Wednesday - A Quiet Day

We spent yesterday pretty much holed up at our hotel. Vinya woke up a little bit weepy at around 5:30am Way too early to get up, but I showed her a game on the iPad, an animal matching game. She figured it out really quickly, and was happy to play. I noticed that she sometimes remembered which animals were on the cards, and sometimes seemed to just be turning them over randomly, but she was happy.

She is really tiny, and she acts young, so I sometimes forget that she is really almost 7. I was reminded because she clearly knew how to wash and dress herself. When it was time to go down to breakfast, she insisted on taking her backpack, with all her stuff in it. She was very quiet at breakfast. The people at the table next to me discussed us. "She is making that child eat with a fork." "Now she is encouraging her." For the record, I was NOT making her eat with a fork. (Indians eat with their fingers, and I tried to tell her that she could as well.) She insisted, even though she doesn't really know how. I finally got her to let me feed her, and that worked better.

After we got back upstairs, she had another meltdown. She wa really upset. After she finally calmed to the point of making a miserable keening noise, I pulled out the matching game again. Even upset, she was able to play that. After a while, she decided that we should take turns.

At lunchtime, she indicated that she was hungry, so we went back down. I got one of the staff to talk to her, and they said she wanted rice. I told them to bring some, and this turned out to be biryani. (I have a post coming up about food, so I'll skip the details here.) She ate it, and then, when we got back up to the room, melted down again. For the first time, she got a little rough, trying to pinch, bite, and hit me. Luckily, she is so tiny that I was able to hold her firmly enough that she didn't do any damage. When I let her up, she turned around and really let me have it. Based on tone of voice, the little bit I understood, gestures and volume, the gist of it was that when Muntaj Mommy catches up with me, I am in big, big trouble. Then she climbed into my lap, locked her arms around my neck and sobbed for about another hour. (I'm not kidding. I estimate that she spent most of the day crying.)

When she calmed down a little, I showed her another game, tangrams. She figured this one out very quickly, as well. I noticed that she doesn't have a lot of fine motor co-ordination, and that she seems to confuse shapes that are the same but rotated. She worked her way through the levels where she copied the shapes they made onto a pattern, and is now working with shapes where they show the finished shape and the first piece, and she has to finish it. She can do this, but tends to be fairly random, rather than looking at the model and figuring it out.

We also played a while with leggos. (And I noticed that I bought knock offs, rather than the real thing.) She knew what to do with them, but stacked the same shape (rectangles or squares) on themselves rather than building anything. When it got too tall to stand, she packed them away (she's very tidy) and has been clear that she doesn't want to play with them again. I tried showing her how to build a house, and she took it apart and put it away.

We had somewhat the same experience with colors. She clearly knew what they were, and was happy to color in a coloring book. She pushes down very hard and doesn't stay in the lines, although she is guided by them. When I gave her blank paper, she just looked at me, not knowing what to do with it.

During all this, she does not want to be separated from me, even if I just go around the corner in the hotel room. She comes to me and raises her arms to be carried and sit on my lap all the time. Last night, she climbed into bed with me to watch TV (Scooby Doo!) and fell asleep. Since there are two twin beds, I moved to the other one to sleep. Sure enough, when I woke up this morning, she had switched to be with me.

She hasn't cried today, and didn't insist on taking her backpack to breakfast, although she does keep putting everything into it whenever I pull something out. (The bananas are the real bone of contention here. I don't mind if she keeps her clothes in it.) She seems really quiet.

We walked down the stairs to breakfast instead of taking the elevator, and she does stairs like a younger child, one step at a time while leaning on the wall. She was trying to go too fast, lost her balance and almost took a tumble, but I managed to grab her other arm in time. She has probably had limited exposure to steps - the orphanage is all on one level and I suspect the school is, as well. She also showed me that her (new) flip-flops have given her blisters. Also, none of the new clothes in the backpack fit her. She is wearing the little outfit that Meri and LiJun picked out, and it fits her fine. She also loves brushing her hair, which is all of half an inch long.

Finally, today was the day I was supposed to move out of the hotel, but Mr. Rajesh got me a 5 day extension. I have to take prints to the office today, so I'm hoping to make them understand that the hotel needs to know how long I'm staying, and at least try to get an estimate of how long it will be. (It probably won't work.)