First Bath and Leo Bloom's Blue Blanket

Abigail has been down for her morning nap for over 2.5 hours. Larry is passed out with her: they both had a rough night last night.

I really want to organize our stuff into suitcases again for our flight this evening (each time I have to do this, it is harder- apparently our stuff is multiplying), but don't want to make noise and wake them up, but blogging is pretty quiet.

Thanks for all of the advice from everyone on what to do about Abigail not letting us sit down. We appreciated your help, even though it was all variations of "hang in there" while we are dead exhausted and living in a hotel with a sick baby and all we want to do is prove to Abigail that we love her sitting down as well as standing. We still have to stand up most of the time when she is awake, but yesterday she did start to let us play with her while sitting, so that was a start. Maybe she will let us sit and play with her a little more today.

Attached are pics from our first successful bath with Abigail. She was standing in the hotel sink. As Steph pointed out to me, we have no idea what we are doing, and our first attempt at a bath was not successful. Apparently, kids don't like to be in chest-deep, skin-blanching water in a full-sized bathtub. (Larry's idea.) Our second attempt, holding her over the tub while pouring water over her was also a failure. (My idea.) We tried to convince her that we are actually a pretty intelligent duo, but she doesn't believe us.

If anyone has ever seen The Producers (movie or musical or movie musical) you know that there is a scene in which Leo Bloom becomes stressed out and he reaches for his blue blanket, holds it over his nose, and breathes deeply into it. We have discovered that Abigail has taught herself this same stress-relieving technique. When something really stresses her out, often she won't scream (only sitting down makes her scream). Instead, if she is stressed (such as when one of us leaves the room, she is fighting sleep, she dirties her diaper, there are too many people around her, etc.) she holds her blanket over her face and hyperventilates into it until her breathing slows down or the situation is made right again. We think she is an amazing adaptor-- this has to be a behavior she developed at the orphanage. Again, we are impressed at the depth of her intellect, instinct and emotions.

Attachment Issues and the Grieving Process

We have one really amazing kid here. We love her so much and she wants to trust us, because we are the ones here taking care of her, feeding her, changing her and even sometimes, making her laugh. When we went through our mandated 10 hours of parent classes to be able to adopt from China, we were told that children attach in different ways. Some kids are so neglected in the orphanage that they have already shut down and given up and are very slow to attach. Others, after experiencing the same neglect, realize suddenly that someone will tend to their every need and desire and quickly attach and become clingy. Some kids attach only to mom and others only to dad. This made sense to us. We were also told that kids go through a grieving process when they are adopted. The grieve for the foster home they lost, the birth mom they will never know, the familiarity of their orphanage or for a worker they may have attached to. Larry and I sort of ignored that part of the course, thinking that since Abigail would only be 13 months, she would not be old enough to grieve.

We did not give her enough credit. The depth of her emotion is beyond what we can understand and what she is going through right now is breaking our hearts.

She seems to have attached to both of us pretty well. When one of us is gone from the room, she will often become very stressed out. Larry went through this yesterday when I had to go for an hour to a paperwork meeting. Twenty-four hours of love, attention, and bonding later, Abigail is a very conflicted little girl. Today Larry had to leave for 2.5 hours to run errands. One hour into the separation Abigail became inconsolable. She was in my arms and we were sitting in a chair. She crawled onto her knees on my lap, facing me and began to go through a type of comfort ritual that we have noticed she does when she becomes stressed. She stuffed a corner of her blanket into her mouth and sucked on it, silent tears ran down her face, she started hyperventilating, and buried her face in my chest for about 5 minutes, sobbing silently and sucking on her blanket and gripping my shirt th

e whole time. Then her breath would slow down, she would sit up, look into my eyes, find a dry spot on her blanket, and repeat the process.

This little human being has been through 2 abandonments (as she sees it) so far in her life and seems terrified that it will happen again. We talked to the social worker with us here, worried that something is really wrong with her because all of the other kids are playing on the floor with their new families and our kid can't be out of our arms for 2 seconds. Apparently, this is just another version of "normal", although it seems like the most cruel and heart wrenching thing in the world to us right now. We have no way to tell her "We are never going to abandon you: this is it, Kid, you are stuck with us!" except to just keep holding her, letting the tears fall, and letting her work through it.