New Beginnings

Madison started school on Tuesday. She will be going for three hours for the first two weeks, and hopefully, if all is goes well, she will start full-time after that. She is basically working on English and also has an art class. Her ELL teacher is surprised at how much Madison does know especially since Madison didn't get to attend regular school in China. Madison is making friends even with the language barrier. There are some great girls in her class that have offered to help Madison get around school. As a mother, I was so glad to hear Madison talk about her friend Sabrina.

In some regards, Madison is your typical teenager, she does not want to get up in the mornings for school, and she was very happy when Saturday finally got here. John woke her up yesterday after he got ready for work and then I had to go up two more times to finally rouse her up. She likes to say, "No school, sleep!"

It has been remarkable at how fast Madison is learning English, we use the translator less and less when going through our daily routines since she has learned these words, phrases, and sentences. This morning I asked her if she wanted to go with me to yi ma's (my younger sister's) or stay home with dad and Sean. She understood everything and quickly decided that she wanted to go with me. We have been using Mandarin words for family, because it is hard for Madison to remember who is who or what their relationship is to mom and dad. In Mandarin, instead of calling both sets of grandparents, grandma and grandpa, they have specific names for each one. For example, my mom is wai po for maternal grandmother, and John's mom is nai nai for paternal grandmother.

Madison is very funny and loves to laugh. The other day while Madison and I were at the dining room table, I would occassionaly look out the window that was behind Madison. Each time I looked, Madison would turn around and to see what I was looking at. I started to tease her by saying, "Made you look!" She quickly caught on, unfortunately, because now she does it to me. Last night, we were in the car and Madison pointed out the window and told me and John to look at a cat, when we both looked for the cat, she started laughing very loudly because she "made us look."

We dropped Sean and his new girlfriend off at the movie theater last night, and later, while we waited for them to come out, Madison took on her little sister role perfectly by practicing kissing sounds and saying "I love you." It was so hilarious.

While Sean and his girlfriend were at the movies, we took Madison to get her ears pierced, which she wanted to do. However, when it came time, she held both our hands very tightly, tensed her whole body, and gritted her teeth. I felt like she needed a bit of rawhide to clamp down on. We were afraid that she would not get the second ear pierced after experiencing the first, so we had two people at each ear and they pierced on the count of three. Now she has beautiful, sparkly flowers on each little, red earlobe.