The Adjustment of Little Miss

Trouble.

From the moment we realized that the plan to move to Ghana was in effect, we agonized over how to shepherd Little Miss through the traumatic experience of moving her from her familiar home  into a new environment with a new home, new culture, new climate and without her extended family, friends, comforts and the way of life into which she had grown.

We made sure to tell her many times about our journey - so much so that we developed sort of a call-and-answer routine that worked great as a party trick.

"Where are we moving to?"

"Gaw-nah!"

"How are we getting there?"

"In the big, big plane!"

Double trouble.

So she knew where she was going. That was half the battle. The other half was waged upon arrival. In our big empty house without toys, we had to get her settled in and keep her busy. So we decorated her "princess room" with anything pink that we could bring to get her excited about her new digs, which worked well. And the DVDs we brought from home (thanks grandma) has kept her from peeling the paint off the walls.

Still, the process has been challenging. Without the usual routine (walks to the park, trips to the grocery store, playgroups), she got bored very quickly. And so did we. So the first few days felt like they would never end.

Children are creatures of habit and disrupting their schedules can send them for a loop. Little Miss' sleeping patterns started to get quite erratic - for a while she was waking up regularly between 2 and 5AM and no amount of milk would get her back down.

Enjoying a little watermelon.

For the first week, she was regularly asking "Where is home?" and insisting that she was ready to go home now. We knew this would happen, but it did not make us feel any less horrible.

But soon enough, the questions got less frequent, the sleeping pattern more predictable and the general spirits heightened. We started learning how to keep her occupied. Mrs. O brought arts and crafts, stimulating her artistic side. Her imagination can be stimulated simply by putting a towel over two chairs ("Dada want to go camping with me?") or by hiding under a blanket and telling stories.

Filthy creature.

We have a network of colleagues with children, so she is starting to make friends, including with our next door neighbour, where they run back and forth - so much so, the guards and househelp are starting to refer to the pair as "the mosquitoes".

And while she has not been eating a very Ghanaian diet, she is enjoying the local flavours, including the fruits (bananas, oranges, mangoes and watermelon) and is crazy for FanIce, the local ice cream in a bag that costs less than 50 cents.

She is also embracing the outdoors, spending much of her day running around the yard and covering herself in dust and dirt. Hopefully, she is absorbing enough bacteria to develop some serious antibodies and slowly become impervious to local diseases. At least that's what we keep telling ourselves.