Fall...and New Challenges

Paul just came back from spending a couple of weeks in Africa for work, so we spent his day off at the pumpkin patch with the girls. I think Eden wasn't quite sure about it :)








When Eden first came home, she was pretty good about sticking right by us so we relaxed a bit on allowing other people to play with her, hold her, etc. We've learned it's called "trauma attachment", where the child may stick to you like glue because they are afraid of all the big changes that have happened and feel insecure about what will happen next. So it turns out that as she's adjusted and gotten used to her new home and surroundings, she is also now getting very comfortable with other people very quickly. A little too quickly. Any new adult she meets is a potential caregiver to her and she will readily follow them around since they're more likely than mommy to offer her sweets and let her have her way with toys and other kids.

It's way more complex than I just described and I know it may be hard for someone who hasn't had the experience of trying to bond and connect with an adopted child to understand. I don't expect everyone to understand it, but we're just asking for the support of our friends and family in stepping back from loving on Eden and allow us the time to form a solid attachment. We will fill people in as we spend time with you, but basically we ask that you not touch/hold her, offer her food or toys, and if she comes to you for any of these things to redirect her to one of us.

We have appreciated the love all of you have shown her, sincerely. Thank you for supporting us in this way.

New Friends

The girls met Millie and her mom this weekend in Palo Alto (Eden and Millie are from the same orphanage/city). Super-encouraging time for Eliza!

Eden's Repertoire

Eden turned two this past weekend and we decided to document her progress in English thus far. She has recently started to try and repeat things we say in English, which is a big change from before when she didn't seem to want to try.

This weekend also marked four months since she became a part of our family!

Her words "backpack" and "map" are nods to Dora The Explorer, her favorite show, and "jie jie" is big sister in Mandarin. She consistently calls Malia that and is also pretty consistent with calling Paul "dada". I, along with about 20 other people/things, am called "mama".

We'll do a birthday post as soon as we can get pictures from people who took them at the party. I was too preoccupied to even look for my camera!

Oh and the scratches on her face? I wasn't even home when it happened and Paul was outside talking to someone. He heard Eden crying in the house and came in to find her face bleeding! Malia says Eden fell into this straw table we have in the family room. Well, until Eden picks up some more words, we'll have to take Malia's story.

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.

Amazing Love

We met Eden only two months ago but already it's hard to imagine our lives without her. She has brought us so much joy and laughter, as well as to our knees in prayer!
Some of the funny things she's done as she's been getting used to things in our home:

She brought me this plastic orange and wooden knife from the toy kitchen in all seriousness so I could cut it up for her to eat.



Once I pulled out a toy car from under the bookcase and she kept leading me over to the bookcase and pointing under it because she thought that toys came from there.



I know many of you have heard bits and pieces of how challenging this adjustment period has been for us all. Yesterday at church God led me to realize an amazing truth in my relationship with Eden. You see, Malia has been so easy to love because she so clearly loves me back and shows me her love and need for me in little ways everyday. What I've been facing with Eden has been willful and disobedient behavior, independence that causes her to turn away from me and do her own thing, unruliness and disregard for family skills and rules, and all the while knowing that she doesn't love me (yet) nor does her heart bend towards me hardly at all. And while this has been a huge struggle for me, especially in trying to emotionally connect to her, I realized suddenly that we are exactly the same. The way Eden appears to me is exactly how I appear to God.

Eden hasn't come to know me and trust me in a way that would allow her to love me yet, and we often go for days without a positive interaction. While I do love God, I often go for days without showing God my love for Him in any way.

Eden could go on and live her life without me as long as there is a suitable replacement to fill my spot. I do that when I replace God with other idols that appear in the moment to satisfy me.

Eden goes about her business, coming to look for me only when she needs something or something needs fixing. Um, yeah, I do that one too.

Eden constantly tests limits with me, lashes out in anger at me, and shrugs and looks away when I'm trying to discipline her. Enough said.

And the amazing gospel and how much God continues to pour out His love and grace on my life despite my sinfulness and choosing to do things my way time and time again, has taken on new meaning for me. Eden has become a powerful reminder to me of how very much I am loved by God, and not for anything I have done.

I am so thankful for my two girls and for the different ways God is using them to teach me and minister to me. I can only strive to love them as God has loved me.