Party of 5

I apologize for not doing this sooner for all of you that got addicted to reading this blog the past few weeks!! It has been a lot harder adjusting to our time zone than I thought! We've been home a week now, and we still feel like we want a nap in the afternoon!

It is weird getting use to the fact we have five in our familly now. When we eat out, we now have to say "Party of 5". Kaitlyn is doing exceptionally well. She's adjusting very well to our household and now loves our dog, Milo. She carries him around like a baby, wraps him in a blanket and wants to sleep with him! Big attitude difference from the last few weeks!! Kaitlyn is also very helpful. She likes rinsing the dishes and stacking them on the counter, making everyone's beds in the morning and keeping her room in order! Austin and Kailey love the fact she likes doing the dishes! Her balance has improved and she's able to stand in 3 feet of water unassisted now. Before she was this floppy fish in the water!! I don't think she ever had the opportunity to be in water other than a bathtub in the past. She has an English vocabulary of over 50 words now and her receptive language is much higher. She understands most of what we tell/show her. We continue to work on "school" stuff and she knows just over half the letters and is learning to count from 11-20. She still refuses to do math problems though! She continues to test her boundries on occasion and sometimes will do things to deliberately get a reaction from us. Those are what we call "Kaitlyn Moments" and our travel group will know exactly what we mean! However, she is doing much, much better than she was in China!!

We went to school the end of last week and registered her. She was thirsty so I showed her the water fountain. Of course she looked at me like, "What am I supposed to do with that?!" I showed her how to take a drink and then she tried it only to get water all over her face and up her nose! It was pretty funny and yet another reminder of just how much she has to learn. We toured the school and went to a lot of classrooms where she felt like a celebrity! She's pretty excited about starting school Thursday!! She will be registered in 4th grade, but will go to a K-3 English Language Development class for most of the day. She will join her 4th grade class for lunch, recess, specials and math (however she will start with 2nd grade math until she catches up).

We went downtown and applied for her Arizona birth certificate today. After two hours of waiting, she will get one in the mail in about 3 weeks. Then we will apply for her social security card & we'll be good to go for our taxes this year!! Tomorrow is the dentist and Wednesday is the doctor! Pray it goes well!