Alive and...Adjusting

How beautiful is she?! Our friend Keren took this photo last weekend. I realize I have been quite remiss in blogging these days. Life has been, shall we say, heavy these days, and its hard to trim down into blog form. Just for fun, however, I thought I would post a quote from my son from a week or two ago, followed by a bit of an update:

While watching Bed Knobs and Broomsticks, the kids were particularly taken by the dancing montage from the "Portabello Street" song. This scene features various styles of dance, at one point a group of African-Americans dancing in a swingish sort of style. At this point, Melat began clapping and bopping with the music. When Allan and I commented on this, our eldest (age 6 1/2) chimed in, "Its because they're brown," he said matter-of-factly, "She's not color-blind, you know!"

Indeed.

Said little one is not very little. She's 10 months+ now and weighs a hefty 22 lbs. (90th percentile in weight, 75th in height) Our pediatrician is simply in awe of her and can't fathom how a child from an orphanage has done so well for herself. Last week at her check up he said, "She must have been a favorite!" Truth is, she's a demanding little thing. Oh, she can be cute and cuddly all right, but every three hours on the dot she'd better have her food in hand. Or else.

One of the things that I've been meaning to blog about but haven't is the challenge of adjusting to this strong-willed baby girl. Its been hard not to have happy little stories full of love and bliss to post. Oh, we have grown attached to her and all, but its hard to feel unconditional fondness for a child who spends a good portion of the afternoon shrieking at you. (Like right now, she's screaming like her heart has been broken because I'm not keeping the Cheerios coming fast enough.) Its also hard to write about without sounding like a whiner among throngs of happy adoptive bloggers. Obviously, we didn't expect adopting to be a breeze. In fact, we expected more difficulty than we have. But after the early months of newness and the fawning of strangers and family alike have passed, you're still left with a new child who, out of some inborn desire to survive, thinks not only that the world revolves around her, but that it should do so at the speed she dictates. I told one friend its like having a perpetual colicky newborn...who weighs 20+ lbs and crawls really fast.

The boys are doing well with her. When people ask how they are adjusting to Melat, I tell them that the boys beat up on her now, so they must been accepting her as their little sister.

Really, she has a very sweet disposition -- with everyone but me. She is attached to me, in a master to slave sort of way, and needs to know where I am at all times. Melat loves people -- so very social -- and loves to be outdoors. She loves to swim and swing and steal her brothers' toys. I have a feeling that everything is going to turn out just fine, but for now the adjustment continues.