Last night, Alara and her parents and grandmother came over for dinner. Alara is three years old, and is very anxious to meet her friend Carolina (she calls Vilma by her middle name, Carolina –the whole name thing is getting very confusing!) Shortly after she arrived at our house, she discovered some toys that I had bought for Carolina and Nelson. We had purchased so many things for our last trip to Guatemala – I didn’t have room to bring everything and some things that I brought to Guatemala, I brought back so we could use them repeatedly between trips and establish some sense of familiarity between trips). In particular, she noticed the cups that we had used in the bathtub and the swimming pool with Carolina and Nelson. Alara’s mommy, Guler, has been very persistent about showing Alara the pictures and the videos of her new friends, Carolina and Nelson – so Alara recognized the cups. After a short while, Alara asked whether she could see my room. At the time I thought that surely she meant Carolina’s room, which she had seen before when it was filled with toys that we were getting ready to take with us on our first trip, but as I think about it, I think she was looking for the room and bathroom that she had seen in the video…
She investigated the bathtub very closely – we have a rather large one – deep and wide with jets for a whirlpool effect, very different from the standard bathtub we used at the hotel. She asked me to pick her up and place her in the tub – she stretched out, jumped up and down, thoroughly investigating. This was our conversation:
“Is this Carolina’s bathtub?”
“Yes, but she hasn’t tried it yet…. She doesn’t live in our house yet.”
“Where is she?”
“Well, right now she is in a different country. We can’t bring her home right away because we have to fill out lots of papers and talk to lots of people before we are allowed to bring her home. But when she comes home, she’ll live with us in this house all of the time."
“Where is she?” (Apparently an inadequate answer!)
“Right now, she is staying with a very nice lady who is taking care of her.”
“Her mommy?”
“No, this lady is just taking care of her until she is ready to come home with us. Do you want to see her room?” (Diversion technique – very successful!)
“Is this Carolina’s bed?” (I have a crib in the bed at the moment. I wanted to demonstrate some semblance of preparedness for our homestudy. At the time, we hadn’t even heard of Vilma and Nelson.)
“No. This bed is too small for Carolina or Nelson. We are going to buy some new beds for them.”
"Would you like to see some of her toys?”
And with that, we proceeded to investigate the toy cabinet. Hopefully indirectly Vilma is making a good impression on Alara by sharing all of her toys! They both seem to like PlayDo a lot – they have at least that in common – and, we learned they are the only three year olds we know who like to have their grapes peeled!
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