Over-tired & Attachment & Feeding

Linda slept most of the night. We did have one wakeup incident at about 2:30am, but it was minor. Just a little encouragement and a couple of minutes comforting and she was out again. I woke up at about 7:00am to make sure we stay on our schedule.

Today we decided to start Linda on real food so we can get her up to speed with others of her own age. She is still on formula and the doctor agreed that we can start easing her into the food world. Also Linda needs to learn to feed herself, so we need to work on the finger pinching and of course “food play”. She is doing pretty well with the veggie puffs. She either grabs them or uses her index finger and thumb depending on what neurons are firing in that little head of hers. In either case she gets it to her mouth just fine, but once there the firing combination does not say, “Release”, so she sometimes just nibbles at what is visible. There have been a number of successes though, and this evening she actually downed at least 8 of them little suckers without our intervention. We were too busy eating our own dinner!

Lunch was fun. We gave her some mashed potatoes I whipped up the night before. (Yes, I can cook and can’t wait to grill up a nice Tri Tip for her!) With spoon in hand Linda had a field day. Some of the food actually made it to her mouth. In the morning I let her play with a spoon I was using to feed her cantaloupe and she simulated eating and digging with the wrong end. At lunch she was holding the spoon the correct way. She will need some practice on the shoveling and stuffing in mouth part, but she seems to have the drum and fling parts down. It was a blast. It was the first time I think she was able to play with food and it wasn’t too bad. After a hosing down, she was good as new. Well, it was more of a wipe down, but you get the picture.

We did get to the park today. Jackson Park is just around the corner from us. Linda actually seemed to enjoy the swing. Kids like swings. She also enjoyed the attempts at walking. This is a fun game we play, but it sure is hard on daddy’s back! I swear this little kid will be walking pretty soon. If we can only get her to sit up on her own we will be on to something. Adopted children seem to have this issue and may never crawl, so one day she may just pull herself up and take off!

This evening was pretty interesting. Actually it occurred throughout the day; Linda did not like being in a room alone. She would whine and cry. A little regression from the last couple of days it appears. This evening a neighbor stopped by and dropped off a card for us. Nice man. After he left, Mel ran out to pick up our dinner from the Mexican place just up the street from us. (She was craving cheese enchiladas which are hard to come by in China.) As soon as she was out the door Linda started to whine and cry. She was sitting in my lap and we were “reading” a book when this occurred. I was amazed that she even knew that Mel was gone. I had to pick her up and walk around with her. I knew she wasn’t hungry since we had just finished feeding her. I was at a loss. The carrying seemed to help the most. Playing did not do much whatsoever. We are going to keep and eye on this behavior and see if it is something we are encouraging or if she is “using” it to gather more attention. Of course it is too early to tell. It may be due to being a bit tired as we continue to “force” the schedule on her.

As for tired, we are attempting to keep that schedule and tonight we started a routine of slow down a bit, bottle, PJs, a book reading, and soft snuggle time. Our target is to put her down by 7:30pm. Today Linda had her two naps, but they were very short. This may be the cause of the tired and cranky stage of the evening. Anyways, we started the routine and it was going pretty good. She got all happy and playful after getting her PJs on. Ok, this is partly our fault as she was like that in China, but tonight we “ignored” her attempts at “hard” play. Reading the book, Goodnight Moon, is a challenge as she wants to hold and play with it. Once complete, we sat on either side of her on the couch and told her how much we loved her and just let her roll and tumble around us a bit. We did not encourage any play. Just before 7:30pm we picked her up and told her, “Night night time.” We placed her in the crib and she whined a bit with a bit of a fake cry. She did the customary rolling around with the whine. (No cheese with it, though.) I stepped back and sat on the floor after saying goodnight and see you in the morning; Amber came in and sat next to me. Mel took the lead of a couple more soft caresses and a final “I love you” and stepped back. In a couple of minutes, Linda was quiet. I moved out of the room and Mel was right behind me. So far so good, so cross your fingers we have a full nights sleep!

An exhausting day for us all and tomorrow will be just as fun! Goodnight!

PS- No we have not taken more pictures. It has been work enough trying to keep our lives going. I plan on taking some pictures over the next couple of days as we begin to do a bit more outings.