Vacation Pictures

5 Weeks

So we've been home for 5 weeks.  Or something like that.  It seems like forever.  We have that all too familiar feeling like Varsha has always been with us.  Other times reality is strong.  The language barrier is killing me.  Her  adjustment is killing me.  Thinking about it too much makes me want to cry.  This poor girl tries so hard to just roll with the punches.  The problem is that most times she doesn't know what is going to happen or what is expected of her.  At this point, there isn't a good way to explain everything.  Right now we are on a family vacation.  Our first in 4 years.  Thankful for my mom for pulling this together and helping us when all of my planning fell apart.
Bonding is going very well.  I mean as well as you would expect for a 9 year old  who is developmentally a 4 year old who doesn't speak english and is still trying to figure out what is going on.  She hugs and kisses us.  I feel special.  Then we go somewhere and she will hug and kiss someone that I stop to talk to.  She is bonding really well with Prasun and Ananya.  They are thick as thieves some days.  She also spends alot of time isolated.  She goes into her head and I'm not quite sure what is going on in there.  We can pull her back out fairly easily.  She does play with the other kids.  The other day she decided she wanted a piggy back ride.  From Prasun.  I about couldn't save him because I was laughing so hard.  The 18 or so months age difference shows in their size. 
We are adjusting to life.  Varsha is getting used to our house.  She isn't terrified of the little dog and cats anymore.  The big dogs are another story though.  Heavens.  Terrified is the perfect word to describe it.  She freaks. She does however love to ride on the dirt bike with Grandpap.  She conned him into a second trip through the back yard.  She is very good during car trips (thankfully.  it took several hours longer than it should have to reach our destination so the kids were in the car for pretty much 2 days.)  She seems to be willing to go with the flow.  She could also get lost in the chaos very easily.  Some behaviors could be pushed off to just being "Varsha" but need to be addressed. Thats what we are working on right now.  If I notice eye contact isn't really happening, I have to stop and make it happen.  If she is twirling around, I have to sit with her for a few minutes.  If our day is getting crazy, I have to try my hardest to make our routine at least similar to our "normal" day.  I'm going to have to come up with a picture chart for Varsha and Prasun.  Kind of like a calendar, but to just show the sequence of how our day should go.  Prasun craves routine and I think Varsha will as well.  I think it will help her cope.
We've been busy lately.  We've been to the dentist (thank you Jesus, it wasn't as bad as I thought.  No cavities).  We've been to the ENT.  Two rounds of antibiotic ear drops and 1 round of oral antibiotics.  Hoping this ear infection will finally clear up to see if she needs tubes.  We've been to the eye doctor.  Got glasses.  We'll be working on adjusting to them in the next few weeks.  We've been swimming two times. We spent a day partying with Grandma and Grandpap before I went back to work (BOOOOO!).
Right now we are just hanging out.  Spending time doing things for Varsha that she can probably do for herself.  Walking her through each day.  Just building trust and taking it from the beginning when she needs us to.  Everyone that's done this knows the first 6 months are rough.  It's easier than I thought it would be, but its still not blissfully happy all the time (real life never is). 
I can tell you for certain that this girl was meant to be in our family.  We are so happy that she is home and is a Phillips for life.  She stuck with us now.