School continues to go very well. She is happy to go in the mornings, and is a mixture of contentment, chatter, and exhaustion in the evenings. She continues to spend most of her day in a regular 2nd grade class, with some added time with the ESL teacher and the reading specialist each day. Her homework is modified and a new packet of it comes home every Monday. There is always an attached "post it" note that says "Please have Wu Yi take her time and return when complete." Well, Wu Yi is very driven to sit down and do all of her homework on the first day! She is a perfectionist, with very neat writing, and asks me to make sure all of her answers are correct when she is done. Both Don and I encourage her to take her time ~ I'm sure her teacher intends for the work to take a couple of weeks (its probably pretty time consuming just putting it together!), but Wu Yi seems to get anxious if it isn't complete right away. She explains that her homework in China was fairly difficult, time consuming, serious business. I tell her that, in America, homework is serious business too, but, for 2nd graders, after school play time is just as important. (This is usually met with a fairly skeptical expression from her.) The homework is also labor intensive for Don and I. Many of the concepts are new to her, but she is so smart and eager to learn! She does well with almost everything, except phonics. She struggles with "sounding out" words. I think this is mainly because she is physically unable to make some of the letter sounds. She is definitely going to do better with just memorizing "sight words". More on this issue in a few minutes . . .
One of the main things Wu Yi enjoys about going to school is having a group of new friends! She chatters on endlessly about the names of the kids in her class, and especially the couple of girlfriends that she eats lunch with and plays with during recess. For the past two weeks, all I hear about is GRACE! Her new BFF! So, after endless questions about when Grace can come to play, Wu Yi finally has the nerve to give Grace our phone number and then ask for hers in return. That very day, Wu Yi came home proudly carrying what I thought must be a winning lottery ticket ~ but was actually just a phone number. :) We had to wait until the weekend to call, but today was the day, and Grace came over to play. (When I called Grace's mom to introduce myself, I was surprised to find out that she already knew all about Wu Yi and that Grace has been wanting to be friends with my daughter for 6 months!). The girls played Barbies, dressed up like princesses, jumped on the trampoline, and then we went to see the Lion King in 3D. (Wu Yi's hands were stretched out in front of her almost the entire movie.) They were endlessly hugging each other and Wu Yi was so happy, she frequently came to hug me and say "thank you". It is amazing how well Grace understands what Wu Yi is saying. I was stunned when she actually translated one thing she said to me!!
Continuing on the subject of BFFs . . . .Wu Yi's best friend from China ~ Eva (formerly Yu Cheeong), called on the phone last week! As you may remember from previous posts, Eva is a year younger than Wu Yi and she just joined her forever family in New Hampshire. On her last day in China, Eva's mom decided to call us at home (unexpectedly!). The two girls, who had shared a twin bed in the orphanage, had not seen or talked to each other in 7 months. Wu Yi knew this day was coming, and she had expressed some nervousness about not remembering how to speak Chinese. I knew this was a possibility, but thought it would all come back to her as soon as her friend started speaking. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Her eyes were lit up so bright as she took the phone, and as Eva started excitedly chattering, Wu Yi's face became a combination of confusion and frustration. She covered up the mouthpiece of the phone and whispered to me "whats she saying???". I took the phone back and talked to Eva's mom for a moment and soon Wu Yi gestured to me that she wanted to try again. The second time went a little better. She hesitantly whispered a few Chinese words and then gained some confidence and talked with a mixture of Chinese and English words. We kept the phone call fairly brief, with the promise that we would Skype when Eva got to the states. Wu Yi was so happy when the call was over. She missed her friend terribly! She asked me how long it would take Eva to learn English and then said she would like to talk to her again then. My mission for the weekend is to get my Skype camera working and hopefully the girls can see each other face to face in just a few more days. That should, hopefully, make communication easier.
One thing great about being an American is getting to celebrate holidays almost monthly. Wu Yi is fascinated about this part of our culture, and she is definitely interested in Halloween. As soon as we saw our first pumpkin in the grocery store, she asked to buy one and wanted to know exactly how the carving business happens. We took a trip to Greenbluff and spent the day picking apples and pumpkins. She also got her first pony ride there, and loved the petting zoo and tractor ride. She is currently undecided about a costume (these things take time for a girl who likes to shop you know) and she asks endless questions about why people like to be scared, and why people actually GET scared about things that aren't even real. Just as trick-or-treating was starting to get a little tiresome, we are all getting excited to go and see what she thinks of it.
Back to the speech issue. Despite the fact that Wu Yi healed up so well from her palate surgery and that she worked very hard for months in speech therapy, she continues to struggle with many of our language sounds and our speech therapist recommended that we go back and see her surgeon. He needed to look into the back of her throat and used a small camera that he threaded up her nose to do it. (Not much fun for her, but she was very brave and earned a little pool toy for her Barbies). Her palate still looks good and the muscles under it should be working, but they are not. Without the movement of these muscles, it is impossible for Wu Yi to make the "explosive" letter sounds like "k", "g", "t", etc. Her surgeon feels that the nerves which should be signaling these muscles to move are nonfunctional (from 8 years of non-use) and that they will never work. Without another surgery, Wu Yi's speech will not improve. So, on Oct 19, we are scheduled to return for a "pharyngoplasty", which is a surgery on her throat (vs her last surgery which was just to the roof of her mouth). This will be very similar to the first surgery in terms of length of hospitalization, pain, eating, etc. Hopefully we won't be in the hospital for 10 days again! We were told that she should sound different almost immediately (there won't be as much air leaking out of her nose when she talks) but that she could develop a significant snoring problem. I didn't think snoring was such a big deal, but our surgeon says if she develops periods of "sleep apnea" during the night, she may become a very different child due to lack of sleep. This is usually a temporary problem, lasting 6 months to a year, but, if severe, the surgery may need to be reversed. Wish us luck!
