"I'm Too Sexy for My Shirt"

So little Bela's personality has certainly come out even more the last few days. Turns out not only is Bela a girly girl (loving her Barbie’s and dolls) she loves to look at herself in the mirror!! One of her adoption reports said that but I didn't really realize how much she really did love that. Specifically, she loves to pick out her clothes in the morning, comb her hair and then stare in the mirror for a few minutes with a big smile! It's is the cutest thing in the world (at least in my opinion)!! She loves to wear sunglasses and pose with them on also. Her obsession with shoes is also totally cute - she insists on lining up her shoes and making sure that her pink ones are put away just right (her pink ones are her favorite). 

So this past week, Ryan and I have been busy with post adoption stuff. For instance, I spent 2 hours at the OC Family Court trying to get paperwork filed to finalize Bela's adoption. Once the paperwork is filed, it takes about 6 months to finalize the adoption. This is after I spent 3 hours filling out all of the paperwork and getting all the right copies made. Turns out the court would NOT accept the forms without all of Bela's international adoption paperwork (of course they wouldn't be more specific than that). So I get to try again next week - I'm looking so forward to that line again (not!). Ryan's persistence definitely paid off in getting Bela an appointment with an endocrinologist though. He physically went down to the OC Choc hospital facility - only to find out they had no openings until April - so they referred us to the Newport Beach center. They also had no openings but the lady on the phone said Ryan sounded really friendly and was touched by our story about us adopting Bela so she squeezed us in for next week!! Woho - the sooner we can get in to see a specialist, the sooner Bela can get the right medication to catch her up on her height. Finally, today we had an Early Intervention Admissions person come and visit Bela. She did an initial evaluation to determine Bela's developmental progress. Bela did great with the puzzles and shapes but she is clearly behind on her language skills - the only problem is that we can't tell for sure whether she is behind because she is learning a new language or because she has some developmental catching up to do. So after an hour of her assessment she referred us to conduct a full evaluation at another facility next week. She said that Bela is doing fantastic on her gross motor and cognitive skills and seems to be very social considering how new her environment is. She was also impressed by the fact that Bela likes to get dressed and likes picking out her new clothes. In fact, she commented on Bela's appetite being better than her 11 yr old (Bela just polished off 6 chicken fingers for lunch - she discovered ketchup today and loves it!). She educated us on the some local learning programs that are offered by school districts for minimal costs - programs that include speech pathologists and various other specialists. The programs are designed for a child and parent (between 0-5) to interact with other children in a social, education environment. There is a program called the learning link in south OC that we will be enrolling Bela into. She is not that social with children so we think this would be a great program to get her involved with.

So next week will be interesting as I will be out for 3 mornings while Ryan and his mom watch Bela. Bela seems to be mesmerized by sitting on a recliner and watching learning videos so hopefully that will help next week. We are just not ready to hire a nanny or sitter because we feel her attachment is still pretty fragile and we don't want to take any steps backwards by introducing her to a new caregiver. BTW, I got to spend some alone time with Bela running errands today – she did amazing. She didn’t fuss at all in her car seat and seemed to enjoy the grocery store – especially since we were buying bananas (her favorite). She is definitely feeling much more comfortable with me while Ryan is working. I love the alone time we get – it’s so much fun showing her new things. BTW – I have picked up singing. I am definitely not a singer, but Bela seems to enjoy it when I do it so I figured, what the hec! Singing out loud is almost therapeutic in many ways so I try to do it at least once a day with her. She loves a CD that my friend gave her of Hindu yoga songs for kids.