One Month In

It was one month ago today that we met Kate. Just today I was re-telling the story of our “gotcha day” to a co-worker, who leaves for China tomorrow to bring home his daughter. What a wild day that was for us, and I’m sure it was 100 times wilder for Kate. [You can check out post from that day if you want to get a sense for the noise, joy, and tears that were abundant in the crowded adoption office.] It seems like Kate has been part of our family for much more than a month. And she’s made some great progress since we returned home 3 weeks ago today.

A lot of people ask us about her language: Is she speaking English yet? Does she understand you? How do you communicate? And I’ve learned that you can do a lot more than you’d think with very little communication. Kate says very few English words – maybe 5. Her repertoire includes bye-bye, night-night, ball, and maybe a couple others. But she’s really picked up the sign language that we’ve used pretty quickly. She understands when we sign many things to her, and she will initiate signs to express her needs or things she sees: eat, drink, cat, go to sleep, and her personal favorite – shoes. One morning she’d been awake for only about 12 seconds before she signed “shoes.” And she’s quite the little princess, with her strong opinions about footwear. She “parrots” a lot of words we’ll say, like thank you, hello, and I love you, and she’s become pretty affectionate too. She seems to understand a decent amount of what we say – maybe 15 or 20%. We’ve tried to encourage Sam to take pride in his role as language tutor, but he still needs a lot of support with his curriculum. Tonight he was talking on his phone to his buddy Bob the Builder. He was kind enough to share the phone with Kate, and it sounds like Bob is a hit in China, because she started throwing down some rapid-fire Mandarin with no shortage of volume. Speaking of Sam’s sharing, he has been much better the past few days, earning praise & stickers. We hope the sweet Sam we know and love is here to stay!

Dawn had a birthday on Tuesday, so we celebrated by having a family lunch at The Varsity. If you’re not from Atlanta or familiar with The V, it is a bona fide institution, a veritable mecca for onion ring lovers and chili dog connoisseurs. It’s worth your time to check out http://www.thevarsity.com/ so you can impress your Atlanta friends with trivia. “Oh, yeah, The Varsity – that place that serves 2 miles of hot dogs every day!” [That’s legit, by the way.] I guess Sam and Kate were pretty caught up in all the history there, because they needed my help to polish off their dogs and “FO’s.” One note for Varsity newbies: I’d recommend scaling down your normal quantity of food by about 25%. I learned the hard way at Georgia Tech when some buddies and I devoured like 4 cheeseburgers each.

We’ve mentioned before that Kate likes to have a good time. You know, “crank up the music and show off your moves” good time. Sam likes to groove too, but Kate dances like a drunk gymnast at a pearl jam show: so flexible it’s scary, and in need of a crash helmet. We love it. Tonight we put on some Akon and Young Jeezy, so the kids strapped on their rain boots and started bouncing. I thought Kate might have broken an ankle at one point, but no grimace, no tears, and no stopping. And somehow they learned the classic conga line / choo choo train with no real instructions. It was a sweet and hilarious moment, until of course one of them realized it wasn’t cool anymore. One kid starts shoving, the other is still feeling the rhythm, cue the tears.