Tuesday

Tonight the evening was laid out the same as the others. Melissa met with Gregg and me, while Jessica met with Meikiina.

Jessica writes an assessment of her observations regarding how Meikiina is during their time together, and we got to read through some of the assessment from her. It was actually very Meikiina. It was similar to what I hear about her from school. She's a lovely, polite, pleasing little girl. And she is. She works very, very hard in school to be like that - to be how she thinks she should be. But that is so hard on her - to work so hard to be 'good' that it causes extreme anxiety in her. Jessica says she is very polite and very much wants to please. She very graciously loses at games she plays with Jessica. Games is a very big concern for me. I get the feeling when she is playing games that to her they are not just games. If she loses a game she has a really hard time with it. But I always get the feeling that to her she's not losing a game, she's losing something much bigger.

They also did an assessment where Jessica started a sentence and Meikiina finished it. They were very typical Meikiina - nothing very surprising. One funny one - When I was a baby, I was...like a bowling ball. Gregg always tells her that when she was little she was so round and chubby that she was like a bowling ball.

Each time she is with Jessica she puts on these glasses and there are these flashing lights. As she's doing the glasses, she listens to music. I have to do more research on what these are and what they do. Something about the brain.

During our group time today we told Meikiina's adoption story. We told about how we came to decide that we would like to adopt a child and a bit about the adoption process.