Tell me about my tummy

Ever since learning that she grew in her birthmother's tummy before she was born, Esther has gone through phases of talking a lot about her birthmother.  These often seem to be triggered by my including her birth family in her night-time prayers.

Sometime last week I prayed for Esther's birth family, and afterwards, as I was getting ready to sing her lullaby, Esther asked, "Tell me about my tummy."  It took me a minute, but then I caught on that she meant her birthmother.  So I told her (not for the first time) how she grew in her birthmother's tummy until it was time for her to be born, and how it was a warm and safe place and she could hear her birthmother's voice and her birthmother could feel her squirm and kick inside.  When I finished, she asked me to talk some more.  So I told her how she had an umbilical cord that attached her to her birthmother, and how she didn't eat when she was in her birthmother's tummy, but got energy from the food her birthmother ate through the umbilical cord.  Over the next several days she asked me several times to talk about her being in her birthmother's tummy.  She was especially interested in her umbilical cord, wanting to know what happened to it.  I told her that after she was born she didn't need it any more because she could eat on her own, so it was cut off and somebody probably threw it away.  (I don't think she was overly pleased with that thought!)  At least three times in the last week, Esther has started a conversation with somebody by pulling up her shirt, sticking out her belly button, and announcing, "I grow up in my birthmother's tummy!"

Developmentally, I don't think Esther has started yet to think of her birthmother as a person, but more as a container.  In fact, one time when she asked me to tell her about her birthmother and I started to talk about where she lived and what she might do, Esther stopped me and made it clear that she wanted to hear about herself growing in her birthmother's tummy, not that other stuff!  I'm not even certain whether she understands that I am not her birthmother.  When we were looking at the fetal development display at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry last month, she told me, "I grow in your tummy."  And on an earlier occasion when I was talking about her birthmother's tummy she said firmly, "your tummy!"  She looked displeased when I told her that, no, she grew in her birthmother's tummy.  I don't know if her displeasure comes from sadness that I wasn't there at that time of her life, or if she is just frowning because she's confused.

At one point during this most recent period of interest, I was telling Esther her life story up until we adopted her, and she kept asking me at various points in the story, "And you see me?"  She clearly expected the answer to be yes, and was happy about being seen by us.  I hated so much to have to tell her that we didn't see her then, that we didn't even know her then!  I told her that we were praying for her every day, knowing that she was somewhere out there.  Then when she asked me if we saw her in her birthmother's tummy, I thought to tell her that nobody could see her then because she was hidden inside her birthmother's tummy, but God could see her.  Later on as I was tucking her into bed she told me how she grew up in her birthmother's tummy.  Matter-of-factly she added, "You didn't see me...but [big grin] God see me!"

Happy second Family Day, Esther Si Di!

Two years ago today, Esther Si Di made us a family of three instead of two and one.  It was a big transition for all of us, but we have been so blessed!

To celebrate, Tim took the day off from work today for some family fun.  After a special breakfast of fried eggs, bacon and frozen blueberries, we set out to the Baltimore Zoo.  We get free admission there through our membership at the National Zoo, but this was our first time trying it.  I have to say, if your main goal is seeing animals, there are places in the area where you'll find a lot more.  But the animals they did have were very nicely "staged" (for lack of a word more appropriate to living beings), and there were lots of fun activities for kids, including giant "lily pads" for hopping across a pond on, a spiral staircase going up inside a huge artificial tree trunk, leading to a slide, and "turtle shells" that you can crawl inside and spin around in.  I particularly enjoyed the bats in the cave display, and the giant (as in, up to four inches long!) tadpoles, the biggest I have ever seen, in a pond near the penguins (not sure if that was supposed to be a display, but it impressed me!).  Esther told Tim her favorite part of the zoo was her water bottle.  We don't normally let her have bottled water, but she had been begging to drink Tim's water bottle from a conference he attended on Monday, so we decided to let her have her own to carry around with her today.  (Don't worry, she did enjoy the animals as well!)

We spent about four hours at the zoo, and Esther napped in the car on the way home.  During the parts of the day that we weren't at the zoo, we mostly read books and played.  Esther took a bath tonight with some moldable, colored soap, and she made a family of worms and took care of them.  She was going to wait until I came into the bedroom to go to sleep, but I suggested that she have a little rest while she was waiting, and I haven't heard a peep out of her since!  I think our little girl had a big day!

academic developments

Esther is getting to the age where people are curious whether she is starting to know colors or letters--you know, academic stuff.  While she's not showing any signs of being a child prodigy in these areas, she is starting to show more interest in them.

Just in the last month, Esther has started to pay more attention to colors, regularly pointing out when two objects have matching colors, asking me what color something is, or using a color to describe an object.  Her descriptions, though, are often lacking in accuracy.  The other day when we were shopping for teddy grahams, for example, she asked for the blue box.  When I picked it up, she whined, "No, I want the blue one!"  Turns out she wanted the brown one.  Then a day or two later when I pulled out her green ice cream holder she protested, "I want the green one!"  What she really had in mind was pink.  So I think it may be time to pull out all her educational books about colors.  She hasn't shown much interest in them in the past, but she might enjoy them now.

