Week of July 9 - Eeeeek!! Grass!!!

We found it very amusing this week to see Emily, a girl with virtually no fear of anything, giving us the big fuss and whimpers at the concept of putting little feet to the grass in our backyard. I have since learned from other parents that this is not too unusual for whatever reason for babies under 2 years of age. That totally leaves me scratching my head, and laughing at the same time.

As shown in the above photo, Emily will raise her little legs up when held over the grass in order to insure that the toes don't touch. Note that Mom thinks this is hilarious.... but then so does Dad. On the other hand, Emily is very much OK with the idea of sitting or standing on a reed pad on the lawn, just not the concept of actually touching the lawn with her little feet or hands. Even with shoes on, she will fuss and complain. The reed pad is of course something she is familiar with from her summer days at the orphanage so no surprise there I guess :)

Emily continues to show very good progress in the standing/walking. Over the last week she has perfected her abilities to move from sitting to standing (and the reverse as well) in virtually any situation where she has something to lean against or hold on to. She has even begun to do side stepping moves left or right when standing at the edge of table, couch, or crib. When we offer her a pair of fingers to hold on to, she will now take forward steps with left and right feet with little difficulty. So motor skill development progresses very well. Naturally, the ability to self balance while standing remains her main challenge. She is able to self balance in standing position for 1-3 seconds before losing balance. If we extend a hand gently to her side or back she will immediately rebalance and continue to stand. If we do not intervene, she will almost always simply fall in a controlled fashion onto her little bottom in sitting position and then begin the process of standing again.

Emily is quite the quick study on most things and this week has observed that the key to escape from the family room (past the Evenflo mesh barrier Dad has installed) lies with copying Mom. See, we have placed a small step platform on each side of the barrier so that Mom can easily exit and enter over top of the barrier. Emily having observed this has now begun to try to the same move, though in her case she is just too short to make it work. But it is fun to see her stand and try to step up on the step platform while leaning on the barrier. Emily will then begin persistent vocal complaints at her failure and demand that Mom come back out of the kitchen to attend to her.

We went to eNoddle resturant in San Jose this weekend, and Emily gained a hefty appreciation for eating noodles and very much loves them. She still won't self feed, prefering that Mom cut them into short pieces and then shovel noodles into her mouth with chop sticks. She is quite proficient now at sucking the little dangling noodle ends into her mouth, making mother and grand parents very proud :)

At home, Emily is taking in more solid foods as well, devouring bananas, small pieces of other soft fruits, finger food puffs, and small bits of assorted foods that come from Mom and Dad's plate. It is quite common for Emily to protest and hold her mouth open until we find and feed her something from our own plates, then giggle and laugh when she gets a taste of something. Let's just say that if Mom in particular does not share her food with Emily... there will be some for of "incident" :) She will drink water from an open cup now if we hold it to her mouth and gently tilt it. While she will also drink from her sippy cup, she prefers to shake it up and down and listen to and watch the water swirl about.

This week we received Emily's quarterly progress reports, from Half The Sky Foundation, while she was in the orphanage. This presented us with two additional photos and more tidbits of her early life at the orphanage to add to the much more detailed biography and photos we received from the HTS nanny when we received Emily on Gotcha Day. We are grateful as it further exemplifies the positive role HTS has played in Emily's formative months, and is now added to Emily's HTS biographical documents. So many adopting parents long for and search for more information about their babies early months of life in the orphanage. We are so very fortunate to have all of this given to us without our searching.

This is a great time now to give pause and recognize and honor that thousands of little babies in China benefit from Half The Sky Infant Care programs every year. While so very important and appreciated for babies that are foriegn adopted, this program as well as other HTS care programs provides important and much needed nurturing and care for thousands of orphans who remain in China. We are grateful that Emily benefited from this program, but we are even more grateful of the benefit for little orphans in China that remain behind. If you are in search of a worthy program to donate to, or if you feel that "tugging" in your heart for orphans in China, this is definitely a program I encourage you to consider becoming active donor and sponsor to. Please take a little time to check it out at http://halfthesky.org/index.html HTS makes a real difference!!