nEW nORMAL?

Aug 17




"C'mon, Mom. I AM only two."

 

"I can keep up with those boys."

Aug 20



A preschooler and a first-grader.

 

And, a no-schooler.

 

Aug 21

"I'm taking pics like I have a newborn...and I do."

"Another difference between boys and girls? The boys have been shooting me for years with their various guns and blasters...Lyric uses them as cell phones to call me with."


 

 

 

 

"I am still the master noodle-eater."

Aug 22

"Anybody out there speak Hepu-ese? 'Cause Lyric keeps saying, "whoa dee-dee" and "nu nu-nu" (gu gu-gu) and I'd like to know what she's saying. Of course, when I say, "Lalalalalalalalalaalalala!" (in an Animal, from the Muppets, voice) she laughs hysterically, so I'd really like to know what I'm saying, too. Anybody? Anybody take Hepu as a second language in college?"

"ACK! Pretty Shoes are a size 5. I just had her feet measured at a 6 1/2 (so we bought 7s and they look like Bozo feet.) Bye-bye, Pretty Shoes. Thanks for the memories."
.

Aug 23

I see you, Wild Child!

 
"Oh, how quickly I'd forgotten how labor intensive 2 yos are...and how swiftly I'm remembering. :)"

"She babbles in baby talk and starts every sentence with "Mama?" I say, "Yes?" She TALKS. She follows me around and helps with all my chores and sits in my lap at the computer and mimics everything that I do."

She was so picky with her food that I just wanted to feel like she was full so I took her to Panda Express for lunch and she ATE. (She was a celebrity, no doubt. The whole crowd loved her.) In fact, she ate so much (and then fussed when I took it away and when I put the to-go box in the back seat) that this was when I realizied that she might be starting to gorge herself on actual food, and not just drink.

"Her hair is coming in nice and thick, it's just standing up taller. hahaha. Come to think of it, she doesn't rub her head anymore. In China she kept rubbing her head and I'd figured that they had JUST shaved it (like the night before) and that it was bugging her."

"She's becoming more 'herself,' if that makes sense, and this very sweet little girl who likes to get dressed up because it's fun is emerging. In the afternoon, when the boys come home and take off their shoes then she takes off hers and often that's when she takes off the headband too, it seems to be connected to her shoes - headband and shoes? hahahahaha Or, maybe, it's just that she plays so hard with them...they are all three on the (indoor) trampoline right now."

"I keep thinking about times, in China, when Chinese people would ask me in passing, "How old she?" I would respond "Two" and they'd say "She big!" A couple of times someone said, "Ah, 'Year of the Tiger', strong!"



Aug 24



"You! Mom! You turned me into a 'bowhead.' "

"I am not amused."



"Compromise Mom, put the headband on."



"Yes, compromise. It's what makes the world go 'round."

 

 

Hahahahahaha Yep, I really "compromised" on that headband.
<sigh> Sometimes, it's good to be the mom. :)

(I took her to the Botanical Gardens.)

 

 



Oh, I love that little face.

 

The Gardens were putting in their scarecrow
display. This one was my favorite. :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Okay, so anyone interested in a 'Come Meet Lyric' Party?

Yes, she's really doing that well. I can't believe it either."

 

 

 



 

 

Aug 27

 

 

 

"How to win friends and influence people?
Well, you jump on the trampoline with them.
Duh!"

 

 

 



Cutie-patootie.

 

 

Aug 28


"Hahahahahaha She FINALLY really tried pizza. YUM!"

So, today we'd been home a month and I'd decided a while ago that today would be the day that I'd stop writing the blog... but then the Welcome Home Party became a reality and so, of course, there will be one more blog post with those pictures (and some more that I took between this day and that one. :) )  I've saved the FINAL thing that I wrote (on Aug 28) to put at the end of the actual blog so until then, here is part of it that is sorta arbitrary and didn't really fit anyway:

"If there's one thing that I learned it's that everyone's trip is individual. We took a LOT of stuff but we ended up needing every bit of it. I kept hearing that the thing that people regretted most about their trip was taking too much stuff, that you could find what you needed in China. Well, that works IF you can find the stuff, IF you can cross the language-divide to explain what you need (try describing "saline solution" to someone who barely speaks English - what we ended up buying was in an IV bag) IF your need doesn't overtax the supply (we needed a LOT of size large diapers) and IF you have the energy to hunt it down.

I knew, when I realized K-Man and I were standing in a Chinese supermarket arguing over whether or not to buy what converted to a $4.50 US pair of Chinese shoes, that it was time to head back to the hotel room. I had NO energy whatsoever to look at clothes in Lyric's size. I was so glad to have brought so many in her size (the ones that were too small, I just crammed back in the luggage) and my size. We changed her clothes (and mine) at least twice a day and we could not reuse pajamas. I had them cleaned by the hotel just to keep down the urine smell but I am allergic to fabric softener so we could NOT wear them again, even once they were cleaned.

Seriously, when you're planning a trip of this magnitude, research other people's experiences but then do what makes sense to you.

