We Love Auntie Pauline!

My sister Pauline was out here visiting from Philly the last 2 weeks and she left an indelible mark on all of us. First of all for Eden, who set a new record for time it took to bond with a new person! From day 1 with Pauline, Eden was hooked. I was even a tad jealous :) And Malia has always loved auntie Pauline, but just didn't understand where she's been the last few months! When Malia woke up to find her gone again one morning she was inconsolable.

And as for me...her presence somehow turned my relationship with Eden around. I know it sounds quite dramatic to say that, but it's just true. It was a combination of having her around to help with the girls, which gave me a much needed break, and also her fresh perspective on Eden that I learned a lot from. She has a lot of experience working with small kids and from that a lot of good techniques and ways to approach them that I took lots of mental notes on!

Truthfully I had hit a bit of a low point right before Pauline's visit. The accumulation of the stress of the last 3 months had really worn me down and I found myself in survival mode rather than being able to really nurture my kids. Plus I had all this baggage with Eden from the struggles we've had to work hard to overcome from the beginning. Even when we worked through something successfully, I continued to carry the stress and emotions of it with me.

But spending 2 weeks with Pauline and also my mom really gave me the opportunity to step back and observe Eden from a distance, and appreciate things about her that I was too fried to notice before. And after 3 months of feeling like I was babysitting someone else's kid, we are really starting to bond and feel more like mother and daughter.

The following pictures are all from Pauline's camera :)

Drunken Monkey Dance

Sorry for the poor video quality (directly from iPhone to Youtube).

Connection Is a Tricky Thing

Some good friends of ours adopted a young boy at almost the exact same time that we brought Eden home. I caught up with them today, and they shared something pretty profound. "Connection is a tricky thing," said the boy's new daddy as he described the ups and downs of bonding with an adopted child you've only known for two months. We can totally relate.

What I tell most people now is that, when we have a moment to look at it in the big picture, there's no doubt that Eden is showing great signs of adjusting well. But ask Eliza or me in one of our not-so-cheery moments, and we'll probably give you a much more gritty answer out of either exhaustion, exasperation or a combination of both.

It's really nice to see Malia and Eden playing together in relative calm and peace. Malia is definitely showing more and more signs of being the nurturing big sister. Sometimes Malia even tries to help Mom or Dad empathize more with her mei mei (little sister) by telling us, "She's trying to say____" or "She doesn't know better" or "I think Eden wants______." It's really cute, and becoming less rare. :)

One of the first signs of bad parenting on our part was trying to get Eden to get hooked on TV... we just need the break once in awhile because she's a nonstop whirlwind otherwise. Well, as Diego says, "Mision completa!"... as evidenced by this video.