Quiet(ish) Week

The past several days have consisted of getting over jet lag (she and I had a few 4:00 wake-up times which have thankfully ceased), lazing around home, and resuming our pre-trip summer schedule which included a little bit of "school time" most days.  I bought Beatrice a big preK workbook just to maintain her skills over the summer and she loves doing it.  That is, as long as she gets to pick which pages she does.  :)  She begged me to bring it to Italy, but it's thick and heavy enough that I resisted.  Well yesterday she found it again and decided she has lots of lost time to make up for, so I think she did 10-15 pages.  Just because she'll hopefully read this blog some day, I'll note that her favorite activities at this point are mazes (which she is incredible with), find the hidden letters, finding how pictures match or are different, and, very recently, dot-to-dots.  She also is great at things like "circle which pictures show a set of 4."  Her number sense and early math skills kind of blow me away, although I'm equally blown away at the difficulty she then has with recognizing her numbers.  She clearly gets the concept of an "8" for instance, but still can't consistently name it or even pick it out of a group of numbers.  I'm sure this will come with time. She avoids coloring, although I know she's good at it based on the daily schoolwork she brought home all year.  Yesterday, I finally got to see her color and I think I learned why she avoids it.  She is so perfectionistic and careful that it takes her forever! She also avoids writing letters, but again I know full well she can do so competently. She can name about half her letters on straight recall, and get almost 100% at letter recognition if you give her a group of 5 or 6 and say "find the G" for instance.  ( But I've learned that if food is offered as a reward, she knows them all and essentially becomes brilliant at almost anything.  Sad, but true! :)

And, oh yeah I almost forgot, we did a quick run to New York City on Tuesday afternoon/night to visit  Tito Nate, Tita Yuen, and cousin Dominic, who live in Florida and whom we haven't seen in over 18 months. It was insane to toss this into our week of recovery, but it was a chance that just couldn't be missed.  Beatrice had a blast with almost-3-year-old Dominic and was very strangely familiar with Nate & Yuen too, who she's probably seen 3 times in her whole life.  Anthony has said this before and I've denied it, but now there are too many examples for me to deny:  Beatrice is much quicker to warm-up to Asians, both children and adults, but especially with adults the difference is glaring.  She has always been remarkably aware of differences of people in terms of skin color, etc. and has initiated heart-breaking conversations with me about our differences, hers and mine, and it is with such sadness in her voice that we can never be "the same" in this way.  I knew said conversations would come eventually, I just didn't think they'd start at 3-years old and reach the depth that they have.  She shocked everyone in Italy at the pool when she came over and showed her arm and exclaimed "look, I have more melanin coming out! Are you getting more, too????" Her identity, racial and otherwise, and her journey to find her place as an adopted child in a multi-racial family is just beginning, but it indeed has begun.  I'd be lying if I didn't say I was scared to death that it will someday create a chasm between us, so for now I'll just keep savoring and  enjoying this time of life when my girl  is so close to me that it appears she'd crawl into my (pasty white) skin if she could.