Getting to know Harmony a bit

Gotcha Day went really well! She did not like the big room at the civil affairs office - 15+ families and guides milling about was not her idea of a good time. So we actually met her outside on the building steps and that went over much better. Having Medora & Lian with us was a huge icebreaker. Oddly enough, she doesn't mind being out and about in the hotel, the tour bus, and on the streets, so I'm not sure what it was about that room that she did not like.

 Her nickname is the Food Vacuum. She is a voracious eater and packed away a ton of lunch and dinner. When the noodle dish at dinner tonight was getting toward the end and the noodles were small and scattered on the plate, she allowed us to feed her ... so sweet. When the noodle remnants got so small we couldn't pick them up any longer with chopsticks or a fork, she pulled the dish right in front of her and proceeded to harvest all noodle remnants ... a noodle piece 1/8" long was not lost on her. She's not picky at all, and channeled her inner Medora by eating a raw lemon wedge.

 She is very smiley and giggles a lot. She's enamored with her older sisters and orchestrated several picture moments today where she insisted on posing with her sisters, then jabbered in Mandarin and waved her arms to indicate that Baba should take photos. Clearly NOT shy or reticent! 

Developmentally, she seems totally on track. She speaks a TON of Mandarin. She jabbers away with anyone else who she can get to stop and talk with her - waiters in restaurants, workers in the hotel, etc. I can understand some of it and respond to her. I'm so thankful for the little bit of Mandarin I do know ... she clearly expects to communicate with us and gets frustrated when we don't understand what she is asking. The girls have been teaching her to count to ten in English already, and she repeats a lot of our English phrases already.

 We had sent her a care package with a USB thumb drive, and asked the orphanage to fill it with any pictures they had of her. They not only complied with that request, but sent a lovely photo album filled with pictures of her. She found the USB drive at Gotcha Day and immediately claimed it as hers. She has not let it out of her sight! I'm not sure why the USB drive is so precious. I did get it away from her for about 60 seconds to copy the photos onto my computer. You'll see it in her hand in any picture (white with yellow accents), but I especially love the picture of her sleeping with the USB drive clutched in her hand.

 She had been sleeping in a crib at the orphanage, so we asked the hotel to give us a crib in our room. Harmony was having NONE of it. If we pointed to it, she'd say "boo shi" and then touch one of the regular beds. So we ended up pulling the bedding out of the crib and putting it on the floor. That was fine with her. She went to bed so sweetly, combing her doll's hair as she drifted off to sleep.

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