Sasha Update

I will post more pics from our trip, but I thought I'd just give another Sasha update to keep all you eager readers informed on her progress.

She's been officially ours eight days shy of two months, and has been home with us for about a month and a half. This kid, I'm telling you, just rolls with the punches. Like everyone hoped, she's both a boy's girl and a girl's girl. She loves putting on headbands and clothes, and parades around in them, expecting us to comment on how cute she is. She's also insistent in trying on clothes in stores, fully convinced that they're all hers. It's also essential to her that she's in on all the action; she follows the boys everywhere, especially when they have friends over. Today, Kristian, Carsten, and a friend of theirs taught her a secret handshake, and she promptly repeated it, to the delight of everyone- especially her. She just basks in the attention. Nothing is better to her than her entire family sitting in a circle around her, giving her our undivided focus. She doesn't care where we go as long as she's with all of us, as proved by our recent 12-hour car trip. The only thing she's truly afraid of is being alone. For this reason, her most frequent word nowadays is "Mon! Mon!" (Her way of saying"c'mon") acompanied by a "come here" gesture. And nothing delights her more than Kristian sitting on her lap. (Yes, you read that right- not her sitting on his lap, him sitting on her lap!)

This kid continues to be quite the smarty-pants- or at least, the most observant human being I have ever seen. I was at the Gap yesterday trying on clothes, and she insisted on being in the dressing room with me. Without hesitation, she began pulling her own pants off, and pulling them back on when I tried on a new pair of jeans. She then looked in the mirror, lifted her shirt all the way up so that her big Buddha belly was sticking out, and tilted her head to the side with a look of deep concentration on her face. It took me a second to figure out what she was doing- I then realized that I'd been doing that a second before, to see how the jeans fit around the waist. It never occured to me that she would have noticed that. The same thing happened later in the day, when I bent over to adjust the cuffs on my pants. I looked over to see if she observed that, and of course, like Simon Says, she was fiddling with the bottoms of her pants, too. I've never seen a kid that age do that before. She really defines the term "Monkey See, Monkey Do."

Another example was the other day, when I was measuring myself against the wall. I panicked when I did it myself at first, thinking I had somehow shrunk since I was a bit shorter than the mark on the wall I made a few months before (because I'm very petite- 4'11'' at best- I'm very sensitive about this!) When my mom said she would measure me herself, Sasha eagerly decided she needed to be measured too. After my turn, Sasha stood against the wall with a concerned expression on her face. It then dawned on me that I must have been doing that when I stood against the wall, afraid that I'd be upset by my measurement (I hadn't shrunk though, thankfully!) Since when can a 19-month-old pick that up???? Of course, she had no reason to be concerned: she, unlike me, has grown a ton in recent months!

She's less quick to pick up English, but she's getting there. Here is what she says now:

• "Bye"


• "Kitty"


• "Papa"


• Some combination of Kristian and Carsten; she applies this word when trying to get the attention of either of her brothers


• "C'mon" (or "Mon")


• "Peekaboo"


• "Eye" (She says it and points to it when we ask her where her eye is)


• "Mouth" (Or at least, she tries to say it...sometimes it's just an "mmmm" sound, and sometimes she says "mow"


• "Ow" (She repeats it when we say it; she understands it's what people say when they hurt themselves, and sometimes, remembering when she pinched someone, she'll say "ow" and rub herself on the arm)


• "Off" (I'm pretty sure she said this when I took her off the tire swing yesterday)


• "Elmo" (She says it whenever we turn the TV on. She refers to all of the Sesame Street characters and the Teletubbies as "Elmo")


• "Uh-oh!"


• "Num-num" (How she refers to food)


• "Hi"


• "Hello" (She says this when pretending to talk on the phone. Yesterday, she used her half-eaten ear of corn as one.)

Her perseptive language is better though- she understands "no" and certain phrases like "diaper change." Though she doesn't say too many real words, she thinks she's talking. When my mom and I talk in the car, she'll babble the whole car trip, convinced she's contributing. Sometimes she'll pick up the phone and babble with certain expressions on her face that are exactly the same as one of us would have when really talking on it.

This kid is amazing. I jokingly tell her all the time that it's not fair to the other babies that she took more than her fair share of brains and cuteness. In all honesty though, she's totally defied all of the adoption handbooks. Nowhere did we read that a kid could be as amazingly good-natured, hilarious, fun, and totally well-adjusted as her. Not to mention that already her looks have model potential. It makes me want to adopt again, but then I think on it and decide that I should probably just absorb every ounce of her that I can for now :-).