Wednesday, June 18, 2008

No Fear

One of the many unexpected things we have found about Grace is she seems to have no fear of anything. One of the main things we have expected to see at this point is stranger anxiety. She just loves new people. Although, Jen and I have been the only ones who have held her thus far I am pretty sure she wouldn't mind being held by anyone. She especially seems to be enamored with older men. By Christmas I am pretty sure we will be letting people hold her, bet she will love sitting on Santa's lap.

I also read somewhere that sometimes children adopted from China infrequently see animals as pets so they will sometimes be afraid of them. Not our Grace. She loves out cat Lucy and we have introduced her to our neighbors' St. Bernard puppy as well as my aunt and uncle's Shih Tzu, no fear there either, she just wanted to grab a handful of fur.

The other day Jen forgot to turn on the fan while showering and the steam caused our fire alarm to go off. I was dressing Grace at the time right next to the alarm. This alarm is loud and usually scares the hell out of us when it goes off. Grace definitely heard it but was more curious than scared of the weird noise out in the hall. We had a pretty good thunderstorm the other night, that didn't seem to bother her much either. The 4th of July is coming up I think she is going to love the fireworks.

Last week Grace had a doctor's appointment where she had a TB test where they stick a needle under the skin, she didn't even cry during the procedure. Right after the TB test we went down to get some blood drawn. They took about 8 vials of blood from her little arm. She did cry during the blood draw but was smiling pretty soon after. Next week she goes back to start her vaccinations, we are curious to see if she remembers what needles are all about and if we see any fear then.

I am not sure what to make of this lack of fear she seem to have. We don't know if she is just a laid back baby or if it is some kind of survival mechanism that she developed while living in orphanage / foster care. We learn more and more about her every day so only time will tell.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow I can't believe how fearless she is so far - sounds like you'll someone to squish spiders for you when Steve's at work, Jen! haha! :-p

Anonymous said...

WOW some of these things are familiar with our daughter and some are not. Our daughter also just checked us out when we got her. But, to most strangers she was very cautious.
She fought like a trapped tiger when we did the blood drawing. Her limbs stiffened up so tight, and her leg muscles almost made us lose control of her.
She had giardia, and the medicine we had to give her was very bitter tasting. She kept it in her mouth for several minutes without swallowing, poor thing. She wouldn't swallow because she didn't like it. But she was too young to realize she could spit it out.
She was just so strong willed.