So we have been home a while. We hit the ground running. Not only did Mom have to go back to work full time, Emily had a lot of things to have done before school starts. She has had her eyes checked and she does need glasses.
She spent an hour at the school doing tests to see which grade she should be in. It was decided that she should be in 3rd grade. She struggles in reading and math. She was very excited to find out that she will be going to a different school than her sisters. So even though they will all get on the same bus in front of our house in the morning and arrive home on the same bus in the afternoon, she will get to take a different bus than her sisters to "her" school. We were then very excited to find out that she will have Mrs. Colvin who has taught many of our other daughters!
She has also been going to counseling. She is grieving heavily for her former family. She has been doing many, many "bad" things to try and get us to send her back. It has been a very frustrating adjustment for everyone. Her sisters feel very bad that she can not "go back" like she wants to and we feel we are breaking her heart telling her that she is not going back. We keep reminding her that she is here FOREVER and she seems to understand that, but still can not stop herself from doing things that she thinks will make us want to send her back. :( She wanted siblings...and now has decided that she wanted younger siblings so she could be the BOSS. She does not like rules and so she wants a family who follows HER rules. We were having contact weekly with her former family but then each week she would think of more things to do so we would send her home. So for now we have stopped the facetime visits. When our other girls were adopted, they were immediately taken away from the orphanage and all the things that they were familiar with. That is the way adoption from China happens. For infants, it is sometimes easier because they depend on a Mother and Father to do everything for them. As long as a baby is getting a bottle and their diapers changed they can kind of "go with the flow". For older kids, it is tough. Jordis was not at all happy to know she was going to a hotel with Zora and I. She was excited to meet us, but when the orphanage staff took off without her...she was NOT a happy camper. I had to carry her kicking and fighting from the Civil Affairs Bureau office. She then fell asleep in the taxi back to our hotel and when she woke up with the hiccups, she seemed to not look back. She did still pick on her big sister Zora by throwing away her shoes one night and then biting her another day. True siblings to this day :)
Tessa was 6 years old and she also had not been told she was going to be adopted. When she walked up to us in the office she was a sullen, sad little girl. She begged our guide to take her home with him rather than go her sisters and I. Then when he told her that was not possible she cried and cried. I also carried her out of the office, crying, kicking and screaming. I then carried her from the van into our hotel room. She then sat on the floor by the door and told me something in Chinese. Maybe it was "Go away or let me go?" I am sorry I don't speak Chinese. Then her big sisters, RaeAnne and Zora, got her interested in playing with her Nintendo and showing her photos on the computer and she was okay for the next two weeks to hold their hands and go with them. She still did not want to have anything to do with this old mom until we left China and went to Hong Kong Disneyland where she quickly started calling me "Mom" like her sisters and asking me to buy her things at Disneyland :)
So things are so much different for Emily. She has been in the United States for 5 years. She speaks English and fluent Chinese. She said she understood that she was coming here to live with us forever, but since her behaviors are to the extreme, she has not made fast friends with her siblings. She has actually done the opposite...she has somewhat alienated herself from them because she will not listen to them when they correct her. She tells them they are not her boss even though Mom and Dad have told her that they know the rules and she should follow the rules. So when her sisters tell her to stop chasing the cat, she will not stop. So her sisters try to protect the cat and Emily will shove and push and try to get around her sisters to get to the cat. Then if she does not stop her bigger sisters will try to hold her from chasing the cat. Emily then kicks her sisters...one day Tessa held Emily from behind with her hands on each of Emily's arms and Emily was still pulling away from Tessa. Tessa stepped up closer to Emily and then Emily threw her head back and hit Tessa in the mouth...causing Tessa's bottom lip to clash into her teeth. Tessa received a very large cut on her bottom lip :( Emily did not do it on purpose, but she would not stop chasing the cat and will not listen to her older sisters to stop. So Mom and/or Dad have to be here ALL the time to moderate. We are here all the time...but taking a bathroom break sometimes causes issues. Then Mom works and Dad has his hands full.
