Monday, July 6, 2009

Brief Update - July 6

Hopefully the pics of our weekend speak for themselves -- it has been fun but very consuming!! The girls are great and overall adjusting well we think, with some challenges. Fernanda is steady and quietly happy pretty much all the time. She is very interested in sports-- she has been swimming, learning to ride a bike, playing soccer, etc., especially with Chris and in his expert opinion :), she has talent as an athlete! Wendy is more the firecracker -- joking, laughing, but also more up and down emotionally. She has been missing the chaperone Adriana who travelled with the children (which we assume stands for missing all that is familiar) and there have been tears and some mini-meltdowns from her over the past few days. Saturday was tear-free, but after seeing Adriana yesterday at the pool party, she had some difficulties again last night. We're trying to take it day by day.

And today art camp started! For those of you who pray, please pray for all that adjustment will be smooth. Both teachers speak Spanish and another little girl in the class who came in after we did turns out to speak Spanish as well, so I am hoping it will be fine. I did hear many "no quieros" (I don't want to) from the girls yesterday, but this morning they were wonderful getting up and ready and out the door to the express bus down to the city. Fingers crossed!

This week, we will try to have a routine of camp, swim time at our pool, playing cards and doing ESL puzzles at home, dinner, "paseo" after dinner (walk to park or errand), Hello Kitty video in Spanish, then ready for bed and hopefully to sleep quickly! (Last night, it took 90 mins which neither of us were too happy with as we need our sleep too!). For those of you that we have had to put off as far as meeting the girls, please accept our apologies. We just need to have some structured days to get into a routine. They have had to adjust to so much in the past week.

And, to those who have sent texts and emails of support, please know how much we appreciate it. We are in full madrina/padrino mode these days so we have not been able to respond as fully as we would like. But we are very grateful for our family and friends and we feel very blessed.

1 comment:

Andy said...

I'm sure there's plenty to cry over. My unsolicited advice is not to try too hard to make her feel better in the moment, but look for a lull where you can get her into some new activity, and don't let her see that her crying worries you. Sadness is not necessarily a problem that needs to be solved.

I promise I will try to resist the urge to give advice in the future, especially given my lack of knowledge of the situation...