JRR: Home for one year

It's hard to believe Jinna has been home for a full year now.  On this day last year we were all waking up in our home after 20 long hours of travel from China.

How does one sum up a year?

She's obviously learned an incredible amount in this past year, not just in facts but in mannerisms.  She makes me laugh, like when she is trying to tell me No for something and she keeps saying, "No, Honey."  That's the only time she calls anyone Honey.

She's learned her place in the family.  As the "baby," she enjoys being helped and served, but she also has always been our behavior monitor as well, informing us whenever anyone breaks one of the rules.  (Which is just great.  As if we didn't already have enough of these "justice" types.)

She also has established herself as a perfect foil for Miles.  While she loves him tremendously -- she often wants to buy him presents and wants to tell him her news first --- she also loves to provoke him.   We were riding in the car recently when someone got the hiccups.  After some discussion on that topic, Miles said,

"Once there was a boy named Miles who hated talking about hiccups."
Immediately Jinna responded,
"Once upon a time there was a girl named Jinna who LOOOOOVED talking about hiccups."

That pretty much sums up their relationship.

She's figured out how to get what she wants, how to make any of us come running, how to make up long, intricate stories, how to help out around the house, how to wrap up "presents" for people and make them cards (pretty much daily), and how to be a friend to others.

There are a few things, though, that she doesn't have exactly right... but we don't want to correct her because these quirks are just cute.  For example, last fall sometime, right after she was starting to learn some English words, she somehow got the idea that "iguanas" were like monsters.  So whenever she wants to talk about something scary, the story she creates always include huge iguanas that eat people.

Another example is what she called soap, up until just recently.  She always called it, "Washabody."  I think we used to hand it to her in the shower and say, "Wash your body," but she started to just refer to it that way.  As in, "Where's the washabody?"  I never wanted her to learn that was wrong... but somehow someone must have clued her in because I heard her say she was out of soap recently.  :(

I know it's only been a year, but I almost can't remember what our family was like without her.  There was definitely a huge hole.  So glad she finally made her way here.

(To celebrate the actual anniversary of her adoption date, we had the Burke family over for dinner.  Fun night!)

(Most of the photos above were by Kharis Photography)