Homesick

Our Holly Jun is dealing with some homesickness.

This week followed a long spring break where Myleigh was home for Holly to play with all day every day for a week. With school back in session, Holly has had time all day to think about what her days used to be like, filled with preschool with her friends being taught by her nannies. As she is not ready emotionally to go to a preschool here, and doesnt have the language skills to be able to socialize much with other children away from home, she is probably feeling the loss.

We try to keep her busy, and engaged, but, there is only just so much we can do.

So, I pulled out her memory book that the orphanage gave us. It's filled with pages that she colored over the years, and progress reports written in Chinese, and pictures of Holly with her nannies and her friends. There are pictures of her from the day she was found until just this fall. This was a great idea as Holly became so animated, and started telling me all about some of the newer pictures, as she would have remembered the day they were taken. Some of the older ones just made her say Eww. They were of her as a baby, and she doesn't believe me when I say it's her. She just says ew.

There is a very nice picture of Holly with her nanny Nia Mah, bending down looking at flowers. She really likes that picture, and I think from her reaction to any picture with Nia Mah in them that she must have been very attached to her.

Early in the week we had gotten a package from Half The Sky, the organization that ran the preschool program at Holly's orphanage, and in it was that same picture. I put it up on our refridgerator, and she just loves looking at it. On Monday I was cleaning out the fridge and she was going on and on, telling me some very animated tales that included Nia Mah, Sun Mah, and Jun Jun (Holly). I have no idea what the story was about, but, she was so into it, I just pretended to understand and to be so excited right along with her. Then it was time to spring clean her room, which meant putting winter clothes in the underbed dresser and taking out the summer clothes.

When I pulled the matching snow pants and jacket I had gotten her, see earlier story, out of the closet, she became very excited, and insisted on putting the jacket on. I didn't think too much of it at the time, and even when she refused to take it off to put it with the snow pants I didn't really pay attention. I'm used to kids wearing odd things in all kinds of weather just because they feel like it at the time, ie swimsuits in winter etc.

The next day, just as soon as she was dressed, she put that jacket back on, wore it all day until it was time for pajamas. I decided that it was a comforting reminder of how she was dressed in the orphanage. By the third day the weather was far too warm for that jacket, and I tried to talk her into taking it off, but, no go. She stayed tight in it, zipped all the way up.

Then I noticed it. In the picture of Holly and Nia Mah looking at the flowers, Holly is wearing a jacket nearly identical to the one she was now so attached to. It made perfect sense. It was like having Nia Mah there with her in some small way. I walked her over to the picture and pointed out the jacket in the picture and she, in her half hand gestures half chinese words way, confirmed that she thought the jacket was the same. I let her know that she could wear it as much as she wanted to, and by yesterday the jacket was off, hanging on a hook in her room.