Outdoor Adventures

As I sat down to write this evening, I remembered my very first foray into journaling.  I was six years old, and I received a Hello Kitty diary for my birthday.  It had space for the date on each entry, so I felt like I had to write something every single day.  So many of the entries that summer consisted of the date and, "Today was fun!"  Tonight, I could summarize our day the same way:  "Today was fun!"  For those of you who wish I wrote more succinctly, you can stop reading now.  For those who want a lot more detail, read on!

Michel seems to like time alone in the mornings and wait for an invitation to come down for breakfast.  But once she has joined the family, she sticks with us for every activity.  If given the option ("Do you want to go to Walgreen's with Mike or stay home with Elizabeth?"), she will always choose the outing.  She also likes to do what the kids are doing.  I were an eleven-year-old girl, I would tire of hanging out with boys all the time, but she never seems to need a break from their energy!

We grabbed Subway for lunch today, since we were a little crunched on time.  Michel picked sandwiches over hamburgers at McDonald's.  However, when we walked into Subway, her eyes widened at the rack of chips.  She took me aside and whispered, "I would like Doritos instead of a sandwich."  I told her she could have Doritos but still asked what kind of sandwich she would like.  She said, "No sandwich.  Just Doritos."  As tempting as it is to give her everything her heart desires, I still had to play the parent (or risk revolt from my boys, now and forever at Subway!).  I described the options:  sandwich, salad, soup.  Nope, just Doritos.  Pizza?  Ahhh, that was a workable compromise.  She was very familiar with pizza and happy to accept that.  She only ate a little - less than half of a personal-size pizza - but it balanced out the Doritos.  Kind of.

Today was our monthly Nature Club at the local arboretum - a favorite activity of our kids.  Michel went on a nature hike and fished for creatures in the pond.  She didn't hesitate at all to grab a net, scoop up some sludge, and poke through the mossy mess to find scuds, snails, seed pods, and other treasures.

A seed pod in the hands of Lee, the world's best Nature Club teacher.  She described the seeds as being attached by a tiny umbilical cord.  I was grateful for my medical interpreting experience and many years working in Labor & Delivery, so I knew the terminology!  

Michel was given permission to keep any uninhabited snail shells, but I think we'll have to check with Customs before sending her back to Colombia with those...  She asked questions about the things she found and wanted to know the names of everything in English and Spanish.  I haven't run into too many words I don't know in Spanish this week, but scuds and water lilies were outside my range of vocabulary!

That's a white water lily starting to bloom in the center of the photo.

We stopped in the tiny town of Dallas Center for ice cream on the way home.  She did mention, when asked on the way home, that she prefers city life to country life, but she seems to have enjoyed all of our outings thus far.

We came home for a little "down time," which consisted of three kids engaging in a rousing game of tug-of-war with the dog.  Playing with the dog elicits such laughter from Michel!  She gets right down on the floor with the boys and the dog, and she gives commands in English and Spanish.  She has varying degrees of success in both languages, but that has more to do with the dog's obedience than Michel's language ability!  A couple of people have commented that when she uses English, she speaks very clearly and is easy to understand.

The kids enjoyed another water gun fight this afternoon, followed by Michel's first time in the hot tub.  She wasn't sure about the warm water at first but quickly grew accustomed to it.  She seems very comfortable in the water, playing and going under to find diving rings.  She and Mike made up a game where he would count to five while she hid her eyes, then looked for the rings.  I was impressed at how well they could create a game with limited common language.  She must have been having fun, because they were in the water for over two hours!

She transitions easily when it's time to end an activity, even when she's having fun.  Mike was so impressed yesterday, during the first water fight, when he told the kids they had five more minutes to play.  After five minutes - with zero prompting from us and no watch or clock to guide her - Michel put her water gun away and waited by the front door.  When Mike asked what she was doing, she told him he had said five more minutes, so it must be time to go inside.  I wish our kids responded that flawlessly and without reminders!

The arsenal of small guns.  The big ones don't fit on the bumper of the car!

