At Home Days 3 & 4

Day 3 at Home

Lily seems to be feeling quite comfortable here as you can see in the picture above. She's just relaxing in her little chair and enjoying all her new family members, including our dog, Ginger.
Yesterday Lily was warming up to the dog, then this morning she acted afraid of her again. By the end of today she was chasing the dog and the dog had to run away from her!!! Lily even puts her face down near the dog so the dog can give her a ching ching (a kiss). Tonight Lily wanted to hold the dog and the dog wanted down, she couldn't understand why she couldn't keep the dog in a head lock.

We finally got Micah and Lily together for this picture. Remember these two were born on the same day. We think he weighs at least 10 lbs. more than her and as you can see he is almost a head taller. 
Lily is also getting along really well with Emily. They sat and played with this pretend cash register for quite a long time today. Lily is quick to give Emily hugs and kisses. There is still the occasional hair pulling or push, but nothing like at first.

No, she hasn't become a California girl already. The phone is dead but Lily doesn't know that. My son Jacob gave her this phone because she stole his real one and wouldn't give it back. He was trying to talk to his fiance on the phone and Lily was running around the house with his phone in her hand and we could hear his girlfriends voice on the phone as she ran through the house, Lily.....Lily....Ju Ju......anyway, you get the picture. So Jacob gave her one of his old phones and she was quite happy with it.

How is Lily Doing?

I would say overall she is doing very well. She is eating most of what we give her. She has almost completely adjusted to the time difference (way better than mom and dad have). She seems very happy. Since we have had her now going on two weeks we have seen a decrease in the hitting, pinching etc. Once in a while she will still just freeze up in frustration or anger. Usually associated with not getting her own way. But even this behavior has seemed to diminish in duration and frequency.

When it's nap time, she says good night to everyone, gives kisses and goes right down. She has been doing better at nap time than at bed time. She has gotten very upset at night so we tried something different. We found that she does better if someone stays in the room with her for a few minutes to assure her that we are still there. It seems that she is used to someone being in the room when she sleeps. This is where visiting the orphanage helped. We visited her sleeping area and the kids were actually taking a nap at the time of our visit. The ayi (nanny) was there in the room with the kids. It appeared that she was making sure they stayed in their beds. So, based upon that we figured she's probably used to having someone in the room when she falls asleep. So last night and tonight we stayed in the room for a few minutes and sure enough, she fell right to sleep.

We have had quite a few visitors, just family but we have a big family. We have been judging how Lily does with groups of people. We would not have had people over if it seemed to upset her or bother in any way. So far she has done remarkably well. She is a very social girl as the Ayi's and volunteers at the orphanage would probably attest.

We did skip church this morning though. Mostly because Christy and I are both still exhausted from not being fully adjusted to the time.

Lily is quickly learning words in english. She is a very quick learner and seems to understand a lot. I'm sure she will be speaking in sentences in no time at all.