On Sunday we celebrated Coppélia being home 1 month. I feel like we are only just beginning to scratch the surface at getting to know her. Just as each child is different, each of our three have grieved in different ways and have dealt with the changes differently. She went from being the center and focus of all life in her foster family to being one of 5 kiddos. She went from having whatever she wanted whenever and however she wanted without having to say anything, a simple grunt or point would do, to know sometimes having to wait (because despite what seems to be a common held belief in our family I am not super woman nor do I have 8 arms and legs to do 16 different things at once and sometimes your need/want may have to wait 5 seconds while I attend to another more pressing need/want….just saying), and being expected to communicate, even if it is through simple signs at this point. But we’re all learning.
Coppélia does seem to love her brothers. They make her smile and laugh often which was something we didn’t know was possible for the first number of days home. The other thing that really makes her happy is food. And she’s not picky. Any type of food she’ll gladly devour. Even if it’s on the ground…or floor…or covered in dirt…or the definition of food is used VERY LOOSELY. But this girl can go from an all out screaming tantrum (because again mummy’s arms are full of dirty stinky diapers and I can’t really pick you up at this point (nor do you want to be picked up honestly)) and see a box of Cheerios and literally shout and giggle with glee. And of course the back carrier is her all time favorite. I think it is very comforting to her and her favorite place to be…my abs and back muscles are getting to be solid. (Which makes up for the stress chocolate that I’ve been eating…)
And again there aren’t really any words that we’ve heard, but its not for lack of voice, because this girl has a set of lungs and vocal cords. Good thing our new house is on 2 acres. But we’re working on signing and finding other ways of communicating instead of all out screaming.
From what we’ve discovered her only dislike is when mommy is not right there holding her. If mommy happens to look at another sibling or (gasp) pick up or pay attention to anyone else, or walk out of the room she very clearly (and loudly) lets everyone know her thoughts on that. If I happen to not be around…or she doesn’t know I’m around then she does ok with daddy. I may have been known to crawl out of the house and send hand signals to Clint on my way out the door so she didn’t see or hear me
We are all learning and figuring each other out. Dressing a girl is not nearly as intimidating as I possibly thought it would be. And I still throw a bit of my personality in the midst of her clothes-i.e. We have been given a number of pairs of hand me down dress shoes, and cute other shoes, but I’ve only put her in tennis shoes because really she’s not the most steady on her feet and while other shoes might look super cute with her little outfit, she would spend the majority of the time flat on her face, and so we go with the sneakers. This coming from the mommy who wore tennis shoes with her wedding dress…And Clint is learning how to do hair and I think he’s getting less and less intimidated each time he does.
And again we’ve only known each other a month in her 21 months of life, we’ve got a lot of learning and figuring out and making memories to do together. And I’m looking forward to it.
Hiking Mommy 