We had Domino's Pizza for dinner.  I confess - it was a desperate move by a tired mother who had been dealing with computer headaches for two hours while Mike and the kids enjoyed the hot tub.  I also wasn't sure if Michel would be upset that we had to throw out her leftover pizza from lunch.  I thought I'd order a pre-emptive pizza dinner to avoid any meltdowns.  (In the car after lunch, when she said that she was full, I told her that we would probably have to throw out any pizza she didn't eat, since we wouldn't have refrigeration for a few hours.  She quickly took the box back and shook her head, as if she didn't want to throw it away.  Later, I did throw it away, after two hours or more in a hot car.  However, she never asked about the lunch leftovers later in the day, so it probably wouldn't have been an issue.  Better safe than sorry!)  She tried all three kinds of pizza (cheese, sausage & ham, and spinach & feta).  Spinach was not a favorite - no surprise there - but I was proud of her for trying it!  Cheese was the favorite, but she ate some of the sausage pizza as well.  Lots of watermelon for dessert - perhaps a universally loved summer food!

After dinner, it was more outside time.  We played a rousing game of soccer with the neighbor kids.  When we play boys against girls, it's not me by myself on a team anymore!  (Our street is almost all boys.)  She gets along great with other kids - whether at nature club, on the basketball court, on the soccer field, or on the street, she is quick to include boys and girls of all ages in whatever she is doing.  She wants to make sure she gets their names right - especially if the names are unfamiliar and don't translate well into Spanish.  She is a very confident leader, but not in a bossy way that turns other kids off.  She gave helpful coaching instructions on the soccer field to direct the play, especially for the younger kids who weren't familiar with the "real" rules of soccer.  She used English and Spanish very effectively to give commands.

Michel spent some time on the computer with Mike before bed this evening.  She navigates basic Windows commands comfortably and loved looking at pictures on his computer.  He only has a couple of pictures of the kids on his work computer - which she enjoyed - but he has a series of pictures he has taken on business trips.  She seemed very interested in pictures of the farms Mike has visited down south, asking questions and learning about peanut and cotton harvesting.  I interpreted for this conversation, but in general, I have been impressed with how well Mike and Michel have been able to communicate, even in the first couple days of her visit.

Michel seems very interested in music.  She found a Spanish radio station that she often plays, but she scrolls through the English stations as well.  (Mike says it makes him hungry when she listens to Spanish music, because it reminds him of being in a Mexican restaurant!)  On the way upstairs to bed, she spotted a set of children's CDs.  She asked me to go through them all and explain what each one was (e.g. silly songs, bedtime stories, fairy tales, farm songs, etc.).  Then she invited Matthew up to her room - perhaps because he's the youngest, and the CDs are targeted for younger kids - to listen to them.  She put each disc in the CD player and listened to a sample of every song to get a feel for it.  We all enjoyed singing and dancing together - even the dog and Michel's teddy bear joined in the fun!

 


At bedtime, we enjoyed a bilingual story together.  Mike read the English part, Michel read the Spanish, and they took turns fluidly and easily.  When our overtired boys had trouble settling down for the night, she brought her CD player to them and put on the Spanish lullaby CD.  Her favorite songs are the Spanish versions of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," and "Everything's Gonna Be All Right."  She told them, "This is what helps me sleep."  Again, a universal element that calmed all three kids within minutes.  I want to cling to Bob Marley's lyrics (as translated and sung in Spanish by Jaci Velasquez):  "Don't worry about a thing, 'cause every little thing gonna be all right."  I want everything to be "all right" for Michel, including a loving home forever.

I saw more of Michel's leadership skills at bedtime, correcting our kids when they were out of line.  Again, she's not bossy, mean, or inappropriate about it, but she definitely will let them know if they are not "with the program."  She was quick to tell them - using more English than Spanish - when it was time to settle down and sleep.  She also lets me know if our kids do something they shouldn't - not tattling, more like a helpful informant pointing out misbehavior.  When I told the kids they couldn't have parade candy before dinner, she put her candy away, then said, "Mateo" (Matthew) to me when he was reaching back into his box.  (It turns out he was just getting some out to share with the neighbor boys.  Please, share the wealth!)

Tomorrow is our first Kidsave event, where potential adoptive families can meet the kids visiting the Midwest this summer.  I'm sure we will have lots to report by tomorrow evening!  If you are in Iowa, or anywhere close by, come join us at Glazed Expressions to paint pottery and have a blast with eight amazing kids.  For a schedule of events, check out http://www.kidsave.org/summer-miracles-events/.

Maybe one of these days, we will have a completely unscheduled, boring day, and you'll be able to read a one-paragraph blog post.  But until then...thanks for staying with me until the end.  Today was fun.