On a cool note: Because we were adopting an orphan we never had to pay extra baggage charges inside of China even though we were WAAAAAAAY over the allowed amount. That, however, is up to the individual at the airline counter and the skills of your guide at explaining the situation."


So, there ya go.

 

Next, will be the party blog entry and then the FINAL entry and then that is it. The End. 

 

Everything that I could say from this point on really is just about all of us, a family being a family. 

 

"Adopted" is one definition for my daughter, I don't want it to be THE definition, "adoptive family" is one of the definitions for my family, I chose to focus on the other things that make us a family. If I ever do another blog it'll be something about our whole family life. 

 

So, two more to go. :)

(For more info about the challenges faced by adopted Chinese orphans in American families, see Somewhere Between.  I imagine we'll own a copy or two.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 



Slow Progress

Aug 4

I think it started Saturday, the day we came home- my eyes were swollen from the THE TRIP. Then, it became a sty. Then, I slept with my eye mask on because Lyric was TERRIFIED of the dark and I had the light on in our room. The next morning, it was worse and I poked around in it too much and voila by this day, DRIVING ME CRAZY so a friend of mine and my mother-in-law came to my rescue with the boys and my other mother-in-law (I have three, it's complicated :) ) drove Lyric and me to the eye doctor.  He gave me some eye drops and a "bandage contact."  Oh my, was it light sensitive!

"Thoughts on having a daughter:
She is delicate and deliberate.  She's quiet and capable of  playing by herself. The whole way she plays is different, much more ...subtle. Tickling her is just about  barely touching her. She doesn't break things or throw things, she's not LOUD. She follows me around and studies what I do. The first time I used the vacuum I was afraid that she'd be afraid, but instead she studied it for a minute and then came and tried to help me push it."

She was determined to figure out the trampoline. 
The boys made it seem so easy.

She LOVED Middle Child.

He thought she was pretty nifty, too.

Wild Child turned 5:

See the sunglasses? Light Sensitive.

Aug 5

" 'A-wuh, a-wuh.'  Lyric's, 'I feel stress,' cries usually end with me picking her up and soothing, 'Sweetheart, Lyric, Mommy's not leaving you. No one is EVER going to leave you, again. Not EVER, I promise.'  And then, I get choked up. We're both a mess. :) "

"I just walked up to my daughter in the hallway, she looked up at me, smiled a big smile, and said, 'MaMa!' <happy sigh>"

"The jet lag is easing...the eye is so frustrating but it's getting better, I may NOT poke it out."

Lyric was a puzzle, her sleep was awful but it was getting better, her behavior in China was either kicking and screaming fits, or giggly. At this point, the fits had subsided, she did seem to be attached to me, although insecurely, and she'd decided that K-Man was okay and would let him hold her and carry her around.

"This evening we went to Publix and she walked around and danced to the music and held my finger...she won't let me get far away but still...K-Man and I looked at one another timidly and said, 'Okay, where is the train wreck that we were expecting?' "

One thing that I could not take for granted was how hard this had been on the boys -they were whiny, they fought with each other, they were clingy -particularly Wild Child, and they back-talked us- particularly Middle Child, they were OVER THE TOP.  Also, the fact that school was suppose to start back soon and that they were bored (with a capital B) -and nervous- was not lost on me.


Aug 6

"So, after seeing the third eye doctor, and being prescribed another antibiotic and a steroid, this eye MAY be feeling better. On a happier note, I do NOT seem to have the 'Chinese Funk' in my eye. That's good, right?"

Aug 7

If someone EVER tries to tell you that little kids don't feel intense emotions, that they don't grieve, that they forget the trauma as soon as it happens and move on...kick 'em and say, "Nuh-uh! I've seen the pictures."  (And these pictures are why it's taken me a while to get this blog post done, they just squeeze my heart until I feel like I can't breathe.)

Lyric kept getting stuck in the hallway just before her bedroom, she would just stand and stare into space.   I investigated and realized that she was stopping and staring at a photo that we have of her and her foster mom, it hung right at eye level for her.  So, I decided that it was time <gulp> and I  took down the picture that we have of her and her whole foster family and handed it to her.

She sorta collapsed over the top of it.

It was subtle, it would have been very easy to miss, to have stepped over her and thought to myself, Thank God, she's quiet. Maybe now, I can get the laundry done.  I didn't. I sat down with her and if I hadn't she'd have learned that I was not accessible, that her emotions in the large scheme of things really don't matter that much and to shove them down.  Instead, I sat down with her on our hard wooden floor in the hallway and, I hope, taught her that she is important, that she matters. I am SO GLAD that I did because if I had stepped over her I'd have missed this. This is what life is all about.

These photos are still hard for me to look at.









She studied that photo. And studied it. She patted it and talked to me about it in her sweet little Lyric language, she waved her little hands around over the top of it, she made these little pushing motions with her hands between the picture and me, she very intensely was communicating something to me. She looked at me, she looked at it, she talked. She moaned. It was just heart-breaking.

I had no idea what to do next, I just waited to see what she'd do and hoped that I was smart enough to figure out what she needed from me.

