A Lara Post

I feel like I am not writing enough posts about Lara. These days she is just growing, changing and developing EVERY DAY in all areas of her life.

Her speech is getting better every day. She did not say a whole lot of words until she was two. She preferred to speak her own language that she got to master so well. And even when she did speak English or Romanian words, she would use only the LAST syllable. We got to be really good at understanding her (and even when we couldn't understand her, Bogdan would immediately 'translate' for us). Now she is suprising us with these long, elaborated phrases (when she wants to) or translates her requests from English into Romanian and back. Also, she REALLY LIKES TO SPEAK IN FRENCH! I have no idea where this is coming from (liking it!). I started counting in French with Bogdan, just for fun, but Lara was more interested in repeating after me. Bogdan does too, but mostly because we praise Lara so much for doing it. I have one French magazine with stories and rhymes for children their age, and Bogdan keeps asking me to read it to him; my French is not what it used to be, so I think we will have to look for a teacher soon. Anyway, back to Lara... In October we had a guest from Germany - being around children was not necessarily his gift, but I asked him to teach our kids the colors and numbers in German. Both Bogdan and Lara looooved repeating after him the strange words. He did say that Lara was saying the words almost perfectly - which was really strange. She wasn't two at the time and she was saying very few things "perfectly".

Lara is amazingly friendly. Going to the store for us means getting into conversations with at least 5 different people with whom she starts talking in the store. If these are children she'll just walk up to them and hold their hand, ask what their name is... If they are adults she'll just smile, wave, play some games (invented by her) or make funny faces.

She loves church and loves to sing and pray.

She loves our young adult group that meets in our home.

She is one of the most stubborn children I have ever met. She knows what she wants and she's not happy until she gets it (that doesn't mean she'll get what she wants, but she's making it really difficult for us). I need to give an illustration: Bubba and I were at the mall and bought ice-cream for the kids. The plan, shared with Bogdan and Lara, was for us to hold the ice-cream cones and feed it to them, in order to have some control of how much they will eat, how big the bites, the mess, etc. No problem with Bogdan. Icecream for him? He was happy! Not Lara. She chose to sit there and scream for 20 minutes because I wouldn't let her hold the cone. And she took no bite of her icecream. I do not remember now what the compromise was. I remember talking to Bubba and wondering what we should do. We were shocked. The icecream was for her and we wanted her to have it, but not after all the screaming and the attention we got from so many in the food court - I do not want to imagine what they were thinking.
Another example would be trying to do school with her and teaching her the numbers with the help of some foam numbers. I would tell her the names for the different numbers and then ask her. Me: "And what number is this?" Lara, "Four". Me, "Noo, it's two". Lara: "No! It is four!" And that went on for minutes!

10 days ago Lara started to use the potty. I had been asking her for a while if she wanted to sit on the potty but she would just say 'NO potty' and run. I don't know what was different this time around, but she just did it. She gets a butterfly or Pooh sticker everytime she uses her potty. We kind of stopped that these last few days because she doesn't seem that interested in her butterfly chart. Needless to say we are very proud of her. I am worried about our upcoming trip to the US. We'll see how the next 3 weeks go, but I am pretty sure we'll have to go back to diapers for the long flights (and even for the long drives).

Lara has started taking swimming lessons together with Bogdan and she is crazy about it. She is the youngest in the class but she does really well.

Bogdan is her best friend and her favorite toys are whatever he is playing with.

I know there is more, but I probably need to post this in order to remember some of the things that I forgot :-).

I love you, Little Lara! You are one precious little girl and we are very grateful the Lord God sent you to us.