Christmas Post

What a Christmas it's been! Christmas eve I gave Tara her first bathing with me - there's no bath here so I used a bucket and the shower head. Needless to say, I experienced my first Tara tears. I was told, after the fact, that most of the children had only experienced cold water bathing so baths were not enjoyable experiences. Coupled with the fact that she may never have experienced a shower head pouring water out, she was terrified. It was so hard to hear her cry, but I finished her up quickly, hair and all, and soon we were cuddling on the couch wrapped in a nice big towel with a hood (thanks Holly)! She fell asleep in my arms and I moved her to bed. This was all at 6:3opm - so I braced for a very early rise. Lucky for me she was sufficiently exhausted that other than a few brief wake-ups, she slept until 6:30am.

She tried her first instant oatmeal this morning, but only ate half so I'm going to have to work on that since what will I do if she doesn't like oatmeal!! We toured around one of the major sites - Bhaktapur - for most of the morning and she was a trooper. The drive there (about 45 minutes) she just watched everything pass outside the window. Then we spent a good 2+ hours walking around and she walked most of the time. I only carried her when we were on small side roads with motorbikes and cars whisking by - the traffic rules here are basically non-existent and it's not clear who, or what, has the right of way!

Then we spent the afternoon at the Hyatt for their Christmas lunch buffet and I got to meet many of the other adoption families and their children. It was nice to finally put faces to the names I had learned over the last 5+ months as we've all gone through this together online.

The buffet was Western food - so I figured what child doesn't like noodles and I got Tara some rigatoni noodles with sauteed little bits of meat, green pepper and mushrooms, in a bit of olive oil. And true to child-form, she picked out all the noodles, ate them happily, and then pushed around the vegetables!! She did however eat all the veggies I put in front of her when they were covered in familiar sauces, so we'll have to work on that. And then fruit for dessert - she picked out the pomegranate seeds in the fruit salad and gobbled them up - she has good taste!

The rest of the evening was spent at the apartment - hanging out. I made some dinner (pre-made indian food warmed up in the microwave and rice) and she watched her first Dora the Explorer (I figure might as well inculcate her into American culture!!) and then, after some more crying when I misted saline up her nose (she's all congested) it was off to bed, where she is hopefully restfully sleeping right now!

On the investigation front - I have hired an investigator and started to get things moving. I will start to work with him over the next week or so to get things started and hope to have most of it done by mid-January. Things are moving!