Thanks for all the messages you've been sending. They're a great encouragement. I wish I could answer them all, but we can't get onto the blog itself. It's weird. We can get to the area to post, but we can't view it done.
So much has gone on in a little over 24 hours it's hard to know where to begin. When I woke Katie up from her nap (I think it takes longer to wake her than put her to sleep) we got ready to walk to the park. She was very quiet and still was not letting Jim hold her. The park was a little further away than we thought but not too bad. It's a beautiful park and I would love to see it in the summer. I think it may be the same one Laurie was at with Shae. Katie was quiet the whole way there and also as we walked through the park, which is VERY unusual for her from what we've seen. As we walked into the park, she saw 2 little girls walking out and studied them quite a bit. She continued to stay quiet. We paid for her to go into the area wtih the playground equipment but she shook her head no at every single slide, swing, horse and everything else in there. She didn't want anything to do with it. Again we were very surprised. I still don't know for sure what was going on. We thought of a couple of possibilities. First we thought that maybe she was starting to realize that this situation was more permanent than she expected and was starting to grieve. Then we also considered that maybe she finally started to relax with us and was just plain tired from the last few days. But we really don't know what it was.
When we got to the restaurant for dinner though, it appeared that there was a switch that was flipped and she started to have a good old time. Actually too good of a time. She had been building up to this at the last few restaurants we had been to. She starts playing around a little too much and then she dares us to stop her in a fun way. It's kind of hard to deal with it all. The whole restaurant is watching these foreigners with a Chinese girl and we don't really know what is expected of us or how they will interpret what we do with her, so it's a little intimidating. Today we decided to get room service for lunch and not go to a restaurant. We had a great afternoon with her. She spent a lot of time playing with her dad. And then we went to another restaurant tonight. I was dreading the routine but when we went to the table there was a plate of toasted sunflower seeds waiting for us. Or I should say waiting for Katie. She spent the whole dinner time husking and eating them. She never ate anything else, but they kept her occupied the whole meal. It was wonderful.
There's a few other things going on. Yesterday she started using sign language with us to try to let us know what she wanted. Then I realized that since the first day the only things she has really said to us were the words for bathroom (there's two different ones for different needs.) I think she realized from the very beginning that we couldn't understand what she said. Maybe somebody told her, I don't know. But she's using sign language all over the place now.
Also, yesterday as we were leaving the park, we stopped to buy a few things from some venders at the entrance. She wanted a pinwheel but there was only one broken one left. She was still in her somber mood but started to brighten up when she saw it spinning in the wind so I knew I needed to find one for her. I picked her up and then...she gave me a hug! Up to now she was very comfortable just being held, but this was new and great. And we did find another pinwheel for her.
She still isn't letting Dad hold her. He's allowed to play with her and do things for her in our hotel room, but as soon as we walk out the door, she doesn't want to have anything to do with him. We figure she just doesn't want to be seen in public with him :o)
I just had to stop writing to take care of a little girl who wanted to sleep but kept waking up crying. Our Chinese guide, Maggie, helped us find out that her stomach hurt. SUNFLOWER SEEDS!!
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