Life with Ella

It’s hard to believe that Ella will have been home for 10 months on Monday. Life with Ella has been so much fun. She’s a very busy girl and is happy and smiling almost all the time. She’s funny and she cracks herself up too! She loves our family and extended family, friends, and church. She has adjusted so well and has added so much joy and laughter to our family. She loves music and is crazy about cows. She talks non-stop with lots of words but putting them together has been happening slowly. She can put the most words together when she sings. Ella still always calls herself Qin Qin but lately she points to E’s and says “E for Ella- Me!!!” She has called me Mai (yep, like Mai Tai) since a few days after we arrived home and still calls me Mai or Mama.

I would say that one of the things that I didn’t expect about Ella for her age is how much she remembers and can express. She talked about a few people in China for a long time, two in particular, and would tell new people that she would meet about them. I know the names of her foster sisters and she has talked about one of them. I keep an eye out for them on the yahoo group for their orphanage as well as other places. She also surprised me a couple weeks ago with something else. My mom was over and Ella wanted to see photos of herself from China. She pointed to the photos of her at the orphanage and said “Mama- cake.” My mom and I looked at each other. I had sent her a cake during Chinese New Year last year and I never knew if she’d actually received it and I’ve never told her about it either. Wow!

Ella is doing so well and sometimes it seems like she’s always been here. It’s easy to forget, even for me sometimes, things from her perspective. She’s always been so happy but I could tell that she was still guarded for months. I saw a change in her around October and could tell that she was feeling more comfortable. She has hidden hurts and fears that I’ve been getting a glimpse of more often now that she can communicate her thoughts. Lately when Ella goes to bed at night she often looks at me and says, “Mama no leave?” and one day last week when I was leaving for work she asked, “Mama come back?” I tell her that this is her home and her family forever and I tell her how much she is loved. She smiles and puts her head back and says, “Fooooo-evah, allllllways!” She has been been through so much in her little life and like I’ve seen it explained before- she knows what Mamas and families are… she’s had those before... her instincts from her experience tell her that they don’t stay… she loves her Mama and her family… so now I need to teach her what forever is.