"Tinker Bell" arrived at our house today, being brought by her former foster mother who cared for her very much, but already had her hands full with several children (including an infant) and is hopeful that the two sisters will be able to be reunited in our home, something that was just not possible at her home.
Turns out she is not 18 months old, but rather already 19 months old and just a week shy of 20 months (I found this out from former foster mom). She's a petite little blond with sparkling blue eyes. She's only about as big as our daughter was at 8 or 9 months old. Former foster mom reports that her weight at her last doctors visit was 19 pounds and 6 ounces. She has a follow up visit in the morning so hopefully we'll see that she is starting to grow a bit.
Despite her small stature and recently being so ill, she is a bright and lively toddler. She doesn't say many words, but she understands everything you say to her and generally responds with "yea" or "nahhh". She did repeat two new words after us today the first was "Jesse" after meeting our Cocker Spaniel and the other was "Joshie" after meeting our 15 year old son. She seems to like J words.
The transition from her foster mother went very smoothly. After saying goodbye, she came to me willingly, and then back to former foster mom, back to me, back to foster mom. She wasn't upset or anything, she seemed to be making more of game of it then anything. Then my 8 year old daughter Lynsey came and stood beside us and Tinker reached for her so she took her. I asked Tink if she wanted a sandwich for lunch and she shakes her head excitedly, so Lynsey takes her to the kitchen giving former foster mom her opportunity to leave. We were dreading a melt-down when she left, but it never happened. She happily went on to eat her lunch, play with the cats and dogs, explore her new surroundings, meet the boys and become Lynsey's little shadow. Lynsey has been such a good little mommy today, I'm sure it will get old soon though.
After lunch, the boys went out to the shed and brought in all of the age appropriate toys we had boxed up years ago and I washed them up and set her up a play area in the living room to be able to keep an eye on her while playing and to allow Lynsey some quiet time without having Tink right on her heels in her bedroom constantly. It worked, she was thrilled with everything. She danced to singing Barney, "cooked" chicken in the toy oven. We tried a couple of times to get her down for a nap, but it just wasn't working today, so we decided being that everything was so new to her, we'd let her wear herself out today and try to get her on our schedule starting tomorrow. She has the greatest sense of humor, laughing at the appropriate times and trying to make others laugh as well.
Later in the evening a pretty nasty thunderstorm rolled through and we lost power for a few hours. So after it had cleared I took her out to the pool. She has obviously been swimming before. I had hardly gotten her life jacked on her and she was two steps down into the water, she loved it. After swimming she played on the swingset, while my guys went to pick up pizza since the power was still out. Before the pizzas arrived back home the power was restored. For being such a little thing, Tinker can surely eat. I was told that she will eat anything you place in front of her and she will. She ate a full piece of pizza with the works. She really enjoyed the black olives, picking each of them off before picking up each small piece that I had cut it into. It took her about 45 minutes to finish that piece of pizza, but she made it clear that she wasn't done yet, until the very last bite was gone, when she pushed her plate towards me.
The day went amazingly well, not a fuss, whine cry or anything until bath time....... She was obviously getting tired by this time and did not want anything to do with getting her hair washed. She cried the entire time she was in the bath, but settled down as soon as I took her out. We got the diaper and pajams on, hair and teeth brushed and I layed her in her new toddler bed. She had been sleeping in either a crib or a pack n play previously, so I wasn't sure how it was going to work out. She laid down and then began to fuss a little, I patted her back from one side of the bed while Lynsey rubbed her arm from the other. Within five minutes Tinker Bell had drifted off to Pixie Hollow land.
No comments:
Post a Comment