Three Weeks With Bella and Sophia

Well, Bella and Sophia have been here three weeks. I feel that we are finally really getting to know them and learning some of their likes and dislikes. 

Bella is one opinionated little girl. She has quite the attitude! If I feed Sophia first -- Bella screams. If I hold Sophia -- Bella stands next to me and yells. If I put on my coat -- Bella cries and cries to go with me. If I give Bella a drink she usually won't drink it until she sees me offer a bottle to Sophia -- then she is fussing for HER drink. She has actually learned one English word -- MINE! She will grab Sophia's doll and yell "MINE" and run. Anything she wants that someone else has is "MINE" according to her. It is amazing to me how fast she learned to say this. If I want Bella to do something I know I just have act like I am doing it with another child, and Bella immediately wants to do the same thing. She craves attention and is happiest when she has your undivided attention. Yesterday, Abigail was playing with Sophia and it made Bella so mad that she ran over and started pulling Sophia's hair -- she was quite angry that Sophia was getting so much attention. Bella can be quite jealous of other kids getting too much attention  -- in her opinion any attention given to others is too much. 

On the other hand, Bella is a sweet child. She will babble and babble to me and make the cutest little faces. She will rub my face and seems to be bonding some to me. She likes me to rock her a little but won't really sit still for long. She is finally going to bed very well for us and sleeps all night long until about 7:30 or so the next morning. She is always very cheery when she wakes up and is ready to run and play. She is a very easy child most of the time  -- as long as she is getting some attention. 

Sophia is not very demanding at all. She will sit or lie on the floor and be content for quite a long time. She is finally watching some of what the other kids are doing. At first she never looked at any of us. She didn't even seem to see us, and our doctor thought she might be blind in one eye. But, now she is looking at things and us a little more. She especially seems to watch Bethany some. At least it seems that she does. She is not very interested in toys or much of anything. We are trying to get her attention in many different ways, but it is not always easy. She saw an OT today for the first time and she said that we need to treat her as an infant as she is very delayed and needs to go back and get some of what she missed. She said we need to start with "tummy time" and then go from there. So we will start putting her on her tummy more and give her lots of bright toys to look at -- though she doesn't like to be on her stomach. The OT also said that she thinks that Sophia has CP on her right side. I have a good friend that went out and bought Sophia and Bella so many new bright and musical toys that Sophia will have plenty to look at. We are hoping to get her to start reaching for toys and wanting to play a little. She does love me to hold her and just sit  -- rocking seems to be a little to much for her right now so we mainly just sit together. She has many appointments in the next couple of weeks which hopefully will tell us what caused her to have such a problem using her right side. She is a very sweet child and loves to be held and loved. 

Some good friends of our came by this past week to see the girls and their daughter really liked the idea of brushing Sophia's hair. I'm not sure how much Sophia liked it but she didn't fight her too much.

Our daughter, Katie, turned 19 this past week. Happy Birthday, Katie  --- holding our friend's daughter. 

We also had another visit with my granddaughter, Reagan, and as always I took a few pictures.