Catching Up (Part 1)

As I sit here relaxing by the pool on the rooftop of our hotel, I realize that I'm four or five days behind on the blog ... and there's no way I could possibly catch up. So, let me summarize what we've done since Thursday. But first, here's a Camille update:

Camille is adjusting fine. She is amazingly good on car rides, especially given the bumpiness of each ride, the length of some of our car trips, and the unbearable heat when we are not in an air-conditioned car. Another thing: she is a GREAT sleeper. By that, I don't mean that she sleeps a lot. I mean that she's super easy to put to sleep, she sleeps through the night, and she doesn't make a sound when she wakes up. I don't know exactly how they treated the children in the baby home, but I could tell you this: to put Camille to sleep, we simply need to give her a bottle, lie her down, and tell her to go to sleep. She'll lay there totally quiet and drink her milk until she falls asleep. Then after a perfectly peaceful sleep, she'll wake up and JUST LIE THERE ... waiting for someone to come and get her. She doesn't whimper or whine or even climb off the bed to come looking for us. She just lays there looking around. Amazing. Finally, she's really good at responding to the word, "no". If she's doing something she's not supposed to do, such as trying to turn off the TV while we're watching, we say "no!". Then .... she just stops what she was doing and moves on. That's it. Weird, huh?

Don't get me wrong ... we still have some issues to deal with. For one, she is a total mama's girl. When Reg is around, she almost exclusively insists on being held ... or fed ... or transported ... by her mama. That could be annoying (for Reg at least), and Reg is definitely tired at the end of a long day. But then again, Reg reminded me that all of our kids were like that at Camille's age ... so I guess she'll eventually take a liking to me. :) I also mentioned in a previous post that she has a tendency to whine. She doesn't have words yet, so she just whines whenever she wants or doesn't want something. That's got to change. And finally, we discovered that if someone tries to do something Camille doesn't like, she hits. Yikes! One of the top rules in our household is "No hitting!", so this has definitely got to change. She's cried a bunch of times when we've firmly told her not to hit, but it's a habit that still needs some time to break. Today was better, though. In fact, she tried to hit me only once, but even then, she sort of stopped herself right before she made contact. I think she remembered how sternly I reacted the last time she hit me.

Ahhh ... parenting. Don't you just love it?