The Bowling Family

Last week was kind of a blur!  In the midst of Christy's first ever birthday week, we had numerous unplanned appointments.  Despite that, we had some really great times.   She and I got a lot of girl time, which was greatly needed.   We seem to have a lot of frustration between us lately.   She's very impulsive and also likes to help me "parent" a lot.   I'll go to grab something...like a utensil...and she'll reach and grab it before me.   Not out of disrespect....it's just what she does right now.  We are both learning and growing through this time.   Just getting out away from everything else was good.   We went out to eat and got her ears pierced.  Then we just walked around the mall and chatted.  She's so cute and funny.    I felt really bad because I thought she was prepared for getting her ears pierced.  There is not telling how they pierced her ears in Ghana.   One was WAY lower than the other and one of them....the hole was not pierced straight through so it was an ordeal to get an earring through the hole.   So, I thought that Claire's would be no big deal!   Well, apparently, when someone starts putting on gloves, sterilizing everything, gets out a little gun and sits you up in a tall stool....it's quite intimidating.   They did both ears at once and she sobbed when they were done.  I think she was more scared than anything and just didn't understand what was going on.   She's happy with them now though.   Luke already managed to rip one out, but, thankfully I was able to put it back in.

I also took her for a speech evaluation. I'm so glad I did.  She is still very hard for a lot of people to understand and it's not because of her accent.  She has some serious speech issues and will be starting speech therapy soon.  I think it will really help her confidence.   She gets frustrated sometimes when people can't understand her and I think she'll be happy to be able to communicate more clearly.   

The speech evaluation was hilarious!  At first they were asking her to tell them all about a certain picture.   One was a shoe.   You could tell Christy didn't understand why she was doing this stuff.  "Tell me about the shoe.  Where do you where it?  On your head?".  Christy..."no!  outside!".      Next....a  jacket.   "Tell me about the jacket".   Christy..."it flies.   it will bite you!".    The sweet lady looks at me very confused.  I told her she was talking about a yellow jacket and that Christy's never worn a jacket in her life!   Wow....we are still adjusting to so much!   

The sweet woman who did the test was very understanding.   She would ask Christy a question like, "You have 5 pennies (holding up her five fingers for Christy to see)....I take away one penny (now holding up 4 fingers)...how many pennies do you have (holding 4 fingers right in front of Christy's face)."   Christy replies enthusiastically, "One!".   Huge smile.   The sweet woman just says, "Ok".  :)  There were 3 more questions like this.  Then the very sweet woman says, "Mom...where does she go to school?".   My face turns red and I mumble, "I homeschool her".  Ha!   Nice.   Great!   Thankfully she asked how long she'd been in the states and understood when I said it'd been less than 6 months.   

Tonight at dinner, Luke was talking to Chad and Christy started to say something and then said, "Oh....I almost erupted!".   I'm trying to soak up all of the cute, funny stuff that's happening.  It would be easy to let the frustrations and hard times overwhelm me.  There really are some great memories in the making.    Moses is putting his mark all over our house in the form of paint, sharpies, holes in the wallls, etc.   We're working on reigning that all in...but, it's definitely going to be a process.   

Aunt Melissa got her this cabbage patch doll and Aunt Jessie made her this wrap to carry her in!  So cute!

We made her this little play kitchen...Moses used it to give the baby a bath :)

Here are some pics of Christy's party.   It was so cool.  There were 3 girls from Ghana at her party, two of whom she lived with for years in Ghana!  How amazing is that!  I just watched them and couldn't believe God orchestrated that!    You could see Christy soaking everything in.  She had a great time and I think she really felt celebrated.   On her 7th birthday, she had her first every birthday celebration!