Ella - One Month Home

One month ago today, our plane touched down at CVG and Ella was finally home.  Things are going well and at this time, the issues we are dealing with are typical for any six-year-old child and not a product of orphanage life.

Ella's abilities in English expand daily.  She sometimes will utter complete sentences that are totally grammatically correct, like, "Emilia, Mama said time to sleep.  Go to bed.  No screaming."  I always stop in my tracks when she does because language acquisition is just so wondrous.  I also chuckle when I hear her say colloquial things like c'mon, let's go, stop it, yup, I need a break, have a good day, etc.

Right now, we do about an hour of focused home school per day with Ella and she is progressing with her pre-academic knowledge. She now recognizes and names 10 letters (lower and upper case as I have been teaching them in pairs), she knows at least a dozen colors, and eight to ten shapes.  Ella can draw people and objects, such as flowers, eye glasses, and boats, but she struggles with handwriting.  She understands concepts like fast and slow, hot and cold and is using comparatives and superlatives.  She counts to 15 and can quantify.  We will be meeting with our school district soon to discuss a half-day Kindergarten option for Ella for the new year.

Ella likes to help us around the house and enjoys praise for a job well done.  We fold laundry together where Ella's first task is always to match up the socks.  Ella also assists with grocery shopping.  She pushes her own little cart through the store and is very careful around other shoppers.  One day she even said, "Excuse me" as she was trying to get past a crowd in an aisle.  When Emilia is at preschool, Ella has had fun cooking with me.  I think she will love Christmas baking.  And not to leave her daddy without an extra set of hands, Ella has pitched in when Craig was assembling a cabinet and a shelf to be used in the basement.

Ella sleeps calmly through the night.  Naps are hit and miss, but she knows she has to rest quietly in her bed even if she does not sleep.  Ella eats well overall, still requesting a lot of fruit, soup, naan (which she calls lavash), greens (lettuces and herbs), Greek yogurt, and icecream.  There have been meals she did not like in which case she has gone to bed a little on the hungry side, I imagine.  She's not fond at all of cheese or spicy foods.  Oh and Ella lost another tooth this week, but she wouldn't tell us where she put it, so the tooth fairy did not come.

Today we had our first visit with orthopedics and they confirmed what we already knew: Ella has a very rare and complex cluster of congenital limb differences.  The doctor told us that there isn't going to be an orthopedic specialist anywhere in the country that will have seen even just a few cases of Ella's specific combination of diagnoses.  He acknowledged his own limited experience and said that he would present Ella's case to the entire orthopedics department at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, so that everyone's knowledge and recommendations could be pooled for her treatment.  We are awaiting a call with further details, but for now are told to simply let her continue to do what she's doing.

This month we have also been blessed to connect with Ella's biological family via social media.  We have learned quite a bit about her birth history as well as about her family in Armenia.  We're looking forward to growing this new relationship and being able to share it with Ella when she begins to ask us questions about these matters.

Our newest daughter is a big fan of arts and crafts, of the Kindle, of singing songs, of hugs and kisses, of braiding my hair, of roughhousing with her daddy, of talking on the phone, of baths, of pretty dresses, and of swinging.  She does not like bedtime, sharing her favorite toys, not being able to ride the school bus yet, having to wait for Christmas, and going to the doctor.  In other words, at one month home, all is well.

Ella holding a thank you card
she made for a kind friend