9 Months

Our Quiet Tiger has been in our family for 9 months today!  Gotcha Day (May 28) in China seems like a lifetime ago!  It feels like our daughter has always been here with us.

9 months ago today - Gotcha Day - May 28
Oh, how she HATED the camera and would cry every time I  held it up.
All my pictures of Gotcha Day are blurry because she ran away and wanted nothing to do with me.

Walking around with the photo album I had made her and mailed to the orphanage months before my arrival.
More blurry pictures while mommy signed temporary custody papers.  :(
Oh, how those shoes were way too small and her toes were tightly curled up inside.

Finally a clear picture back at the hotel and all alone with mommy
and big tears in her eyes.  The book - her only possession - still in hand.

She has put on 6.5 pounds and 1.5 inches since coming home.  She comprehends our language and her words are exploding, with probably around 50 or 60 plus words that she uses correctly now.  Heck, she may have more than that - I've lost count.  She's starting to put 2 and 3 words together in small sentences but that is pretty seldom still.  Currently she is all about learning her colors.  She'll point to her shirt and say it's color.  If she's wrong, she'll repeat the proper color after I re-correct.  She'll constantly bring me toys and items and say it's color with fairly good accuracy.  She is so smart!  She still loves music, her favorite song being "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."  She loves to be tickled and will often lift up her shirt, show us her belly and ask, "Tickle?"  Then when we put our hand up in the air to tickle her she'll shout and laugh a long, drawn out, "Oh noooooooo!!!!" as our hands close in on her.  She's silly!

Her one-handedness does not hold her back.  Her newest feat is learning to take her clothes off, pushing down her pants and pulling her arms out of shirts.  If I put her in zippered, 1-piece footed pajamas, she'll be out of them in no time and I've often found her running around in a diaper rather than the pajamas I'd just put on her.  Her latest word is "tricky," if she has trouble doing something.  And it isn't much trouble she's having as it is wanting me to do something for her.  I'll always air on the side of letting her figure it out for herself.  The biggest trouble so far is pulling her pants up when getting dressed.  She has to learn how to stretch her full arm all the way around, grab the waistband with her 1 hand and inch her pants up.

Her hair is growing out and is very thick!  Right now it's at that difficult point where I either want to cut it short again like a pretty pixie cut or keep dealing with sprouts on the top of her head to keep the hair out of her eyes as it grows long.  I'll go with the latter.  Her hair still has the tendency to grow straight forward and needs some serious training to part on the side correctly.  She likes wearing sprouts and tails, but she continues to rip out any barrettes I put in.  So, tails it is.  My mom and stepdad are coming for Easter and the plan will be to take L for her first cut in a salon just to give her hair some more shape.    I'll be sure to take photos.

This is a pretty standard look for L first thing in the morning.
Massive bed-head!

We have attempted potty training but she is just nowhere near ready.  I'm guessing she spent many hours in the orphanage in soaking wet diapers and she doesn't mind being wet.  I've tried diapers and I've tried putting her in underwear and she simply doesn't care or even notice that she's wet.  And she'll scream something horrible at the suggestion of sitting on the potty, so I'm not pushing it.  She's not ready.

L has learned to play well on her own, especially while I'm busy with home school for the boys.  She very rarely sits with us while they work.  She's too busy!  

Friends in my adoption group have been commenting recently about regression in their kids.  It seems many of these kids are having issues resurface as of late.  I'm by no means an international adoption expert, I'm flying by the seat of my pants daily, but many of us are seeing that the 8-10 month mark can bring on some regression in our kids.  I'm finding this to be true for us too.

L's issues with food resurfaced last month.  At first I chalked it up to her first doozy of a cold that she had.  A cold will often take away an appetite and that's precisely what happened to L.  As long as she had her sippy cup with her, she was happy getting fluids, but she really didn't want to eat because she felt so lousy.  During this time she slimmed down quite a bit which I quickly found out ended our battle with leaky diapers.  She was never overweight, but she had a belly on her.  That belly would push down on the diaper and cause it to fall below her waistline and gap and leak.  Any brand, any size, all diapers leaked.

Once the cold was over, her appetite returned and she began eating normally again.  For the first few weeks after the cold was over, she was eating just fine and her spirits were high.  But then someone or something triggered a switch.  She began shoving food in her mouth, eating way too fast, gulping down a meal, desiring mass quantities and eating more than her brothers again.  Her tears and sobs while I was cooking and preparing a meal returned, as did and her uncontrollable hysterics when a meal was over.  To have all these food issues return full force exhausted me and "Here we go again," was often uttered to myself. 

What's more is that she also needed a major attitude adjustment.  She began giving me an evil eye whenever I asked her to do something or disciplined her not to do something.  If she threw a toy and I asked her not to, she'd pick it right back up and throw it again.  If I told her not to stand on the laundry basket, she'd give me a look and climb right back up.  If Jay told her not to play with the dishes in the living room left from dessert, she'd cry and scream huge tears.  If I reminded her to spit the toothpaste into the sink, she'd swallow it with a look in her eye that said, "I'm not listening to you."  Any time of day, any day of the week, she did not want to listen to anything we had to say.

Starting her day off with a temper tantrum and the naughty step.
(sigh)

You can say that's typical 2 year old behavior and I'd agree with you in part.  But coupled with that and the food issues, I knew we were looking at regression again.  We can add one more thing to the list too.

Last month she began crying again if I left the room.  I couldn't go to the garage for 30 seconds to look for a tape measure without her screaming, wailing, dramatic crocodile tears.  I couldn't go outside with the dog or go to the restroom without her incessant carrying on.  And leaving her at the house with Jay and the boys for my weekly grocery run would leave her in a puddle.  

Oddly enough, what I have seen almost completely stop is her RMD, her head banging and leg kicking in the crib at bed time and nap time.  I'd expect that would have increased during a regression, not decreased.  How very odd.  An interesting observation to say the least.

We've had "mini-regressions" before, but this one is full-blown.  We'll get through it.  I have a feeling that's the way it's going to be with our Quiet Tiger - one step forward, two steps back.

Our Quiet Tiger today
9 months after Gotcha