Maia plays a game with Lana

We took Alana with us to the Bark Park, today. She's a little girl who lives down the street, also adopted, and also from Kazakhstan. At the bark Park, Maia and Lana were playing on a tree. I had tried to get them to come down from it and stay down from it because Lana had an injured foot. But towards the end of the hour--we always stay at the Bark Park for about an hour--Maia and Lana were up the tree again, Maia ahead of Lana. I insisted that they come down. Lana initiated a gave of tag with Maia, probably because Maia was higher up the tree than she could hope to get with her hurt foot, and she wanted to put Maia one down to her. But Maia tagged her back and that either caused or happened at the time that Lana slid down the tree. Lana ended up on her belly on the ground, which was a little muddy. Lana was crying and angry at Maia, and dirty from the fall. I helped her to clean off, but she stayed angry at Maia. On the way back in the case, Maia kept trying to get Lana to talk to her, but she wouldn't. Lana is 9 but acts like she's 5. Finally, in response to a protest from Lana that she stop, Maia said, "But I'm not Maia." "Who are you?" Lana wanted to know. "Cocoa," Maia said. Although it didn't last, Lana talked to her for a time then. Funny, how such a pretense had the power to break the ice between them. Creative, for Maia to come up with that. John, Sunday, December 2, 2012.