Wow, time flies, Kara's 3 month update

Kara Irina has been home for 3 months!

Kara is doing very well and we can report that she is beginning to walk 5-6 feet at a time, and she is determined, she will walk to the sofa and then crawl back 5-6 feet away, and walk there again and again. She giggles the whole time and we clap and cheer for her all saying BRAVO!! Her huge smile makes all of us happy and the change in her personality is awe-inspiring to me. I rarely saw her smile in Ukraine, though I think the orphanage staff did, and they were worried about it when she didn't with us as much. I understood her; we were complete strangers, and she was getting to know us. By the time I left with Kara, she smiled for me, but not at me, now she smiles at me, at us, this is progress!!

Her determination gets our little daredevil into trouble; she has found a way to climb onto the back of the sofa from behind, onto the antique sewing machine, and then she slides onto the sofa and tries to crawl over the top to get back where she started. I will get a video of her doing this. Yesterday she slid off the sofa and onto the floor, whoops, overshot. She was fine, actually laughed and started over. Meghan is determined NOT to let Kara climb over the sofa and tries to stop her, which make Kara MAD, and they argue. We are worried Meghan may accidentally make her slip, so we do not let her stop Kara.

I think we all worry she will fall, and have to watch her very carefully all the time. She is also very determined to get to her daddies laptop and threw it to the floor the other day. We cannot leave it open on any table, and have to close it and place it on the floor if we get up for even a second. I do have to say that by nap time I am happy she sleeps for a while, the adrenaline rush tired poor mommy out.

Her eating issues are improving, but she still does not chew her food. I place it on her teeth to encourage her, and she bites my fingers, and she bites hard. We have been working hard on this, and once she has services, we will get a feeding specialist to help us. It has not hurt her nutritionally, we just mash her food or cut it in tiny pieces, and she has gotten quite chunky! Her skinny little legs are pudgy and squish-able, and her already chubby face is even chubbier! She has a sheen to her hair and more energy than before, though I felt she was well cared for in Vorzel, she always seemed to be starving once home and was apathetic at times (depression probably had something to do with that), and she still asks for our food after she has eaten. We feed her first, otherwise we cannot eat in peace and she still will not feed herself, though she is improving there as well.

Her skin is not adjusting well to our extreme dry weather, mine is also a mess right now, we are a desert, but it is exceptionally dry right now. Our main issue is getting her to drink enough water. She does not like plain water, but we do not give lots of juices to Meghan or she...except lately, and that is because it is all Kara will drink. The last week she has began to drink more and more water, and we are working on milk, though we tend to not drink it often, we do not think dairy products are all that great for us, especially non-organic, and we would prefer raw milk, but cannot find any. She does eat organic yogurt all the time, and grilled cheese sandwiches (in tiny pieces), so she is OK with her dairy. She does not like really cold food like ice cream; I hope she will realize she will want colder water this summer when it gets over 100 degrees here.

Kara has learned how to clap her hands! We are so happy to see her doing this as we attend a lot of plays. :o) We think she enjoys the theater too, just like Meghan does. She is a toddler though, and cannot sit still more than 30 minutes, so we do lots of bouncing to keep her happy.

We believe she is adjusting well, learning our rules and what we will and will not allow behaviorally (biting, hitting, pinching), and getting used to our family. She will crawl next to me and sit with me if I am on the sofa. She often rests her head on my shoulder and smiles up at me. Most of the day she is exploring different corners of the house, getting to know her environment. She will not move to another area until she is comfortable in the first, weird...she will not play in her bedroom, only sleep there.

She will have her social security card in 2 weeks and we can pick up her number Monday. We can now get her in the system, apply for ALTCCS and DDD services, get her into the school system and signed up for Project Able for August. All we needed was her adoption decree, COC, and her new foreign born birth certificate. They authenticated these through their system and handed all of those very important documents back to me, I was so relieved I did not have to entrust them to the SS office. It was easier than the person on the phone indicated, and we are grateful for that.

We love her very much! We think she loves us too, but at the very least, she likes us a lot. :o)