Sweet but Sad

Lena Yi Yi was watching the 3rd movie of Ice Age last night. Due to the language barrier there are few movies she likes but she loves Ice Age and we have all three. I was undecorating the Christmas tree and was watching with her and then Brad sat down to watch with her.

We've noticed that when there are groups of animals or people in books Yi Yi likes to take and name them as Mama, Daddy, Gege and Yi Yi. She likes to put herself into a family at every chance she gets.

So, toward the end of the movie when Ellie the Mammoth gives birth to her baby Yi Yi did the typical girl thing of "awww" at the new baby but immediatly put myself and Brad as the parent mammoths and her as the new baby. It was kind of funny then as Lane became Gege the sabre tooth (Diego). She went on to call Eema (Aunt) Sid the sloth and Grandma and Grandpa as Crash and Eddie the opossums.

She did all this right before Lane said he didn't care who he was except he didn't want to be Sid the sloth. He was happy to hear he won the title of Diego.

So it was sweet but sad too. She so obviously wants to be part of a family unit. This kind of thing always makes my mind start thinking of who that woman was that was her birth mother and what was her story and was she scared. Then, in Lena YiYi's case, it leads me to think of the woman who raised her as her own for almost 9 years, tried to adopt her and was forced to give her up and how painful that must have been for both of them.

We are pretty sure we have a phone number and possibly and e-mail contact for the woman who raised her. We would love to pursue this and fill in some blanks that can be a part of Lena YiYi's life book. Who knows, maybe we'll even be able to get some pictures from when she was younger.

On a lighter note, yesterday we enrolled her in ballet. I talked to the teacher about her limited English and we ended up agreeing that putting her in a class with kids just a couple years younger than her would help her in all aspects. We tried to use the elec. translator to explain everything and she got some of it. She just thought we were all kind of strange when we're trying to find shoes for her (trying on several ones), leotard etc. The woman was so nice and talked to her slowly and smiled a lot.

Lena Yi Yi told us later, via charades, that it all sounded like blah, blah, blah to her but she kind of got it.

There was one scene on the movie last night that she seemed to comprehend some English as she looked right at me, speaking Chinese, and I could pick up enough words of what she said that I'm pretty sure she comprehended some of that scene of the movie. Even at just a week home we're hearing a few words pop in when she tries to communicate. She makes the effort, pretty often, to try and speak some English. We're learning some Chinese in the process. Her biggest effort for English was to proclaim her love for Saucy and Spencer our dogs.

Happy New Year to everyone!

Lisa