Up Since 4 a.m.

Really?! I mean really?! My home is calm, everyone is sleeping. My room is quiet and for the first time in 2 months we slept without a light on in our room…dark, cool, quiet and just like I like it. And at 4 a.m…..BAM! I’m awake. What?! I try to fall back asleep for and hour and 30 minutes…no go. I pray. I let my mind wander to random stuff. I hear my stomach grumble. Well phooey! I guess I’ll just drag myself upstairs. Light is just dawning and I am here babbling on this dumb computer into cyberspace. The upside is that I’m not ignoring any children to do this so it is guilt free blogging, nor am I compromising any sleep as I cannot actually sleep right now, so bonus! This will be long on, so I’m not offended if you don’t make it all the way through…

I suppose I should record for posterity’s sake what things actually look like around here. Currently, things are a bit chaotic. Eden has shifted to our first priority with her strangely out of character and disturbingly angry behavior. I contacted the IAC family therapist and a local play therapist with regards to sweet Eden to figure out what of her behavior is normal two year old behavior, what is new sibling behavior and what merits intervention; and to get some new parenting tools to handle it all. The best information I got was this: “It sounds like grieving behavior that we see in young children.” Grief. Finally a word to describe what we are seeing. Because it isn’t your run of the mill jealously at a new sibling behavior. Weirdly enough that one word was unbelievably helpful. Eric and I have been studying how to handle grief for over a year now in preparation for Yaya. It was so strange because I you’d think I could identify grief in a toddler since we were seeing it all over the place with Yaya. But perhaps that was the problem we were so narrowly focused on Yaya we didn’t catch what the real issue was with Eden. All I know is that it felt like she was slipping away from us and it was a horrible, terrifying feeling for me. But within just one short week we have begun turning the tide on this front. I have implemented several strategies that were suggested to me and we have seen a remarkable change in her attachment/affection towards me. The raging behavior is still there and has been getting a bit worse actually but her and I are bonding more and I don’t think she feels so alone now in her grieving. Her and I have bonded so much now that Eric can hardly get any attention from her, which is great for Yaya because she only wants his attention…not great for Eric and I or our family as a whole. So we have some cross-over work to do with the girls. Eric and Eden will have their first Daddy/Eden date today, I think it will go a long way with her. She fought us at first until I got the computer and showed her where Daddy was taking her…the McWane Science Center. I pray they have a great time. Plus, I need the time alone with Yaya. Eden has monopolized me for 4 days now. Last night she even started to fly into a rage because I picked Yaya up; not the behavior we are hoping to produce. So we are in a bit of a balance game. I am so thankful for the immediate change we see in the relationship between Eden and myself. She wants to go everywhere with me. So I try to take her on errands with me that don’t include Yaya or Noah. She wants to help with household chores (ooh-rah): unloading the dishwasher, cleaning the microwave, clearing the table and throwing everything in the sink (including glass…yikes), making beds, making Yaya’s bottles and feeding Yaya. It is sweet that she wants to help and I am totally training letting her. It does however, take me increasingly longer to do said chores. But I am loving having a little helper by my side. I have hope that we can navigate these stormy seas and come out the other side intact. That hope was dwindling fast for me as of late. Praise you Jesus for the work you are doing in Eden’s tender heart.

