Reasoning With a Preschooler

Well, it took 1 1/2 hours and 8 adults to reason with our daughter today and convince her to go on an outing with us. Nate and I have figured out that the best way to deal with this 10-day wait and the fact that we are an experiment is by going with the flow. We don't bother to offer our opinion anymore. We just do whatever they ask and count down the days until we will be able to make our own decisions for our daughter. It took considerable effort on our part to not roll our eyes as everyone felt the need to come into the visiting room and give their opinion to us and to our daughter about her behavior.

Even though it took that long for her to agree to go with us (we felt it ridiculous because we would've just taken her earlier in the process and let her calm down in the car) we did manage to find something positive about the time sitting in the visiting room with her. During that whole period of time, she willingly sat in my lap and let me rub her back and play with her hair. That's a huge deal! So we decided to stop rolling our eyes and be grateful for that bonding time.

Once we got in the car, we took her to a mall here that has a kids area for her to play in. It was basically an arcade with a few games for littler kids to play or ride on. It was a great time of being spoiled by our coordinator, our translator and us. We spoiled her with our time and physical touch, but our coordinator delighted in buying her a balloon, some chocolate, some ice cream, sharing his green tea with her and letting her have some juice. You can tell he adores her. Like I said, we had some good bonding time over play and food. Following are some of the pictures. There were so many good ones, it was hard to pick. My favorite was when she delighted in sharing her green tea with me. Nate had a blast being just plain silly with her.

1 Samuel 1:27 "I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him."