I'm not sure how long I'll have to type before little one wakes up from her nap, but it's been so long since I wrote anything that I thought I'd at least try for a short post.
First of all, thanks everyone for your comments! We didn't get to read them until we got home from China, but we really enjoyed seeing what everyone had to say.
Esther is pursuing new gross-motor skills with single-minded passion. She now crawls with confidence, pulls herself up to a standing position, balances in a standing position while holding on with one hand or leaning her tummy against something, and (her latest accomplishment) collapses from a standing position into a sitting one instead of falling straight backwards. A few days after we got home, I tried her in her little chair at the table for the first time (instead of buying a high chair, which takes up a lot of space and keeps the child somewhat separate from the table, we had bought a little seat that hooks on to the table). I wasn't sure if she would be able to sit up in it, since she wasn't sitting very competently when we got her, or if she would tolerate being strapped in, but lo and behold she loved it! I gave Esther some chunks of ricecake (not the fried kind that the McDaniel clan like for breakfast, but the puffed-rice kind that you can buy in a grocery store) and she happily gnawed on the parts that stuck out of her fist while allowing us to eat our dinners simultaneously and in peace. What a lovely moment! For the first couple of days she would stick her whole fist in her mouth and cry when she tasted fingers instead of ricecake. After that she figured out how to open her fist against her mouth to shove the ricecake in, and once that skill was mastered, she easily transferred it to Cheerios. Now that she can get a whole fistful of food in her mouth at once, I have to give her smaller pieces of ricecake, and only one at a time, because she wants to shovel everything in at one go. We've also discovered that small cubes of tofu make excellent finger food. She still has eaten everything that we've given her, but I think we finally discovered a food she didn't like. When we gave her some little cubes of soft cheese she ate several, but she ate them very slowly and made a funny face after each one. And she left several uneaten, which is unusual for her.
Esther is now sleeping well at night (waking up once for a bottle), and has started (usually) falling asleep without crying about it. Maybe that's what the orphanage meant when they said she had good sleeping habits? I had thought they meant that she was a sound sleeper, which she is. It's not clear yet whether she needs two naps a day or just one; she goes back and forth about it.
She pretty much stopped babbling the first week we were back, but the last few days she's been babbling again with a vengeance. She'll even whine in syllables! I don't know if she was so busy working on standing that other skills fell by the wayside, or whether she was reacting to the change in language environment, or what. But it's fun to hear her "talking" again.
There are certain things that Esther isn't allowed to do--like grab Daddy's glasses, pull Mommy's hair, stand up against the glass door to the VCR cabinet, or hold the spoon I'm using to feed her--but for the most part we've just been physically restraining or removing her from whatever she isn't supposed to do. So last night was, for me, our first real experience of discipline. We've been bathing her in her inflatable duck tub inside the big bathtub, and last night she decided she wanted to pull herself up on the side of the big bathtub and stand up in her bath. That's something I REALLY don't want her to do and I want her to know that she's not allowed to do it. So I put her back into a sitting position, looked her in the eyes, and said sternly, "No!" And repeated the process several times as she kept trying to stand up. The first few times I told her no, she grinned adorably. When she finally figured out what I meant, she whimpered a bit, but then moved on to another activity. I'm sure we'll repeat this whole procedure for several baths to come, but I hope eventually she'll internalize the fact that she may not stand up in her bath. At least I'm pretty sure she got the message!
Speaking of whimpering, I just heard a little noise from her crib, so I think I'll sign off here and get ready for naptime to be over.
Linette
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