“Happy Happy”

India has cookies in honor of Phil on Duck Dynasty!

If you don’t watch Duck Dynasty, you won’t get my joke.  🙂

But the three of us are “happy happy” here!  She had a much better day (Saturday) her first full day with us. She woke up in a very pleasant mood.  She loves brushing her teeth, so that is what we did first thing and she laughed the whole time.

We went down and had some breakfast at the hotel and she did wonderful during that, as I mentioned in a previous post.

When we got back up to the room she had another melt down, but it was different.  Instead of pushing us away, and not wanting us to console her.  She came to me and wanted me to hold her.  A big step in the right direction.  We are earning her trust.  She cried for a good 20 minutes, and Scott and I kept trying to come up with things that would take her mind off her sadness.  

Finally we found something… the television.  (She might be American after all) We flipped it on, and there was some sort of Bollywood music video on.  We have no idea what they were saying in the song, but she immediately stopped crying and was watching the video.

We found Toy Story 2 in Hindi and she watched about 30 minutes of that, until she fell asleep.

One coping mechanism we have observed with her is she sits Indian style and rocks forward and back. When I see her get in that position, I know she is about to break down, and some times I can get through to her and distract her before she starts.

After a good long nap for all three of us, we headed out on the town to find our baby some brand new shoes.  

She has some shoes from the orphanage.  She already is struggling with her walking, but when she wears them it is even worse.  Before we left for India, I had some friends looking for shoes in different sizes, because we had no idea what size shoe she would wear or the size of her clothes for that matter. 

Well I was way off with the shoes, and pretty close in the clothing size.

She is very close in size to my 16 month old, Katy Pierce.  The sizes over here are in UK measurements.  She wears a four in shoe here, which I am pretty sure is a 6 in the US.  My KP wears a 4-5…so they are very close.  The smallest clothing I brought was 3T.  She can wear them, but some of the items are slightly big on her.  She is one little petite tiny princess.  (Thanks for trying so hard to help me with shoes Vickie and Connie!)

I think part of that is the lack of nutrition in her diet, and some of that is just who she is… an itty bitty cutie patootie!

She was so proud of her new shoes.  In fact, when we got back to the hotel, bathed, and got ready for bed…she wanted to wear her new sandals with her pajamas while I packed up.

She colored and played while I packed.  She wants to be very close to where I am…more steps in the right direction.

Daddy was tickling her

My friend Andrea made some scarves for me to take as gifts to different people.  Part of the Indian culture is giving gifts to one another, so I wanted to have some items on hand as I needed them.  This scarf was intended for someone else, but Andrea I think she will have to keep this one.  She played and played with this, and giggled a whole bunch with it.  I think this one found its owner!  🙂

Some of her beautiful art work

Today we took some giant steps forward, knowing we might revert back some in the future… but right now we will enjoy all the moments day by day!  She has already started bonding very well with Scott.  I think she may end up being a Daddy’s girl!