click

In the last week or so things have started to click for Elizabeth. Maybe for us too. She seems to be recognizing more things, routines and words. Now when we pull up at home she makes a high pitched "oooooo" noise. When I put her in her car seat, she grabs the buckle to help. She has started saying all done and doing the sign for it. She does this all the time, when she is in the cart at the store and is all done, when she is in her crib and does not want to sleep, when she is in the car seat. It is really sweet and funny. The "D" sound is a big step, up until now she only really had "m's" and variations on the ma sound. Now she is saying something for dog, Sam (sounds like mam), me or mine, all done and of course mama. She also has some signs to use for more and banana (which I think means any fruit). She is a stubborn little one though and tends to try whining first. We are trying to be firm and make her try to use a word or sign that she knows.

Things are clicking for us too. We need to keep reminding ourselves that we are on a very long journey to attachment. We read some articles last week and I will post them if I figure out how. They talked about the difference between bonding and attachment. I guess I thought they were the same. David summed it up as, bonding is love (which she has) attachment is trust (which she is working on). The attachment part will take a while and we will always be working on it. I was getting pretty tired and sought the advice of other parents in the FCC (families with children from China). They all said that the clingyness we are going through is very normal and to be expected. The articles said the same thing. Actually if she was not this clingy, that might signal more problems. I think one issue I am having is with other people. If you have not experienced adoption, either personally or through a close friend or family member, you don't know the ins and outs of attachment or the trauma the child has been through and its lasting effects on their brain. Even though E does not "remember" being abandoned on a doorstep at three days old, the effects of that trauma are there in her brain. She may no longer "remember" the orphanage, but she has the effects in her brain of being left in her crib, not always being attended to, having several caretakers. Her brain is hardwired wrong. Now we need to undo all that. We need to provide for her all the attention, physical contact, love, snuggling, parenting that she missed out on for 15 months. We need to overcompensate for what she missed out on. So to onlookers, it may seem as though we are spoiling her or giving in to her too much or what ever. To her, she is learning to trust us and learning that we will meet her needs every time. And we will meet her needs when she wants, not when the orphanage schedule dictates. So now that we have more information, we can counter those that mean well, but don't have as much information on the subject.

My mom just emailed me and said she remembered reading an article a while back (long before we were heading to china). It was about children adopted from Romania and all the troubles they were having. The line that stuck out to her and she thought was so applicable was, "You can't put these kids in Gap clothes and take them to Disney Land and think they are just like any other American kid". It is so true. I have to keep reminding myself of that. I keep saying, "Sam wasn't like this" or we might compare E to her cousin Jenna, but we can't, their lives are so different and their needs are so different.

So things are starting to click and it is really exciting. She seems so much bigger and older just in these few months. She is less like a baby and more like a toddler. She is almost 19 months! I can't believe it!

One last click comment. My camera is MIA right now, so no click of the camera and no new pictures to post. I think it is in Chummy, so I'll look this weekend.