Yaya is in a bit of a regression right now. Not sure what triggered it but it has been going on for almost 3 weeks now. We are seeing “in China” behavior. She is ubber clingy…like to the drive you insane stage. She would not do anything independently for 2 weeks! She had to be on us or hanging on to our finger CONSTANTLY; or she would scream. I have less tolerance for this and so I believe her current switch to wanting Eric exclusively is in part due to the fact that I don’t honor her demands on my person constantly, and now even Eric is growing weary of it. But in the past 3 days we have seen some independent play and she has gone off with Eden several times to play. It is encouraging to see some of what we hope is her “old self” back. Like I said before though, Eric and I have to be more intentional about sharing the girls equally whether they like it or not. She has started fighting nap time with a vengeance, she will scream like you are ripping her arms off for about 10-20 minutes then she will moan another 20 more and finally fall asleep. For some of my adoptive Moms out there, I know you are thinking…”Psshh that’s a cake walk.” But when you compare it to a little fussiness that you can sing away to sleep in 5-10 minutes it is a bummer indeed. Her night terrors are pretty consistent now. I’d say we have at least 5 a week. Plus the usual 3-5 times waking with a shriek or cry that we are able to contain by just our voice reassuring her we are there. She WAS eating baby food but that came to a screeching halt as she would cover her face with her hands and then lie her head down on the tray if we came at her with a spoon. We believe much of her setback there was us. We were doing all these things to desensitize her body and mouth to calm her down throughout the day. When she began eating we stopped it all. Duh. So now we are back to scrubbing her down 3 times a day with a dry washcloth. Nuby gum simulator for infants in the mouth 1-2-3’s.again and all the other tricks in our bag. So she has taken a couple bites here and there. Her sign language is off the charts in my opinion, but I’m just an interpreter what do I know, I’m not a speech/path person. She communicates very well with us for the most part. I’m going to start introducing feeling words soon. We have her second IAC appointment where we meet with OT and PT to assess her developmental progress. Her anesthesia pre-op appointment is the 16th and surgery to close her lip is right around the corner.

Noah…sigh. He is my hero. My word is this young man outstanding. He is so patient with the girls (well most of the time). He knows his place in the family hierarchy and accepts it, which kills me as he is the bottom of the pack. He is too grown up for his age. I try to remind him that he is 8 years old and he can act like one if he wants too. He can pitch fits and freak out and stomp and cry and yell a bit if he needs to. But all he says, as he smiles his devastatingly handsome smile is, “That’s okay Mom, I’m good.” For the most part, he seems good, he will tell us when he is having a rough time most of the time. He has said a couple of times, “I wish it was back in the time when it was only me.” He began a weird “I’m afraid to sleep in my room thing” and it frustrated me to no end, we tried everything to get him to stay in his room. Then it hit me, his way of feeling connected to us is getting to snuggle with us at night in our bed and then sleep on a futon on the floor in the room all night. That is how he bonds with us and gets his “connection” re-established with us everyday. So we set up a permanent place to sleep on the floor and it is all good. I mean really, America is really the only place in the world where families don’t all sleep in the same room or bed….family bed…who knew I’d buy into that?!  He has a “come apart” about once every two weeks, but overall he is doing well. He is having a good summer and is looking forward to getting back to school (for the most part). Eric is trying to get some good one on one time in with him as of late and it really helps Noah out a lot. He is still doing competition gymnastics this year but he just isn’t gung-ho in love with the sport; but he refuses to quit. And it doesn’t matter if we offer up several other sports he can try. He doesn’t want to lose all that he has gained with gymnastics but he really doesn’t want to put the work into being his “best” at it either. So time will tell. He is losing one of his best buds today and I am sad for him. His friend is moving to Wisconsin (I think…or Minnesota, somewhere way to freakin’ cold for me). And he potentially could lose another good friend to a move right before school starts. I am praying that God is lining up some great playmates for Noah to bond with this year.

Eric and I are managing. We have 2 kids in our room every night so it makes it hard for Eric and I to have any time to ourselves or our marriage. Noah likes to pretend he is sleeping so he can hear our discussions, so we don’t talk much anymore. We finally hooked up a mosquito repellent thing on the front porch and retreated out side in the muggy summer night and instructed Noah to go stay in his room and play, just so we could have some time without any little ears around! Noah was unhappy, but it was an hour well used as we got our game plans together on how to manage this family. He and I need a getaway but that is not anywhere in the near foreseeable future. We are trying to be kinder to each other though and laugh a bit more. Work is somewhat stressful right now and his office just made a move and now instead of offices they will be in cubes…he is not happy. He is still trying to get work from home figured out, but it isn’t looking good for full-time work from home and did I mention he is not happy about the cube environment. Not to mention there will be more than one governmental office together down there and it is a dog eat dog environment now, he won’t have as flexible a schedule anymore as other employees will surely complain because their schedule and bosses are not flexible. I mean really, haven’t out grown tattling? The answer is no, no we haven’t. So that is that. And that’s all I got right now. It is surely enough for this post…whew.