bleeds more than anything else.

It just takes that one second where you see all that blood pouring out of her head and start panicking!! My hands are still shaking!