These are the days....

I want to thank all of you for your posts both on and off blog. I also want to say that the ones that mean the absolute most to me (and coincidentally are the entire reason I posted in the first place) are the ones that say someone was encouraged by my post or appreciated knowing they were "normal" or not alone in their experience. That's the whole and total reason I share the dirty details of a day in our life.

But now let me also say, because SO many of my friends and family (thank you so much) have been very concerned about Meg since I posted this. I want to tell you that 90% of our day is a very normal looking day for a family of six. Meg is an absolutely DELIGHTFUL child. She is fun, go with the flow, eager to learn and be a part of every thing that goes on here. She is daring, more and more every day she tries new things and tackles new words. She is happy and giggling and squealing and running and jumping and playing in the rain with her brothers and trying SO hard to ride a tricycle. She is learning sign language like nobodies business and just tonight she pulled out a new one on me (Help) which I had only shown her once, when she wanted me to cut a plum for her. So, the angry fits I described in the past post are a reality in our life. They break my heart. They make me realize we have further to go than I thought we did. BUT, they are not how we live our days. And in fact, I may have discovered the beginning of the end of the fits anyway.

As I mentioned I called my friend who is an attachment therapist (if you need one in the Nashville area, you are crazy if you don't call her... but you'll have to call me to get her number because she doesn't have a blog, though she should... but I digress... again.) Anyway, it so happened that on Wednesday I was in her office for some training on a whole separate issue unrelated to our adoption and after the training class was over she said she had about ten minutes and for me to write down some games for Meg from her Thera Play book. The games are fun, but that wasn't the progress. I told her that I thought I had discovered the way to remove Meg's "power" when she hits me and she patted me on the back as if she had been waiting a very long time for me to realize that this was the correct path, young Jedi. And that is that I TOTALLY ignore it. I don't acknowledge it in any way, other than I am sure I flinch sometimes because she can get a good whack in. I don't talk about it, I don't look at her, I don't look like anything even happened. The fit is immediately diffused. We have been doing this since Wednesday and she has stopped hitting so much. Also, when she does hit, she usually will hit me two, maybe three times and when it gets no reaction, she tries to get a laugh out of me by pulling my hair over my eyes, playing peek-a-boo, or making a funny face. When she does that, we laugh together and move on. Like I said, the hitting has decreased dramatically, so instead of 25 times a day she's smacking me and we are going through the whole "reconnection" dance, now I think we had two times today when she hit me and both of them were after 7:00 (past her bedtime because we were at Jack's baseball game) and she was hungry because the ham and cheese she had at 5:30 had left her and she was signing "eat" over and over.) So I think in this circumstance, all she knew to do to get her point across was whack me. But even then, when I didn't react, she moved on. So I am sure, like everything else, just when I have a little success, we'll take two steps backward, but for the past two days, we've made great strides toward a less violent expression of anger. If you saw us together as a family or she and I one on one you would never think anything was wrong.

I do, however, keep reminding myself that even though she isn't hitting me, she is still not used to being reconnected with after a "rupture" in a relationship. So I do have to keep making sure that I consciously reconnect even if she seems fine. More times than not, she is so sad when I tell her no, and it's like it has just hurt her last feeling.

So, now that we're clear on how wonderful, perfect, precious, beautiful, and absolutely delightful my daughter is, you can all feel free to agree with me in some more comments! :)

And oh, yeah, I am so excited to be "bumping into" other bloggers that are in Nashville that I didn't know about. How exciting! :)

And another Oh Yeah, I got my new, fabulous ERGO baby Carrier in the mail this week. If you don't have one and if you are adopting or if you are a baby wearer, please do yourself a HUGE favor and get this thing. It's AMAZING!!!! I have terrible back pains when I wear my old carrier and Meg was not fitting right in the sling (maybe too tall??) but the Ergo is AMAZING! Did I say that already? I wore Meg through an entire 1.5 hour PTO meeting, standing 90% of the meeting. She actually fell asleep in front of 35 women with me talking to the group, that's how secure she felt in it. And my back never had a pain. When I took her off and into her car seat, I wasn't sweaty, my back didn't ache and I was happy to have gotten through the meeting without incident. So.... two thumbs up for the Ergo! :)

God is GOOD all the time!

Psalm 71:5
"For you have been my hope, O Sovereighn Lord, my confidence since my youth."