December…in January…I’m a Little Late, I Know.

So, yeah, I’m a little behind on the ole’ blogging and I hate to not mention December and what went on during that time as I believe it was all fairly crucial in helping Yaya to move deeper in her attachment to us. It all started with an idea to have a family vacation in the middle of December. Thanksgiving marked our 6 months home and we thought we could try a family trip away from home again but for a little longer than our trip to Grandma’s house  for Thanksgiving. We used our Hilton points to book a two bedroom suite in a resort in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. We packed all our food on top of our car (the suite had a full kitchen) and crammed all our other stuff and kids in the minivan and we looked like the Clampets driving into the resort. 

The kids did great on the drive up and we had a wonderful reunion with Ella and her family. Ella if you don’t know or recall is a little girl who was in Yaya’s first orphanage with her and who remembers Yaya. Her mother, Julie, is a total lifesaver for me and we are trying hard to keep our girls in touch with each other. There house was a little past halfway to our destination and they had a great yard for the kids to all run around in.

(Note to self: Need picture of Julie and I.)

After about an hour we headed to the ‘burg’. When driving down the strip in Pigeon Forge we were all a twitter with all the fun stuff we imagined we’d be doing! (HA!) We arrived just in time to check in without penalty and then we unloaded the car while the kids ran amuck in the suite loving it all. The first surprise was that the freaky Christmas elves not only followed us to Tennessee but they were waiting for us in the bedroom when we arrived. The kids totally freaked out! They loved it. Here was my favorite location that the elves hid themselves…

The place we stayed was very nice and the bathtub/mini pool was a big hit for the kids.

Yaya made herself at home on the counter…

Eden made herself at home in her suitcase umm, bear cave I mean. There is a cute video of this but I don’t have it ready yet. I’ll post it later.

We tried to locate some cool events for the entire family and we found a few. My favorite event was the Ripley’s Aquarium. I must say I was pleasantly surprised at what a great aquarium is. This kids loved it. However, it was here that we began to see the beginning of the unraveling of our sweet Yaya. We knew that she would be a bit nervous in this new environment and the first full day in Gatlinburg we stayed in the hotel suite the entire day. We saw a whole lot of ‘velcro asian’ at the hotel, but we had hoped it would abate the longer we stayed. Instead it got worse. At the aquarium, she was so put out by Eric dropping her hand to go attend to Eden that she refused not only to take my hand but she ran up to a complete stranger lady and took her hand!! I was beside myself at her behavior! As the week progressed her anger at being near me increased, to the point that she tried to refuse me giving her a bottle. This is something she has never done. I was texting my friend Julie every other minute. The text that hit home the most was the one where Julie said Yaya was “breaking up with me” before I could “break up with her.” Ahhhhhh. Yes that makes sense, no wait…it didn’t make sense at the time. But as we were driving home at the end of our trip it all came full circle. I’ll expand on that a bit in a moment.

We found a children’s museum that was really incredible but is was geared for kids a bit older than the girls. They had an amazing ropes course above the museum in way up in the ceiling that was all in  black light. Noah and Eric made it to the 2nd level before it was too much for Noah. Eric said it had a couple more really challenging levels he would have loved to have tried. The girls liked the peg board, bubbles, and giant piano the best.

Later we found MagiQuest. Noah and Eric’s favorite thing by far. They ran around with magic wand things and did quests while I entertained the girls in the pirate black light mini-golf course. I did get to do a house of mirrors with Noah at this same place and it was awesome. I ended up having to go get doughnuts with the girls on a car trip to busy the girls while the boys were playing MagiQuest. But all in all it was a pretty successful outing.

I was able to get out with Noah one afternoon and take Noah to see Rise of the Guardians and that was fun. And one night we all went out for pizza at the local Pizza Hut, also a pretty descent time. We got to walk the streets of Gatlinburg one day when the weather warmed up a bit and we visited the pool a couple times. We had to dress up in all are warm cloths just to walk to the pool. It felt ridiculous. But the pool was fun.

However all the in between times about killed Mama. Yaya was off the chain anxiously attached to Eric and when I say attached I mean physically attached. When Eric would try to move or get her off of him she would go into hysterics. Then I would have to take her off him and to another room and listen to her scream for 20 minutes and then try to do our attachment games. It was very tiring and annoying. I can’t sugar coat this. I had a horrible time on the “vacation” for the majority of the time. I had to handle all of her rage and then act like I liked her and wanted to be close to her. It was very trying. We decided to pack up and leave on Friday night instead of Saturday morning hoping the kids would sleep most of the way home. No such luck.

Yaya decided that at about 2.5 hours away from home she wanted to scream and cry and she did this for the entire 2.5 hours we had left. Nothing would console her. Then as we were approaching the 20 minutes left landmarks, I had a sobering realization. We took Yaya away on a trip over her Gotcha Day anniversary and we took her 5 hours away by car and we ended up on top of a mountain…literally. When Yaya was moved from her first orphanage to the second orphanage she was taken on a 5 hour car ride that ended on a mountain. Nice. We recreated one of the 3 most stressful events in her life. The entire time in Gatlinburg she was waiting for me to give her away. She was breaking up with me before I could break up with her. Now I get it. So when I saw our first landmark I knew Yaya would recognize I got her attention and pointed it out excitedly. As I kept pointing out landmarks she started settling down. The closer we got to home the quicker she recognized things, it was dark after all. Then as we were turning on one of our main roads close to home I pointed out the Target. At that moment, it was like a light switched was flipped in Yaya’s psyche. She instantly settled down and her entire temperament changed.  When we arrived home she was perfectly fine. No more anxious behavior, no more shunning me or her siblings, no more velcro Asian. She was happy as a clam to have me feed her a bottle before bed and then put her down. Her intellect works for us and against us I tell you. Once she realized we were going home as a family and not going to give her away she was fine. And she has made great strides in her attachment since that time. Incredible.