List making

How I love this face! I was blog surfacing the other day and I stumbled upon a blog written by a Korean adoptee who is probably about Cheshire's age. She posed the question whether parents love their adoptive parents as much or in the same way that they love their bio kids. She went on to explain how her parent treated her, but as they had no bio kids any comparison was purely academic. Other adoptees commented on the blog -- one described how she was abused by her adoptive father, and another told how he/she (?) was treated too carefully. I wonder about that Julia will think, how will she judge our raising. There is no way of treating any two children the same. There must be difference even between multiples, and there can be great differences in the way the children view how they were loved and cared for. It is love though, love. Treatment can vary, will never be equal, but love, abundant love can be -- not equal, but filling to each little soul.

How I love this face.

Julia had a first Occupational Therapy (OT) session on Monday. She used a body swing -- laying on a hammock-styled swing using her hands to steer and direct her body -- , made bubbles in a tub by blowing into a long narrow tube, drew lines and cut them, and picked out a key toy and opened little doors. Annie, the therapist provided Julia with a picture list of what they were going to do. As they did each thing, Julia and Annie checked off the activity. Julia liked the list and asked to take it home.

The purpose of the list is to provide some control, to give the person using it some stability. I had no idea whether using a list would help Julia but I tried it this morning. I wanted to do shopping -- stopping at 5 different places. At one place, Julia would get a chance to make an icepop stick snow flake, and at the last stop, we would buy a snack for Julia. Julia is not usually good at this sort of expedition and it was a good test of the list. We went to each place, and found and bought things we needed for our Thanksgiving travels. Julia decided no to make the snowflake but wanted to buy a small dinoasur instead. She found a muffin as her treat. Each time we completed a task, we crossed off that task on the list. And we arrived home about three hours later with a very well behaved little girl.

Amazing.