Cute Stuff

I want to make sure I get some things in here before I forget. Our daughters are so cute! They refer to Manuela as “Manu.” But they say it a couple of times in a row, so it sounds kind of like “Nanoo, nanoo.” It’s so funny! The girls refer to Vanesa as “Vanny” and Angee as “Ang.”
They all have such sweet little voices. Vanesa speaks very softly. Manuela is not quite as soft and she squeals when she is excited. Angee is VERY shy and soft spoken. It’s so cute when she talks because she nods her head at you too.

Today they had their first little girl fight. Vanesa was handing out dolls and Angee ended up with 3 and Manuela none. Then, when Vanesa pulled out one that Angee wanted, but gave it to Manu, Angee tried to grab it and give Manu the others. There was some screaming, then intervention, and crying. I was just cracking up because it was such a girly incident.

They began begging to go to the pool first thing in the morning. I just pretended like I didn’t ever learn that word yesterday. They just keep asking and asking. I wasn’t going to take them, but we ended up walking to the store today and it was really hot. The trip there was great, but it was all up hill on the way home and I had a sleeping 30 lb. baby and a 15 lb. backpack. Paul had Manuela in the stroller and Vanesa holding his hand. One of the ladies here took us there and ended up carrying lots of our stuff back. We are definitely taking a cab next time! Anyway, I was so worn out and hot, that the pool was sounding really good. They hadn’t mentioned it for a while, so it was nice to get to ask them if they wanted to go instead of them begging us.

They are all very good at entertaining themselves. We brought a pack of construction paper and they each sit down and color on it for long periods of time. Paul painted with Manu & Angee today. Vanesa has very neat handwriting and can understand the difference between upper and lower case letters. She knows when to use capital letters. She can count to 10 in English. She is learning to write her new name (Vanesa Sinclair, but she spells it with 2 “s’s.” Her birth cert. only has one). She loves the computer. She is good at translating our “sign language” into Spanish.

Manuela loves to color. She likes to brush her hair. Today she fixed my hair after we got back from the store. It was crazy looking, but it felt nice to have it up so I could cool off. She is much stronger than she looks – it kinda hurt, but I certainly didn’t mind. She also had a great time with the stroller. She kept putting toys in it and pushing it around the room. At one point, she put Angee in there. The drove past me and Angee said, “Ciao!” and waved as they went past.

Angee loves to wash her hands. Sometimes I think she wants to “chi chi” just so she can wash her hands afterwards. She HATES cold water. The orphanage warned us about this. She did not like the cold water in the pool, but at least she enjoys keeping the rest of us company down there. She likes to look at the pictures we sent to them when we applied for 3 siblings. Yesterday she was looking at the pictures of Bailey (our dog) and talking – we didn’t know what she was saying. Then I realized she was saying “bow wow.” This little girl can put the food down!!! She loves food. For lunch we had some chicken and fries. She refused the chicken, then Rosario brought out a cake for one of the worker’s birthday. Angee’s eyes were glued to the cake. She couldn’t hear a thing anyone was saying to her - Paul waved his hand in front of her face and she didn’t even blink.

This morning we thought we would try to distract them by teaching them a song. We chose “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.” We don’t know how to say “stand up” and they were not really in the mood for it. We did it anyway. They decided they liked it. Manu has been singing a lot today.

Before we had our first meal, we told the girls that we were going to talk to God before we eat. This was certainly not a new concept for them. When we got to the table and folded our hands, they began to recite a prayer in unison. It was cute. Then Paul said a prayer. Now, when we eat, they recite their prayer (which is quite long), then say “Now Papi.”

We had some really cute pictures and videos from today, but we accidentally deleted them. I’m sorry about that. We need to take more pictures, but neither of us wants to miss anything while holding the camera.