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Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Settling In

Aug 10


Wanna see the face of a little girl who has fallen in love with her daddy?



 Well, first he was tickling her....
 
...and then...
 
 
...there it is!
Took us 3 and 1/2 weeks but we got there!


She cried when K-Man left for work and, when he came home, as soon as she saw him through the door, she screamed "MaMa!" and ran to the door.  She laughed and giggled at him as he picked her up.  (He started working on "Daddy," almost immediately. hahahaha)


Aug 11






"Middle Child was singing  "Old McDonald" in the truck this evening and, ever since, Lyric has been running around the house saying, 'eee ah eee ah  o o o o o o.'  "

"Last night CHINESE LULLABIES (you can find it on Amazon.com) might have kept Lyric in her bed. I put it on "repeat."  She woke up once, I put her bottle back in her mouth and she fell asleep.  She spent the whole night in her bed! Crossing fingers for tonight."


Aug 12




"Lyric speaks baby talk A LOT and it sounds Chinese (Hepu/Cantonese.) She just twists those vowels!"


Aug 13





"We may have reached a new stage with Lyric and her sleep, she's only woken up once in the last two nights (around 1am) and she's easily put back to sleep -put that bottle back in- but putting her down is awful. Last night it took 1 hour and 40 minutes of constant rocking and holding and etc and the night before it took longer. The depth of her pain and fear is still so palatable, she hangs onto me and fights sleep like it's the enemy. She's my fourth 2 year old, I've seen many babies fight sleep but there's something different about this.  Like she mourns the need to sleep, like she is truly afraid that if she falls asleep terrible things will happen." 

Good grief, I'd seen kids fight sleep before but she hung onto "awake" like it was a life raft...and maybe it did feel like one to her.

Wild Child needed to sleep with me most of the night before, when I'd gotten up for water, he'd followed through me through the house.  At another point I'd woken up and he was sobbing in his sleep, that morning I'd asked him about it. "I had a nightmare.  You didn't love me anymore and Daddy left."  Even Middle Child had been telling me about fears that he had that we'd leave.  This had been so hard on everybody but we were all getting through it, we were on the other side of it and letting it work its way out.


Aug 14






"Just put Lyric down for her nap, this is where I think about the adoption and her and what I feel. I love that I sit in my grandfather's rocking chair and nurture my daughter.  A lot of where I found nurturing as a child was from my grandparents.  For a while I've sorta tripped over my right to parent another mother's daughter.  I'd thought I'd dealt with all of my angst about this while deciding about the adoption and waiting on Lyric but I guess, that there is another level to be dealt with after she's finally here. Parenthood is such a sacred thing and I've wondered at my arrogance to assume the role of another woman, even if the child is unwanted.  I guess, that's part of it , I don't really believe that Lyric was unwanted. I believe that she was born to a woman who wanted her desperately but couldn't keep her.  It is so unfair.  Whether due to cultural differences or economic reasons or both, I received this precious gift that rightfully belongs to another woman.  It screams UNFAIR. And, it is.  But here is another  place in life where we must grow up and deal with hard realities. That life, itself, is unfair.  That bad things do happen to good people, through absolutely no fault of their own.  That we are as well off as we are is such luck and such a gift...and such a responsibility.  Q-Boo's birth mom made the choices that she could make out of the ones offered to her.  I can only do the same.  Whether or not I have the right to parent her is an argument for another day between people much more intelligent (or much more stupid :)  ) than I am.  I just WILL parent her because that's what you do when you love a child -you mother her, period."

In the succeeding weeks since I first wrote this, I've realized that what I was really doing was questioning my right to be "privileged" when so many others in the world aren't.  I don't have the answers (and I DON'T know the circumstances surrounding Q-Boo's abandonment. I DON'T know whether she was wanted or not, it wouldn't really matter anyway, and I probably won't ever really know.) I can't help the circumstances of my birth, any more than Lyric can help hers. What I CAN do is what I can do. Period. So, I'll jump off of that bandwagon and put away the self-torture devices. And, love MY child, no matter the circumstances of her birth into our family.


Love Without Boundaries: Post Adoption Struggles


Aug 16




 
 
 
 
 
"Today we've had Lyric a month. Things have changed:

She's no longer TERRIFIED of the dark, although we still have to leave a light on for her to sleep by in her room.

She no longer wakes up fitfully throughout the night ( I think we've spoken enough about her sleep, right? Although my favorite story is still the one where K-Man came into our bedroom one morning - he slept on the couch if she came to our bed- to get dressed for work and found us asleep, me with my hand on her cheek, her little hand on my hand. ) Now, she wakes up once in the early morning and can be put back to sleep in her bed and then she sleeps the rest of the night IN her bed. If she sleeps with me, she still likes to sleep REALLY close to me, some part of her must be touching some part of me. She woke up without crying this morning and then again this afternoon after her nap.

She loves me AND Kenny and she's becoming more attached to the boys

She's no longer afraid of thresholds, she'll get down and crawl over them or if it's too big she'll hold my finger while she climbs it.

Suddenly, she'll wear a headband. If she removes it, she puts it right back on.

She' s beginning to pay some slight attention to her dolls... nurturing? Our social work said that when she began to nurture her dolls and her stuffed animals then that was a really good sign."


 
 At dinner this night, Q-Boo threw up her dinner because she'd drank too much unsweet tea. This was reminiscent of the time, at the sushi place in China, where she'd also thrown up after drinking too much yucky drink.

Adoptive Mom Duh! Moment: My child, who was not getting the nutrients or amounts of food that she needed a little over a month ago is gorging herself on food, now.

DUH!

(We've since implemented some techniques to correct this. IE She gets limited amounts of drinks at meals. Mostly, she only does this with liquids but there have been a few times where I've literally had to say, "Enough," to her eating. And, then the next day she will eat nothing. Typical. It is. Typical of these kids. )

It seemed that she was doing "food" like she did us at the beginning -in the beginning we had a little girl who was either giggly (like, on steroids giggly) or sobbing ...food, also, seemed to be either all or nothing.
 
 
 

 
 

 
 
 


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