These first pics were taken at a children's museum.
Driving a fire truck!
Big Sis at a Princess Party
Attachment is not something you can take for granted when adopting a toddler who has been abandoned. It means being there 24/7 to meet your child's needs, and being very intentional about everything you do as a parent. It means throwing out a lot of the conventional "rules" of parenting (i.e. you can never, ever allow your child to cry himself to sleep). The relationship you have with your child is not something that just happens. He has to learn that you are Mom and Dad and that you can be trusted. Much of this means that in our parenting of Gong Gong, we must treat him like a baby and establish what may not have been established. Things like holding him to make eye contact and feeding him from a baby bottle. However, he is NOT a baby; he is a very mobile 2 year old who is into EVERYTHING! Becoming a family is definitely a process, not something that magically happened when we stepped off the plane three weeks ago. And we certainly don't have any nice formula for how this works. I am exhausted and my housework is not done. As Jean McLeod wrote in her article “Baby Shock”, “…parenting a post-institutionalized 12 month old is NOT the same as parenting a sleepy newborn. The real rewards of parenting an internationally adopted child are huge, and the real challenges can be draining, confusing, and…depressing.” We're having some fun moments, though, as well as some trying ones. Here are some pics of some of the fun ones (you really don't want to see one of his raging temper tantrums do you?). It is good to know that we WILL get through this. I am so thankful that I can have leave from work and can't imagine doing this any other way. With all that said, I know that I am BLESSED!
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