Blogville
2007-09-24, 11:25

In my quest to fill my head with helpful hints for the process of raising an adopted child, I get the RSS feed for a China Adoption Blog, written by a guy named Grant (who also happens to be a geek music artist- check his site for details). Recently, he did a mini-interview with an adoptive mother, and I asked him through comments as to whether he'd done any other interviews and if so whether he'd be posting more. He said that he hadn't made it a formal process or anything and hey wait, are you offering? The resulting 'sure, why not' produced a list of questions that were answered thus: [part 1] and [part 2].

If you want to go way back to June of 2005, you can hear our would-have-been-pt1-of-two-episodes-but-ended-up-being-just-one-part interview with my friend Chris about our impending adoption here (right-click to download the mp3): Unquiet Desperation Podcast, Episode One: The Road to China

Pathetically, I still haven't finished writing up my perspective on the adoption journey (click), though it is mostly done. It still needs a lot of cleaning up and expanding and lots of pictures need to be added (though there is a link to about 500 pics from the trip). I got the idea a while ago to, once I'm done with the wordage, put it all together in a book. Not for public consumption, mind you, but for private use. Mainly I want something concrete from the experience, if only for Laurana, something to hold in hand and look over at leisure when the mood strikes. I'd like to have it done before she becomes a solid reader. I guess I'd better get moving, because she's well on her way to being one at age 4. She's already starting to recognize a few words on sight and is up to writing 5 letters pretty consistently, albeit crudely, of course. She's got L (of course), H, S, A, and O. Yesterday she showed me her G using chalk on the driveway, and she said, "Show me 'W' next time." That's my girl.

She's been living in serious Tantrumville for the last week, and that's saying something. We thought we were making some progress when we found a near cure for her weekday morning unpleasantness - which used to consist of her screaming and complaining and whining and being difficult when H was trying to get her ready for preschool, and now consists of me waking her up before I leave and taking her over to our bed to cuddle with mommy, with a healthy dose of hugs and kisses from daddy before departing for work - but this last week or so has been trying, to put it lightly. Things don't go her way and suddenly she's screaming and saying (screaming) "I don't WANT TO" (emphasis hers) and "I don't like you" almost out of the blue. Things go from fine to apocalyptic in a matter of seconds. I have feeling though, that it's mainly because she's not feeling all that great. There's been a bug of some sort floating around lately that's hit H, The Boy and The Girl, and I think Laurana got caught in the viral crossfire. She got a plethora of mosquito bites recently too, which hasn't been helping. We've been extending the chair-sitting time-outs as a result, and I think it's done some good. It's all very painful though, on my ears and my heart. I know it's necessary to help her understand that there are consequences for her actions, but it's hard to know where the line is between negative reinforcement and unproductive punishment. Sometimes I think that we rely on her intellect too much, assuming that she understands more than we think she does. But I don't want to undersell her, either. And what part of this stems from abandonment/adoption trauma? Crap, but parenting is hard.

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