April 17 - A second day with Maya

This morning we met with the doctor and Maya's physical therapist. We were so impressed with the physical therapist. Maya has seen him for an hour a day (during the week) since she came to the orphanage 18months ago. All of her therapy is fun, play based and she has developed some incredible strength in her arms. He said they were all a little worried if she would interact with us. He couldn't believe how open she really was, especially with Matt that morning. We both think it is because of the occupational and physical therapy he has been doing. Plus, the physical therapist resembled Matt in build and height so we think that helped. After all the work he has done we think Maya would enjoy gymnastics classes when she gets back to the US.

Maya was nervous around us again this morning, but she was opening up a bit more. After her physical therapy, we had most of the time together by ourselves. I brought our First 1000 words in Polish book this afternoon and she loved looking through the book. I'm convinced she is going to love books. We got our second serious laughing out of her when looking at the book. We did have a great afternoon and thought we had made a really good connection with her. Funnily, she learned that good things come out of our small English-Polish phrases dictionary. Everytime we had a new activity we "looked up the words" in the book first so she started to get the book to give to Matt - we think to get a new activity.


After lunch and naptime we were able to spend another three hours with Maya. Maya learned the word for "UP" since when she said it, Matt would pick her way up in the air. She instigated a game of chase outside and we had quite a bit of fun chasing the ball around. Even Mimi had fun playing soccer, chase, blowing bubbles, and playing patty-cake. We really had a good day. Maya was really opening up and we were hearing her real voice at regular levels.