The early days…

The next day, May 19, is Maya’s 1st birthday but we don’t really do anything special, just more paperwork and signing of the formal adoption certificate. However our guide, Grace, arranged a special birthday cake through the hotel to be delivered to our room. It’s complete with cart, white table-cloth, candles and a rose. What a treat! Maya hadn’t been eating any solid foods yet, but when we gave her cake…hey, no problems eating solids now. The day is spent walking around, going on Skype with family, feeding, changing, napping, playing…

Wednesday May 20 starts out as a good day but goes downhill after dinner. While at the shopping street and in the car on the way home, Maya becomes whiny and will only let dad carry her. Of course, this hurts mom’s feelings but we both understood that this may happen initially. By the time we reach the hotel, little Maya is inconsolable. She’s been drooling all afternoon and we can now see that she’s cutting at least 1 new tooth. Add to this the fact that she hasn’t pooped in days so much be in a lot of pain. It takes us 90+ minutes of carrying her and pacing the room to finally get her to sleep and stop crying.

Thursday was not much of a good day either. Poor Maya didn’t sleep well last night (so we didn’t either) and is still whiny when she wakes in the morning. She cries & whines for the next 2 hours so we discuss this with our guide Grace and decide to go to the hotel medical clinic to get her an enema. One of the other babies in our group had one last night and made a world of difference to her mood. The whole enema process was quite tramatic for all of us (for John almost as much as for Maya). No wonder the poor kid was in such discomfort!! We decided to stay in the hotel for much of the day to let her settle down & recover from the morning events. Maya remains whiny all day and bedtime proved to be a bit of challenge as well. Tomorrow is a ‘free’ day so we decide to take it easy again so she won’t be so stressed.

Now that a few days have passed (and she's been relieved), we’re starting to see Maya’s real personality appear. What we know is: she is whiny when she’s unsure or unhappy with anything or it changes too quickly; she bum dances to music; she likes anything technology (tv, music, computer, blackberry); she can stomp and is only days away from walking on her own without ever having learned to crawl; has an adorable smile & giggle; LOVES to clap and bang on things and doesn’t like doing anything without having a hand on one of us…