Huge Strides

Collins is making great progress. She's speaking more english, a little at a time. She's saying phrases like "let's eat", "go outside", "go see home" (when we're out), and when we're home and she wants to leave she pretends to be driving a car. Sunday night I had a meeting at church so Carl was keeping her in the foyer. She starting whining and crying for me, wouldn't stop, so Carl took her to his office where she had a meltdown. We hooked up when I got out of my meeting and she was fine. She needed to go to the bathroom and while there she proceeded to explain to me that whole episode. I totally knew what had happened without Carl telling me! She pointed to herself, and then ran her fingers down from her eyes like she was crying. She said, "Where's Mommy? Where's Mommy?", then said "Daddy" with a frown. I started laughing, she was telling on him or telling on herself! She understands most everything we say and is very clever to the point where we now realize we have to be careful what we say around her. Today, for the first time, she was without Carl or I in close proximity. Carl was at work and I had to go to work, so we bribed her by telling her Conner was going to take her to get ice cream! Somehow it worked and she jumped right in the car with him. That was a really good sign, that she knows if she's away from us that we will come back. She's still pretty much 100% dependent on me, following my every move all day long. But today she had a friend over for a little while. They did pretty good and I was actually able to be on a different floor of the house from them for maybe 10 minutes at a time. Whew! Yesterday, Collins and I put together a metal rack for her closet. She LOVED the entire experience of going to Lowe's to pick it out, and then putting it together. She's very mechanical and is fascinated with how things work and how they are put together. Maybe an engineer one day.... At bedtime she went to the closet, pointed to the rack, and asked through gestures if she could put the rack in the bed so it could sleep with her! Today when her little friend was over I was telling her that Sophie didn't have a brother. Collins looked over at Conner, grinned and said, "Caca BASEBALL!" She doesn't know her other brother plays baseball too. Caca is brother in Cantonese but since its not such a nice word in spanish we get lots of looks and laughs with her. We're still trying to get her to make the switch to "Conner", and about half the time now she calls him "Tonna". If someone asks her what her name is, she will say "Cowwins." How cute is that? Another thing she really loves to do is to help me cook. She peels the potatoes for me, stirs and butters things, and is amazing at folding clothes. I'm sure the orphanage gave her lots of experience in that. Overall, we are pretty amazed at the huge strides she has made since we got her on Sept. 16th. When I think back to her behavior in China to how she is now, its encouraging to see how much calmer and compliant she is. (Except at church of course!) Yesterday, I taught the women's Bible Study at our church on Psalm 95 with our Collin's journey woven throughout. At the end they showed the video we have of her on youtube, and then that crazy girl went on the stage in front of about 150 women and sang "Jesus Loves Me" and "There is None Like You". Husky, little baby voice singing truth...what is better than that? I'll close with this. The other night Carl and I were watching the video I posted earlier on vimeo. Its an animated video about a little girl living in an orphanage who's just waiting, watching others get picked. Collins watched it through and then we were telling her that this was about a little girl in an orphanage with no mommy or daddy. We talked (through motions) that she had a mommy and daddy, but this little girl didn't. She quickly pointed to me and to Carl and then pointed to the little girl on the video. We got chills. We think she was telling us to go get her.