(I've spent some time, this morning, trying to figure out how to explain how her moaning sounded. I can't. Every description that I can come up with seems melodramatic and overly emotional on a nice, sunny, morning in the middle of September.  It would, however, be entirely accurate. It was the sound of...sacred brokenness. A sound that no two year old should EVER make.)

Finally Wild Child found us in the hall and crawled into my lap, she immediately got jealous and made her fussy noises at him. It was like she was trapped between that picture and my lap. (Oh, so symbolic.) He reached out and tried to touch the picture, she got mad. Mad? She practically barked at him (she never gets mad about sharing anything - except me- but this picture DEFINITELY belonged to her.)  I couldn't take her pain anymore and so I pulled her into my lap next to Wild Child, with the picture. She looked at it a bit more, fussed at Wild Child, looked at the picture, and finally put it down but with "warnings" to Wild Child (I don't know how to explain that other than Wild Child and I both got it,  DO NOT TOUCH!)  and I moved it into her room, on the floor, where she could reach it whenever she needed to reach it.

Bless her poor, torn-up, heart.

(Those two previous pictures look eerily similar to something that I saw while we were in China:

July 17 in Nanning, Guangxi, China
<gulp> Oh, my sweet baby girl.

This was actually the day that the adoption became final and she's looking at the SAME photo.  I remember thinking, Well, she's stuck on that photo but she doesn't seem that upset by it.  Silly, Mommy.  The experts call it "dissociation," she was literally emotionally numb because she couldn't process the emotions. They hurt too much. She really was stuck, in every way. In this photo, she's escaped to a place inside her own head, far, far, far away.) 

And, like any kid, she felt strongly, she reacted strongly to her feelings, and then she moved on. (Surely, this is MUCH healthier than what we do -deny, deny, deny, run too hard, work too much, pretend we don't feel it, and then...crash.)

She had a leisurely lunch (she was finally beginning to eat) and ate lots of different stuff, although she did still seem to prefer noodle-shaped things -IE green beans.

That afternoon I caught Wild Child and Lyric playing together,
and later I saw him tickling her and singing "Itsy Bitsy Spider."
 They were slowly making friends. :)

Aug 8

This morning, Lyric picked up her picture and, as I was already sitting on the floor, she walked backwards toward me with her butt sticking out- the universal "kid" for "hold me." We sat and looked at her photo and she moaned a bit. Not nearly as much as the day before but some. This time it didn't take me so by surprise and I found my voice and I told her, " I know, I am so sorry.  Just so sorry."  She kept looking behind it so I showed her that it came out of the frame and soon she was more interested in putting it in and out of the frame than the picture itself.

That afternoon, we traveled to Birmingham to visit the International Adoption Clinic and they did lots of lab work (6 vials of blood, took three of us to get it done and she fought the whole time, one of the lab techs said, "She's a little fighter, she's been pulling against me the whole time." :)  I said, "These kids have to be or they wouldn't survive." It's true.)

We also spoke with the family therapist who gave us some pointers but said, overall, that things looked excellent. "The way that y'all do it, she should be fine."  !!!  This from a woman who'd spent the last 45 minutes with Lyric, me, K-Man, and BOTH boys, stuck in a little room where we'd been for at least an hour before she'd shown up.  :)

She did say that Lyric's "a-wuh" was a sign of stress. She also said Lyric definitely looked like a grieving child to her.  The constant going from K-Man to me, anxiety when doors were opened or closed, the fear that I would leave, and the constant need to be reassured -all grief and response to trauma.

We talked about the picture of the foster family and the therapist said that the fact that Lyric comes to me for comfort while she grieves and that I will grieve with her is a VERY good thing. (So, that's what I'm doing? Grieving with her? Thank God because it felt like I was just floundering around, hoping desperately to do the right things for my daughter's broken heart. There is no handbook for this.)

That night, she met Step-Son and Girlfriend K.

"Hmph, how many brothers do I have?" hahahaha
(Four, Honey. You have four.)

Aug 9

"She went down HARD last night and today has been hard.  She's clingy and whiny and irritable...I'm wondering if it's not her tummy but it's also DEF yesterday."   Doctors still rocked Lyric's world.

"Lyric has discovered ice. hahahahaha So funny!"

Lyric brought her picture to me again this morning and we sat and looked at it together. She mourned much less and soon was playing the Take It Out - Put It Back Game.  

Progress. Slow progress.

That afternoon I fell asleep on her floor while she played. "She brought me the picture, I got it out of the frame, she sat and looked at it, no whining that I heard. She found other toys, I woke up , there was a mess around us. She was holding the picture in front of her face and when she moved it and looked at me l  said, "Peekaboo!" She laughed and loved it. This became a game. When I finally sat up she dropped the picture, grabbed a toy, and flew into my lap."

We were slowly getting there.

Later that evening, after I'd picked the boys up from school, I realized that Lyric was in Wild Child's room, playing with the boys, away from me!   I went to check on her and she smiled up at me and said, "Mama!"  When K-Man came home from work, she started laughing, and ran at him, arms up .

So many emotions packed into one day, into one week...
...packed into one little body.