Callie is finally home with her forever family, and what a journey it has been! Our journey is posted at www.myadoptionwebsite.com/callyn, but for the moment we are posting home updates here, since the My Adoption Website folks are in China right now on their own adoption journey.
Callie continued to amaze us in China with her complete adaptability, which served her well on the looooong trip home. Of the five of us, she was the only one who weathered the trip without becoming cranky and irritable, myself included. She sat quietly in her seat for the entire plane ride, content to play her gameboy or watch a movie. She napped on and off throughout the flight but always woke up cheerful and smiling, a feat I must confess the rest of us didn't manage to pull off so very well.
Aunt Shari was kind enough to pick us up at the airport and deliver us home complete with dinner ready to put in the oven, and we stayed up just long enough to eat it before everyone fell into the bed for the best night's sleep we've had in three weeks. Callie was excited to meet Aunt Shari and recognized her immediately from skyping with her daily while we were in China. She smiled and giggled when she saw her room; I'm pretty sure she recognized it from the photo books we had sent her. She happily climbed into bed with Maili after they had both selected dolls, blankets, and stuffed animals to sleep with. She remembered our bedtime ritual from China and held out both hands for me to fill with kisses and leaned in for some more kisses. Maili did the same and they were asleep in minutes, curled up next to each other holding their teddy bears. We moved around so much in China I'm wondering if she realizes that this is home. Boy, won't she be surprised when she realizes that this hotel doesn't come with a remote control shower curtain and a gourmet breakfast buffet!
The next morning I woke up around 4 AM and couldn't go back to sleep; around 5 I heard giggles and little footsteps running around overhead. About half an hour later the girls emerged from their room, Callie with a big grin and saying "eat, Mama" while making the sign for "hungry. " She threw in the Chinese phrase for "I'm hungry" just in case I didn't get the picture. So we had an early breakfast and the girls ate pancakes and played some more in their room. We have been so lucky that they get along so well; being so close in age I was a bit worried about competition for toys and attention but so far we really haven't seen much of that at all. Aside from random bouts of giggles, they play so quietly and nicely together that I keep running in to check on them to make sure they aren't up to something. Each time I find to my amazement that they are happily building lego creations together or playing dress up. Maili hasn't always been known for her ability to share nicely and play cooperatively with others, to put it mildly. Sharing and turn taking are skills we've had to work hard to teach and practice repeatedly, and she still requires reminders at times to respect the personal space and property of others. Those were not skills that she possessed when she came to us and they did not come easily or naturally. So we are absolutely blown away with how kind and caring she has been with her new sister. Honestly it is beyond amazing, it is nothing short of miraculous. She seems extremely attuned to the fact that Callie needs extra attention from Mom and Dad right now and she even shares that willingly, which is an absolute blessing.
Since she's been home, Maili has returned to being the sweet, joyful ray of sunshine that she was before the trip. For whatever reason, her being back in China triggered all of the negative behaviors that had long been extinguished, and she went back to being very overactive, deliberately disobedient, and easily overstimulated while we were there. We knew before the trip that it was highly likely that we would see regression of that sort, but I don't think anything can prepare you when your happy, normally obedient six year old suddenly becomes an overactive two year old, complete with constant grabbing of other people's belongings, flicking light switches, bouts of uncontrollable singing, crying or giggling outbursts which can change minute to minute. I don't think any of us were prepared for the magnitude of her complete regression, and it took every ounce of patience we could muster to deal with it during our trip. I'm quite sure most people at our hotel thought MAILI was the newly adopted one and not Callie.
But thankfully, from the moment she woke up in her own bed the next morning, our Maili is back. She has been nothing but loving and obedient, and she seems at peace. She talks about China and the trip fondly, but she seems somehow at peace in a way she hasn't been in quite awhile. In the days leading up to the trip her behavior started on a downward spiral, partially the result of not sleeping well due to the excitement and anticipation of the trip and getting her new sister. Now that Callie is home she seems so calm and relaxed that she is like a different child.
She looks like a different child too- When I took Callie to get her hair shaped up yesterday Maili insisted on getting hers cut short so she would look like her sister. As much as it pained me to see her get it all cut off, I could see that it was important to her and I let her get it cut. She was very happy with the result; her Daddy not so much. Her hair was so very short when we got her and she has been letting it grow for almost three years, so it was kind of sad to see it go. But her plan is to let it grow back out as Callie grows hers, so I guess we can't argue with that.
I had promised Callie when we were in China that as soon as we returned to the United States we would get her ears pierced, and she did not let me forget. Yesterday morning, which was her first morning home, she reminded me within the first half hour of waking up that she still did not have earrings in her ears. So on the way to the haircuts, we stopped by M*rle Norm*n and solved the problem. She sat very quietly while the technician did each ear, and then held the mirror up to her face with a satisfied grin. Her new word of the day was beau-tee-full and she practiced it all day while admiring herself in every mirror she could find. I just thought Maili was a princess; she's got nothing on this one..
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