One month anniversary

As I was putting Molly down to sleep this evening, I realized that we picked her up in Thai Nguyen exactly one month ago today.

It feels like we've had her forever, in some ways, and in others we are still trying to find balance in that ever sensitive mobile known as our family. The mobile as a trio was bound to change balance with the addition of another person. Change is inevitable and still it takes some getting used to.

So it seems especially for Max. He was a rockstar the entire time we were abroad and now that we are home, on his highness' TERRITORY, the "I'm so Excited to Have a Sister" song has changed to "I'm not really so sure anymore." Who is this baby and why do people ogle over her when all she does is lay there like a lump?

He is certainly acting out in all sorts of ways to get our attention and we are told this is perfectly normal. Just to be patient and ride it out. Give it 3 to 4 weeks and hopefully our mobile will have regained some sense of composure and balance.

But the minutes go by like hours. Poop on the bedroom wall once (which Max emphatically denies - first he blamed it on Tom and then the cat), the baby's monitor in the trash, being a little rough with the baby always with one doubtful eye cast up at me or Tom when he's doing it, being noisy when we ask him to be quiet and overall regressing to a baby has taken a great deal of patience from a parent's perspective. I wish I were as balanced, sane and wise as the Buddha so that I could hold Max's confusion and pain without reacting or getting impatient. But I'm not the Buddha. I'm a 42 year old mother doing the best I humanly can with aspirations of being all-loving and patient.

My summer reading list now includes "Siblings without Rivalry" and "How to Talk so kids will listen and how to listen so kids will talk" not to mention countless articles on the sibling topic. While searching for guidance on how to deal with this natural bump in the road, I've also found that the wound from my childhood experience (aka being dethroned and not particularly well) has re-opened. Fun stuff, huh?

I know Max will grow through this phase. Tom and I are trying to be exceedingly patient (perhaps too lenient?) and validate how he is and always will be very special to us. I'm trying to encourage his engineer-like, detailed mind to learn how to express his feelings. Not an easy thing for any of us to do and particularly when your world has been rocked upside down in the course of one afternoon outing. Of course it boggles my mind how the light of my life could even doubt his position in the world but he's been thrown a curve ball he didn't see coming.

The silver lining, I hope, is that we are learning new skills to promote self-expression in healthy ways, learning words and ways to communicate our feelings and re-learning that we are loved. All excellent skills to have and if I have given Max any tools for the-rest-of-his-life toolbox, I hope these are among the most important and serve him forever.

In all fairness, i can really see Max trying to do the right thing. Yesterday, he gave Molly a bottle and he takes great pride in showing off to others that he can hold his big sister all by himself. Tonite, he insisted on helping prepare her bottle and says he can carry her which is something we haven't let him do. Whenever he hears her cry, he says "Mommy, you better go get that baby" and occasinally I overhear him calling her various terms of endearment including sweet pea and little bug.

He also has adopted "Mia" (named after one of Molly's cribmates from the orphanage who we got to know well). Mia was given to him about two years ago and he has basically ignored this Asian doll made by Corelle ever since. Until just a few days ago when he rediscovered her in Molly's room. Since then, he walks around with her, feeding her, burping her and thanks to Gaga, he now has a stroller to push her around in. I was very hopeful that Mia might help with the adjustment period but then I think I've had to feed Mia more than he has (per his orders) and a recent influx of presents (all airplanes!!!) has distracted him from his own baby.

The good news is Molly is a dream baby. She's just great. Like, knock on wood, so far so good. She is a happy, adventurous and social little girl who loves to smile, giggle and blow raspberries. Oddly enough, she also really responds to age appropriate learning toys, loving their bright colors and silly noises. After a month of living with this precious little girl, Tom and I seem more convinced than ever that life in the orphanage was like living in a sensory deprivation tank for the first four months of her life - at best. She likes being held, she doesn't mind by whom, but she still doesn't like sitting in a car seat. (Not that I could blame her.) She has a very sweet disposition and tolerates Max's fumbling attempts at affection surprisingly well. She's a great eater (do not get in between her and her bottle at feeding time!) and being hungry is one of the few times she cries. I am in awe that she is so good at self-soothing and I can put her in her crib at naptime or bedtime and she puts herself to sleep. I love her so much and the fact that I really have a daughter, after so many years of wanting, wanting, still hasn't fully resonated in my pea brain.

What else is new? I miss our adventure. I miss the excitement of being abroad and the unexpected juiciness of each new day. I miss our new friends, who we bonded with in a super life changing event. I miss making new friends. I miss Cambodia. I miss the Grand Hotel D'Angkor in Siem Reap and I miss fresh spring rolls in Vietnam. I miss writing in my blog.

I do not miss the mildewy smelly towels at the Melia Hotel nor do I miss the oppressive heat. People kept asking me this past week - while we've been in the midst of a record-breaking heatwave - if it was this hot in Vietnam. They're surprised when I say hotter. I don't miss the pollution or crazy traffic in Hanoi but I do wish I had walked around Hoan Keim Lake more often than I did. I still have so much I want to write for future adoptive parents in Vietnam as the blogs and yahoo groups that precede me were so helpful. I felt like I had a clue of what was happening during our time in Vietnam while others, who didn't read blogs or join yahoo groups for families adopting from Vietnam, seemed basically clueless and as a result, extremely anxious. As time permits, I will try to update the blog with that information. But getting quiet, personal time to write seems to be a low priority these days.

Life is good. We are blessed. We leave for Fishers Island for two weeks which is a wonderful bonus b/c we weren't sure we were going to be able to get up there this year. My family of origin is celebrating a family reunion this week. We've got much to celebrate - my brother's engagement and two new babies to welcome into the family tree. It's late and soon Molly will be wanting her midnight snack so I will write more later.