Getting Adjusted

Look what I found under the couch! It’s a blog. Kinda dusty.

We’re getting adjusted. I knew that going back to work full time would be the test for me. Tabitha’s doing great; I’m exhausted. My house is a mess, my car is a pigsty, but we’re happy. Every morning on the way to day care I tell Tabitha “The Story of Monday (or whatever day it is).” In this story I describe her day and how at the end of it Mama comes to pick her up and take her home. She joins in with a chorus of “home!” at the end of each story. I don’t know if it is this preparation or that she’s just a stoic little girl, but after giving me a goodbye kiss and hug, she waves bye and toddles off to play without a tear. Part of me wants her to cling to me and cry so I’ll know she’s attached to me. When I come to pick her up in the afternoon, though, she runs to me laughing with arms reaching up. It makes my heart warm just thinking about it.

The day care workers tell me she never cries and that she’s totally fearless. Occasionally she has a time out for aggressive behavior toward the other babies but they’re patiently trying to teach her, along with all the other toddlers, to share. I read a lot about attachment disorder while we were waiting to go to China. I know that many children adopted from orphanages suffer from this disorder. I have the list of attachment disorder symptoms burned into my brain from reading them so often before she came home. (I had a lot more time on my hands then.) Every time I see her behavior lean in the direction of one of those symptoms, like never crying at day care, not crying when I leave her, and her fearlessness, my mind tries to put a check mark beside a symptom. Then I erase the check and tell myself, “Self, she’s only been home since January. The orphanage was all she had ever known and you don’t know what she experienced there. Give her time to adjust. Of course she’s tough and stoic, she’s never had a primary caregiver who she trusted to take care of all her needs. Keep showing her that you’re hers and you will take care of her no matter what. Enjoy her, love her, worry later, if necessary.”

Okay, when I’m not worrying about attachment disorder, I enjoy her spunkiness. I love spunky kids. She’s funny, too. She loves to be silly and clown around. But don’t cross her or she may have to take her shoe off. The day care workers told me that she went up to the biggest boy of the two year olds, took her shoe off and started hitting him with it. Poor little fellow obviously didn’t realize he outweighs her by 10 pounds so he ran from her. She chased him a few feet, still swatting at him with her shoe. Then she stopped and calmly put her shoe back on. The teachers scolded her and comforted him then inwardly howled with laughter at the sight of the tiniest chastising the largest. My petite baby girl is 17 pounds of pure dynamite.

Disclaimer: She must have learned the shoe thing in China. We have big feet and our shoes would be considered lethal weapons. We don’t hit each other and if we did, we certainly wouldn’t use shoes.