Wonky Internet - Quick catchup

The internet has been going in and out, making it difficult to post anything. I've written a few things off-line, and I'll send them when I can.

We haven't done too much for a few days, letting Vindya get used to me.  The good news is that she has been coming out of her shell and her true personality is showing.  The bad news is that she is coming out of her shell and her true personality is showing.  Isn't that always the way?

She is really, really clingy.  She will watch TV, if she is sitting in my lap.  She will color in her coloring book, if she is sitting in my lap.  She will play with the toys I brought, if she is sitting in my lap.  She will play tangrams or animal matching, or anything else, if she is sitting in my lap.  She actually doesn't fit into my lap very well, and is always sliding off, which upsets her.  The only thing she is willing to do sitting next to me is putting stickers in her book.  We put a lot of stickers in the book.

She is also only willing to sleep if we are in the same bed.  There are two twin beds here, and she sleeps sideways and kicking, so after she falls asleep, I switch beds.  Usually, she wakes up in the night and climbs in with me.  When she starts kicking, I wake up and switch beds again.  This happens two or three times a night.  

(On top of this, when I was brushing her teeth last night I got a good look at her head and discovered that, yep, she has lice.  Between the Saran-wrap attitude at the best of times and sharing pillows and switching back and forth, I'm sure I have them by now.  Luckily, I've been through this before.  I'll add the Minnesota Lice Lady to the list of appointments we need to make when we get home.)

If she is not connected to me, she gets into things.  If I'm not watching her for 5 seconds, I look up and she's taking something apart.  Saying, "Vindya, No!" only makes her look at me and smile sweetly, while continuing what she's doing.  After about the 10th time this happened, I realized why this was familiar, and why God sent the Evil Lilly.  It's so I could get used to this and not over-react.

She does NOT like it when I'm typing, so she will come over and turn the computer off, of start pushing buttons randomly, or try to run off with the keyboard.  I have to wait until she's asleep to type, and as I said, internet has been very spotty.

When I took her away from the DWDCW, they needed photographs.  We used my camera for that, and they were very clear that they needed the prints either the next day or the day after, to complete the file.  Since I couldn't just leave Vindya at the hotel, we headed over to drop them off.

She insisted on taking her (full) backpack, and obviously recognized the department.  She would not leave the pack in the car, so she carried it to the office.  I handed over the photos, and asked Mrs. N if she had any idea about a court order.  She talked to someone else and said something that I didn't quite follow about "Saturday."  When I asked her if she was saying that I would get my court order on Saturday, she said no, and then asked me to wait.

At this point, I feel like I should just move in to the office, but, we waited for over an hour.  I'm not sure what we were waiting for, to be honest, because at the end of that time, Mrs. N came back and said that we could leave, and they would call as soon as they got the court order.  In the meantime, all the ladies who work there talked to Vindya at length.  She informed them that she had chicken for lunch, which seemed to make them happy.  She enjoyed being fussed over.

When we left, she was fine until we left the compound instead of driving back to the orphanage.  She was very upset and cried a lot, and was still crying when we arrived at the department store.  We managed to get her to leave the pack in the car (she would have been required to leave it at the bag check, and I don't think that would have worked at all), and took her to the children's department.

Everyone stared at her, which brought her wailing down to a miserable crooning noise.  This lasted until we put her in shoes that fit.  Then she cheered up.  (The same thing happened with LiJun.  She came to me in shoes so small that her feet were calloused, and having shoes that fit made such a bit impression that she is a shoe freak to this day.)  We also picked up a couple of outfits that fit her.  The ones that the orphanage sent were all way, way too big.  I noticed that,  whenever she wears pants, she automatically grabs a handful of the front of the thighs when she walks.  I suspect that she has never worn pants that fit before.  Indian clothes are sized by age, and she fits into 5-6 year old clothes.  I noticed that all the pants in this size have the elastic/button combo that we have in toddler clothes.  That tells me that Indians are like Chinese - no hips!  Great.  Now I have two kids whose clothes will keep sliding down.

The only other thing of note happened yesterday.  She was going around fiddling with things that aren't hers, and managed to trip and drop my cup of tea.  Luckily, the cup didn't break, but tea went everywhere, and she lost it.  She cried and cried, harder than I have heard so far.  (I suspect that she wasn't upset about spilling so much, but it just tipped her over the edge.)  It went on for over an hour, to the point I was expecting that other guests would complain.  I did notice, as a positive, that she wasn't calling for Muntaj Mommy, or saying that she wanted to go home, but just sobbing.  

Eventually, it settled into a low, constant moaning that is at just the frequency designed to drive someone mad.  Luckily, I have fostered dogs for Dachshund Rescue for years, and I know how to ignore annoying noises.  (I also know the basic rule of whining/nagging/crying/howling - if you're going to give in, do it right away.  Otherwise, you just train the child/dog/other to make that noise for a very long time.)  She finally fell asleep, mid-moan, and woke up much happier.