After 3 months at home

We've been a bit quiet on the blog after the busyness of the every day has kicked in with Aaron going to work every day. After a month of almost isolation to give Olivia time to settle in, we were also keen to spend time with family and friends again. Especially with Pat and Chas who arrived from Australia in early July. Here, we are having a Sunday lunch picnic at Mossø. Olivia tried to sneak off with Dad's beer... hmm, where is this going?

 We have been home for 3 months now, and it is going really well with Olivia's bonding with me. Every week we notice how she is gradually becoming more and more relaxed. The nights are more calm now, she never clings to me at home anymore, and when we are out, she spends little effort checking out where I am. But so far, Dad is still someone to play with, and his comforting cuddles are not accepted if Olivia is upset - even when Mum is not around. She has also not yet accepted that I leave the house without her, and this is the next big boundary we are hoping to cross soon in preparation for when MAternity leave turns into PAternity leave in 2 months from now.

Olivia does love to hang out with Dad though. Here they are reading books before bedtime.

At Pat and Chas' house, we came across a drum set in the basement, and Olivia and Dad basically had to be dragged away ...


 There is no doubt that Olivia loves music, and next week we are going to check out a music playschool in the local area, which I hope to go to once a week, so that Olivia gets the opportunity to spend more time with other kids ... Here are a couple of clips of her enjoying music at home :-) We are looking forward to Aunty Lauren coming over to join the party next month..

 Every week is a mix of playing at home, visiting Dorthe & Janus or other friends, going to the pool, or meeting with the 3 other adoptive Mum's and their kids, which we have formed a playgroup with. Here, we take a trip to the deer park with Dorthe and Janus. Olivia and Janus love to hang out, and Janus always gives her cuddles and wants to hold her hand.

Here we play with soap bubbles in the garden - but Olivia thinks it is more funny to say "oh-ooooh" an pour out the soap to watch my reaction...

 

For a long time, Olivias vocabulary was Mum, Dad, cat, dog and bird. But she is really starting to copy many words now, and  if you hang out with her long enough, you can decifer what the "baa", "boo" and "nee"s mean... the switch to using words in stead of hand gestures has, however, caused some frustration, e.g. when Mum does not understand that "boo" means "spoon" even after repeating it 20 times...

It's been a wet summer, and snails and slugs are abundant everywhere around the garden. Olivia is fascinated, but also a bit scared of the slimy friends on the wall by the stairs.

A bit more friendly are the worms, slugs and snails she makes from play dough

Olivia, this is your Grandma...

My Mum and her partner Chas arrived in DK on Tuesday and brought some Australian sun with them!

Olivia experienced some of Grandma's influence trying some non-dairy rice milk... which she enjoyed!

We played with the ball in the backyard which gave Grandma and Olivia a chance to have a game together... Olivia was very interested and happy.
 

 We made a trip to Kolding so the grandparents could compare notes...

Two proud Grandmothers...

While Olivia is bonding with us - and getting to know what it means to have a Mum and Dad - it is really important that she is not confused by emotional contact to others. This makes the role of grandparent in the first months of the adoption process perhaps one of the most unnatural situations one can experience. After a long wait, they must wait even longer to have that cuddle and closeness that is bursting to come out.

Olivia is lucky both to have three "sets" of grandparents but also that they have been so understanding.

Summer fun

We exploited a rare appearance by the sunshine here in Denmark and visited Mikkel and Trine Marie in their summerhouse. Trine's boys, Albert and Artur, were just her style with a good mix of consideration and being a bit rough. Olivia was comfortable and just wandered around playing with the boys even with out one of us to be there and give her a sense of security. This is big progress compared to just a week or so ago where she would sit with us and look over longingly at the other kids playing.

Albert helped her to get the hang of the bubble machine...

Olivia was not at all interested in dolls and stuffed toys when she first came to live with us, but in the past weeks she has started to become closer to Rabbit, or "Baa-be" as she calls him (thanks Aunty Lauren and Uncle Adrian!). Now she sleeps with Rabbit, takes him for a walk and gives him some of her bottle.

Olivia has shown us that she is pretty good on her feet. She takes the stairs at home now with no problems and she is good at running about, and could even take it to Albert and Artur on the trampoline... Here she figures out how to walk backwards.