We have had many family meetings and have explained to all the girls that Emily needs to learn and follow our rules. Emily tells us she will follow the rules and that she WILL listen and do what her sisters tell her because they are older and know the rules, but she then will not follow through. We are working on this EVERY. SINGLE. MINUTE.
One thing that Emily does is become a growling animal. She will growl and bark at us. When we ask her why she is doing it...she explains, "Because if I am an animal you can not tell me what to do because I will bite you." We have told her even though she is growling and barking...she is still a little girl and that will not work. One morning she took a book I have been reading and hid it. When I started looking for the book she said she did not know where it was. It didn't take much to figure out she was the only person that was in the bathroom where the book had been just an hour before. So when asked, she finally showed me the book. She had taken it from the bathroom and had wrapped it up inside a magazine and had it hidden on the couch under a blanket. When I asked her why she took it, she first told me so that if she was bad I would send her home and then because she wanted to read the book herself. The book is not age appropriate and her reading skills are not enough that she would be able to read and/or understand the book. So then we have to take away her priviledges which include her computer, her I-pad and her Game Boy. She does not like when this happens but yet we are struggling with having her follow the rules so she can regain her fun things.
She loves to swim and has spent many hours at the pool. We will enroll her in swimming lessons next summer, but for the time being she puts on a life jacket and paddles around with her googles on. It was really hard for her to understand one night while we were at a night swim why we had to get out of the pool when it was lightening. She was disappointed that the swimming pool closes when it is lightening...her thought was "When the lightening comes, we will just duck under the water!" Dad explained to her that lightening is electricity and you will "fry" under the water. She was still upset that we had to go home.
We have had her to see a pediatric Endocrinologist at Children's Mercy in Kansas City. She has Turner's Syndrome and gets daily growth hormone shots. She is currently wearing a size 4T and this is after growing a foot in the last year since she started the injections! Tiny, but very mighty! The doctor is Chinese and they had quite the conversation in Chinese. Dr. Yan says that Emily is very intelligent and told her that she needs to follow the rules at her new house. Emily told her that she would try. She had bone x-ray of her wrist and it shows that her growth age is 8 years and 9 months which is very good. She will be 10 years old in February. She also had blood drawn and everything was excellent! She will go back to their Turner's Syndrome clinic in November to have her ears checked as she does have some hearing loss. The clinic is for the whole family to learn more about Turner's Syndrome and there are all kinds of arts and crafts for the kids to do for several hours during the morning and a lunch and learn for the parents. We hope this will help our whole family understand what makes this little girl tick much better.
As her sisters are older and more sedate, Emily gets bored easily. She can only watch so much PBS kids and the shows her sisters watch are too much older for her to really comprehend. So Mom has been finding more outside things for the girls to do this year. We pulled weeds one night to help burn off energy and work up our appetites for dinner. Not too many enjoyed this activity :(
Yesterday was so beautiful the girls got all our bikes and scooters out and laid a little rubber in our driveway and down our gravel street. We need to find a good bike repair shop and have some tires fixed. Fortunately we have an air compressor so we can air the tires up when they go flat. Of course, this activity was frowned on by our couch potatoes and thus it only lasted about an hour.
Our social worker has been here and we will have another phone post placement report before we will finalize our adoption. We also changed the venue of where the adoption will be completed to our local county courthouse so we can make it a family affair. Will post more on that as it is happening.
Emily has also seen a special counselor and they are looking into medication to help her focus her attention. She is like a butterfly flitting from one flower to another. She in 5 minutes can have her computer on, the TV on, her Game Boy on, the I-pad on and be chasing the dog or cat. So she then loses a few electronics and we try to focus on doing one thing at a time. We are concerned that she will not be able to focus and learn in school if she can not sit still for more than a minute or two. We have to be careful with all the medical needs she has with her TS. So our team of doctors are all working together to see what they can do to help her.
She had chosen to sleep in the top bunk bed in her room, but we had to move her down to the bottom bunk as she was bouncing too much in the top one and we did not want her to break the bed. So yesterday Mom washed all the bedding and we remade the beds with all the blankets for winter and a special new blanket for Emily. They were pretty happy after their beds were made last night :)