As for letters, she knows that a letter is a letter when she sees one, but she doesn't know which one it is.  So while she likes to "read off" the letters in words she sees, there is never much correspondence with the letters that are actually there.  The only exception is the capital letter E, which she clearly does recognize (although I have heard her call it 'T').  Whenever she sees one, she will gleefully point it out, saying, "That's for me!!"  She hasn't yet started asking me about the names of letters, or asking me to spell words out.  I am, however, impressed that she can tell the difference between Chinese characters and the Roman alphabet.

As for numbers, Esther can recite the numbers 1-14 in English and 1-9 in Chinese.  She understands (really understands!) the concepts of one and two, and (the only recent development on this list) she understands that there should be a one-to-one correspondence between objects and numbers when counting.  However, she tends to either skip objects or count them twice when counting, so her conclusions about "how many" are not so accurate.  The other day she was playing with a dog and I asked her how many feet it had.  So she looked at the feet, pointed at each one, and replied, "One, two, three, four five!"  Oy.  She also likes to "measure" things and will stand on our bathroom scale or wrap a measuring tape around her waist and proclaim, "Three pounds, forty inches!"  Um, yeah, maybe if you were a two and three-quarters year-old snake.

It's her non-academic developments that I get most excited about, since there's no real need for her to be able to read or count at this age.  But it's fun to watch her develop, in whatever way!

First camping trip of the season!

Esther has been talking about camping--specifically, sleeping in a tent, eating hotdogs and roasting marshmallows--all winter long!  Apparently our last camping trip of the fall made a deep impression.  So faced with unseasonably warm temperatures and a free Friday night on the 2nd day of April, we decided to go on a spontaneous camping trip.  There is a park not too far from us that has a wooded campground, and if you tune out the occasional faint traffic noises and overlook the fact that you can only see the few brightest stars in the sky, it's almost as good as being in the middle of nowhere, only a whole lot shorter drive.  So we duly packed up food, sleeping bags, etc. (this time we remembered the oil and salt for our scrambled eggs!), drove to the park, picked out a campsite, and set up our tent.  Esther was thrilled with everything, except for not being allowed to breathe down Daddy's neck while he cooked on a propane stove on a not-quite-flat picnic table top, and for not being allowed to get too close to the campfire.  She was also somewhat less than thrilled with the fact that it got dark before we went into our tent--I had not factored in the fact that she has developed some fear of the dark since the last time we camped, so I got to clean up for the night one-handed while balancing her on my hip where she felt safe.  But the roasted marshmallows were a hit, and what could be better than sleeping on three layers of quilts on a slight incline?  (Do you detect the fact that Mommy did not agree on the last point?  I was in the middle, and Tim kept rolling into me, but I couldn't roll out of his way because I didn't want to squish Esther.  However, I enjoyed the marshmallows at least as much as Esther did!)

In the morning, we looked at holes that a woodpecker had made in a nearby tree, found a sprouting nut on the ground, shooed several spiders out of the tent, and examined the piles of dirt near the entrances to ant-holes (the ants being strangely absent at the time).  It made me nostalgic for my own childhood, and glad that Esther can have some experiences just exploring and enjoying the outdoors.  After eating breakfast and packing up, we went for a hike. Early on, we met several joggers, whom Esther decided to emulate.  She probably ran more than a mile, with occasional stops to beg to be carried (but if we tried to convince her to walk instead, she would take off jogging again).  The very last part of the hike we took turns carrying her and having her walk between the yellow splotches on tree-trunks that marked the trail.

So despite the dark and the incline, I think it's safe to say that our first camping trip this year was a rousing success!

Her mother's daughter...and her Uncle Nathan's niece!

We recently spent a lovely two weeks in Oregon with my family.  Esther really enjoyed being around her extended family.  She was particularly enamored of my mom, and wanted Grandma to do everything that I normally do (including accompanying Esther to the bathroom!).  They enjoyed reading books, playing games, and cutting up scrap paper together, among other things.  And one memorable day Grandma let Esther be the chief chef of macaroni and cheese, which Esther is still talking about!  At the end of our visit my mom gave Esther a (totally unofficial) IQ test, just for fun.  (Yes, it is possible to have fun with IQ tests.)  Esther's aggregate score wasn't anything dramatic, but she did very well on the expressive language section.  That didn't really surprise anybody--during the course of our two weeks there she correctly and spontaneously used words like protect, habitat and episode (of a TV program).  My mom commented, "She's her mother's daughter!"

While my mom's style of having fun with a child is very educational, my brother had a stated goal of "corrupting" his niece while we were there.  He endeared himself to her in a big way by letting her garden with him, use his vise, and sit in his beloved truck while he washed it.  (There were times when "Unta Nafan" rose even higher on her list of favorite people than "Danma"!)  And by the end of the visit he had her begging to watch "Woewee Hoddy" (aka Laurel and Hardy) and exclaiming "meeeeeat!" (his own favorite quirky expression) when pleased by something.  More than two weeks after coming home, she is still talking about Laurel and Hardy and...well, let's just say when we gave her a favorite snack recently (I forget what it was, but I'll use grapes as an example), she exclaimed, "Grapes!  Meeeeeeeat!"  I think the corruption worked.  Sigh.