We have on the whole had a pretty wet summer. Eastern Sweden is under water and the garden looks very happy. But... again when the sun came out we made the most of it and headed out to Steen and Inge's "hunting lodge".

We tried out the new backpack (Thanks Maria!) and Olivia loved it. At this rate I might even get some back muscles...

Butterfly hunting in the meadow... Olivia was good a spotting them and even saw some before Dad.

Olivia is good mates with Ditte... Again Olivia felt safe to run around and play with her as long as we were in sight.

This was the only time they just sat quietly!

Snapshots of the every-day

 We have been home with Olivia for 6 weeks now and feel that we're settling into the routines having a new little person in our family. Olivia is showing many signs of bonding, and we feel so lucky to have been given such a cheerful little girl who loves to receive and to give plenty of kisses and cuddles. Our first impression of her as a rather shy girl is no longer valid. She loves some action and when asked if she wants to get out of the house, she immediately nods, grabs the handbag, and she's ready to go... Here I went to the beach to make the most of a sunny morning

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We also feel that Olivia is relaxing into life with us. Every week brings a new change in how she interacts with us. As you know, she was just paralised in the very beginning. Then she started to want our attention, and was constantly clowning around to get it, eventhough that was hardly necessary :-) At the same time, she was very unsure of whether we would leave her, so she was constantly on my arm or my lap and could not sit still for two seconds. If I'd leave the room, she went into panic and was genuinely scared, even if Aaron was with her. However, in the last week or so, she has become more calm and can sit calmly and play with us, and she potters around me while I get the boring daily chores done (now using both arms - yey!!). She still has a great sense of humor and plays a lot of cheeky tricks on us, but we rarely see the manic clowing around for attention anymore. I'm hoping that this means she is relaxing and just being herself, rather than constantly having to put on a show to keep our attention. Here, we're having some quiet cuddling and playing in the hammock in the garden, and below, Aaron is entertaining her after breakfast with some YouTube videos of cats and dogs :-)

Pointing out dogs, cats and birds are still the favorite passtime. We bought a book with ONLY cats, and she is as excited as ever, every single time she turns a page :-)  Here she just realised that your phone has a picture of a dog....

We had a cask of wine on the kitchen bench, and one day Olivia started to push the tap while going "aaah" with an open mouth under it. She has never seen us pour wine from it (that happens after she has gone to bed), so I have no idea where she got this habit from :-)

Olivia has changed the tune with regards to sleeping. During the first 3 weeks, we hardly noticed her in the bed, but after she started showing signs of bonding, she has also been seeking cuddles from me during the night. Sometimes the cuddles are more like rubgy-tackling than cuddles (we have therefore named it the "rugby-cuddles"), so I lie awake for hours with Olivia more or less throwing herself across my face or neck every couple of minutes. Maybe the rugby-cuddles started because we played this game with her in the bed one afternoon...

 The highligt of this week was the visit from Dorthe and little Janus - Olivia's friend from Pattaya Orphanage. The two both recognized each other immediately and said each other's Thai names. Below, they get caught in the kitchen looking for more cashew nuts. After they left, Olivia kept pointing to the window and saying Janus' Thai name. We're looking forward to seeing them again next week!

More time with Dad

It has been a week with quite some progress with Olivia, especially for spending time with Dad. Rikke had to go to the doctor the other day and I spent 3 hours with her walking in the stroller and playing at the park. Then yesterday Rikke was sick and we hung out in the backyard to let Mum sleep in. Olivia even let me change her for the first time. It is really great to spend time together and Olivia likes looking around and noticing birds and dogs, bees and all manner of other details she sees around the place - which I can do for hours.

She is also sleeping better as Rikke figured out that she has become lactose intolerant and was getting an upset stomach in the night. We could hear her tummy loudly rumbling and put two and two together. It stopped immediately when we switched her to the lactose-free milk. Lactose tolerance is actually a mutation as most mammals only drink milk as babies (so it is Olivia that is the "normal" one). We had read that Thai folks are in this respect mostly non-mutants (and thus lactose intolerant), but had just not expected it to come so quickly as she drank milk without problems until just a week ago. It has been great to have her sleeping again and good that the poor girl is not sick every night.

