{Cocooning}

Our first week home has already come and gone and we’re back in the thick of it.  Home schooling, cooking, cleaning, laundry, daddy at work, kids going full steam, baseball, speech lessons, trying to figure out what our new schedule will look like now that we have a napper back in the mix…and much more!

It’s been exhausting!  So much so that Andie-Grace finally decided to show us the spunk that she’s definitely gotten a good handle on.  I have to wonder if the “squeaky wheel gets the oil” approach worked in her orphanage because girlfriend has a temper! She’s an incredibly easy going baby for the most part but she’s got her moments and I dare say that it is not just girl drama either.  She’s a fighter and makes no apologies for letting her sass show.  So, I’m balancing a lot right now…especially since we are in this critical attachment and bonding stage. 

She’ll still go to anyone which for most parents is a great thing.  BUT, for an adoptive parent…it is bad.  Very bad.  Basically, everything that I learned with parenting the first three I have to forget or, at the very least, think the opposite of with her.  She plays this game of going back and forth between people {basically a version of pass the baby around} which brings her great joy.  It’s just that it’s not so great right now.  As much as I want to believe she’s really starting to figure this whole family thing out, the reality is that she’s just not there yet.  She will still let pretty much anyone love her, feed her, etc.  So many nannies have come and gone throughout her 16 months that she’s just learned to trust whomever is with her at that moment.  What we have to do now though is teach her that we are here to stay.  That I’ll meet her needs now and forever.  And in her little world, that just doesn’t make sense just yet.   So we are trying to lay low so that others aren’t tempted to hold her just yet or try to feed her or anything else that she could misinterpret as caring for her when she really needs to be learning it from us first.

So, we are cocooning.  We are spending lots of time at home {although life does certainly go on and taking my other two to their commitments has to happen also} but we’re trying to reel it in right now.  She needs time to learn this new relationship.  It’s completely foreign to her so it’s imperative that she learn immediately that her daddy and I are the only ones that meet her basic needs.  That we are the ones she can always count on and that we will always be there for her.  Babysitters are a long way off…as much as I’d love a night out…and that’s okay.  We knew this going into it and we truly want to establish this now so that {hopefully} soon she’ll learn it for good.   And, when we do head out of this safe place for her, she’ll be cradled next to me to further instill in her little mind that I’m not leaving her. 

I’m optimistic in those sweet moments where she crawls up to me and just wants to be held.  They are brief but she’s slowly learning that I am her mommy…and it is a beautiful thing. 

We are all learning this new life together.  It’s hard, y’all.  It’s much harder than I thought it would be.  Adoption truly is a beautiful gift…a redeeming story.  But, behind all of it lies so much brokenness.  Broken hearts.  Broken trusts.  Broken thoughts.  Broken minds.  Broken stories.  The hard truth is that, as glorious as it is to hold my daughter, she is only mine because we live in a broken world.  So we have to take these pieces and offer them daily to the One who will heal…who will restore…who does redeem.  And that’s what I’m doing…I’m trying so hard sometimes by the hour to do.

We are cocooning for now but only because we know that the result will be a butterfly…a child who will soar on wings as eagles knowing that her family is always there for her and that, ultimately, her Father will never leave nor forsake her either.

Thank you for praying us through these days.  I know without a doubt that it’s all that’s getting us through this season. 

Here are a few moments of Andie-Grace’s first week home… she’s loving self feeding some and plays so well with the boys and us.  She mimics everything I do and calls China at least twice a day on her princess phone.  ;)  Oh and the pigtails did not look like this before her nap!  She sleeps hard!

Oh, yes…and she’s teething, too!  She already has had one tooth come in last week and is working on two more!