Christmas

We are having a wonderful Christmastime. Yuly continues to adjust to our family. It is amazing to see how far we have come in two months.

During this season, we had fun introducing Yuly to our family traditions...well, except for one. I did not take Yuly or Riza on our 4am Black Friday shopping excursion. The older girls and I do that every year--mostly to get the snow globes at JC Penney's. It is a fun tradition. Maybe we'll take the other girls next year...

But, we took her to find the perfect Christmas tree and then home to decorate it . We introduced her to cooking baking (and cookie eating). We took our annual hayride through a living nativity. We counted down the days until Christmas with chocolate advent calendars. We went to Christmas Eve service and then opened Christmas Eve presents (new pjs for the girls)...You get the idea. It was all very fun.






We incorporated in some Colombian, too. During cookie making, we also made buenelos. At the Christmas Eve party, we had Postobon...we work to continue to incorporate Colombian foods and traditions into our family life.



All of my girls are in dance, so Christmas is also a time for Christmas dance recitals. Riza (ballet) and Yuly (ballet and tap!) both danced on stage for the first time. It was so awesome to see!! Audrey (ballet) and Savanna (Irish dance) also had Christmas dance programs. I love watching my girls dance!

And, as I said, Yuly continues to adjust to life in our family. I can't believe how much more comfortable she seems. She is using more English--especially when she is at her grandparents' home because they don't speak any Spanish (my mom says she speaks quite a bit more to them!) Todd also "caught" her speaking English to a worker at Chick-fil-a ("May I have one (a candy cane) for my sister?"). I say "caught" because at home she still uses mostly Spanish.

But the language barrier continues to be the biggest problem...I mean, we communicate fine about every day things, but I can't really talk with her about what she is thinking and feeling. After we put up all the Christmas stuff, Yuly had a little relapse in her behavior so I called our local caseworker. Our caseworker is bilingual and she immigrated from Cuba when she was seven. Z (the caseworker) came by for a visit. She was able to relate with Yuly about saying goodbye to her home country. Z asked Yuly about her foster family. At first, Yuly seemed reluctant to talk about them (she kept looking at me), but I let her know that it was o.k. Z. also asked her if she were excited about Christmas. When Yuly said, "No" Z asked her why. Although I had been following most of the conversation to this point, I didn't understand Yuly's response. Z looked at me and said, "She is dreading eating the Christmas pudding." We quickly reassured her that there would be no Christmas pudding. A few days later I invited my co-worker from Colombia and asked her about the pudding. The pudding is Natilla, and my friend said that she thought it tasted bad,too. Needless to say, one Colombian tradition that we avoided was Natilla!! And, incidentally, Yuly's behavior immediately improved after the visit from Z. If my Spanish were better, maybe we could have averted this whole situation...It makes me sad to that I could have reassured her much sooner instead of having her be stressed about the pudding! (A friend gave me a box of Natilla mix. We will make it sometime so the rest of the family can experience it, but I want to make sure that when we do, Yuly knows that she does not have to eat it!)

Yuly still has (and I hope continues to have) a lot of Colombian pride. Anytime she has a Colombian snack, she tells me how good it is because it is from Colombia. One day, though I made the girls chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, and for the first time Yuly said (in Spanish) "In Colombia, I do not like pancakes, but I like these pancakes." Of course, being a chocoholic is an essential trait for our family members, so we are glad that she fits right in!

We are looking to starting a school-based program in January. Yuly will go two days a week for two hours and participate in music, physical education, and art. It is a program for home-schoolers and I think it will give her a school-type socialization experience without the academic pressure for right now.

Anyway, we are having a great time. We know that our transition has been bolstered by the prayers of many friends and we thank God for allowing us to expand our family through adoption.



And so, 2009 ends for us very differently than it began.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of you!!