With Olivia's increasing sense of security we visited some of the folks we have missed since coming home. Our trip to Kolding to visit Mormor and Morfar (Grandma and Grandad) and Moster, Onkel (Aunty and Uncle) and the boys, was great. She just went around and explored without problems and was happy to see them all again.

We also visited Inge, Steen and Ditte to celebrate Inge's birthday. Again, Olivia was happy to go around and explore and liked to play with Ditte, who was good at showing her her room and toys. The star of the show was however the dog, Cirko, and Olivia loved to pat him and play.

There have even been periods of sunshine and we thought we would try out Olivia new wading pool (Thanks Lars and Charlotte!). We had to add a bit of warm water from inside but it was lots of fun.

We are also really starting to see her cheeky side. She figured out that Rikke put her phone down when she asked for a drink, so she pretended to ask for a drink to get hold of the phone. This has become a game now, but the implications of how her mind works remain...

After being home for 4 weeks...

It has soon been 4 weeks since Olivia came home and she has made such progress it is almost difficult to believe it has been so short a time. I apologise up front for the radio silence on the blog but I have been plagued first by a lung infection then a flu and persistent sore throat, at the same time as adjusting back to work after the break... anyway enough bleating from Saunders, you are hear to hear about Olivia.

Olivia has made big steps bonding to us and often shows us affection with a big cuddle and sometimes a kiss. Rikke and Olivia have made good progress with bonding and Olivia looks like she really feels comfort and closeness in her Mum's arms - even sometimes when she has hurt herself where she used to just go into herself.

Olivia and I have also become closer and she often asks to come up and sit with me or for me to come and play. When I came home the other day she ran up and gave me a cuddle and was excited to see "Di-di" after me being at work all day.

Today, she even played with me for a whole hour - without stress - while Rikke had a nap. We had to go in a few times and look - "Shhh. Mummy's sleeping..." - but otherwise we just went for a walk around the garden then upstairs and made dinner together. It was wonderful to just be together like that. Just a week ago she had to check in and be picked up by Rikke at least every 3-5 min...

She loves to listen to music and dance... her favourite is the electric piano "demo button" song. We are all singing the tune 24-7 now...

Olivia's language is improving and in addition to "bye-bye" she can now say a number of words like "di-di" (daddy), "mum", "ow" (learned by burning her finger on the kettle), "more" (if it is Dad's cooking), and her favourite things which she is always on the lookout for: "do [g]" and "bir [d]".

A big step for us has been buying the new car. Not only is this good for family outings, but it is a diesel with decent fuel efficiency and I have been driving each day the 100 or so kilometers to work in Aalborg instead of taking the train. This gives me more time with my girls...

So although one could call it a "family car" it is actually Dad's car and this is the way that the girls get around in the neighbourhood during the day! Olivia enjoys the bike and we also have a little bike-trailer (thanks Grandma Pat) for the bike that she can sit in if Rikke also needs groceries.

Olivia is getting more confident out in the neighbourhood. She likes to go down to the park in the afternoon and muck around, especially if there are some friendly dogs that she can pat or chase around.

Despite the calendar saying summer, cold windy days are an ever present part of life.

Here Olivia gets acquainted with her jumpsuit which is standard issue for Danish kids and they can race about without fear of getting a chill. She has her, "are you kidding me?" look on, and while sympathising I had to break it to her that this really was summer and it is weather-wise only downhill from here...

Olivia had initially shown a dislike for all manner of stuffed toy or fluffy animal, but she is starting to warm to them. This one of the first meetings with the kookaburra puppet Olivia got for her birthday from Grandma Liz and Grandad.

Here she is getting closer to the kookaburra after Rikke found a compromise for Olivia's insistence that Mum sit on the back of the rocking horse with her.

The usually careful and shy Olivia is at times fearless in her play. Here she decided it was funny to run blind in the backyard...

Playing in the garden

Just a quick one today with some clips from our adventures in the garden today. It was another beautiful summer's day with 25 degrees and blue sky... maybe it will stay like this forever!

Olivia and Rikke started a little project to grow some plants from seeds. These ones are echinacea (purpur solhat). She loves to go around with her watering can and learned to play with the hose today... and spray Dad.

When we came home from shopping the other day Olivia invented a game where she ran around pointing the cucumber at us and saying "bee". Now we play it all the time...

Olivia is crazy about Chopin the cat and is even getting brave enough to pat her.