Yes, We're Still Alive (or, "The New Normal")

Yesterday was the two month anniversary of our Gotcha Day!  Two months since we met this beautiful little one:

We've finally been able to catch our breath long enough to compose some thoughts about this journey so far.  First of all, we'll just say that Helen is doing SO WELL!  We're getting so many glimpses of an extremely joyful and silly little toddler who absolutely loves her older siblings.  She has happily taken her place as the baby in our family.  We have discovered that she is one smart little girl as well. She understood much of what we said to her even before we arrived home from China. And now, seven weeks since we've been home, she can understand almost everything we say to her and even communicates back through several baby signs and even a few words.

Steve and I have agreed to be completely honest with others when they ask us about this journey. If you don't want to hear about the hard parts of it, please stop reading here.  We want to be transparent and not fake, because that doesn't benefit us or anyone else considering adoption.  The best way we can say it is that adoption. is. hard.  It's hard to love someone so much and wait for months with nothing but a picture to dream about. It's hard to leave your other kids for two weeks while you travel across the world to get your baby. It's hard to not immediately bond to this child you've waited so long for. It's hard to get someone to trust you that has already experienced abandonment, neglect, and being handed over to complete strangers in their 16 short months of their life. It's hard (this one is minor, but still stands out distinctly in our minds) to fly 15 hours across the globe already in a sleep-deprived state with a baby that doesn't know you.  It's hard to be patient and loving to your kids when you are dealing with jet lag and one kid is screaming at you for 9 out of 10 hours at night and the other two are testing the limits because you were gone for two weeks and suddenly you're back home and in charge and you brought a screaming, biting baby with you. It's hard to have the conversation for the 30th time in one day when someone asks how it's going and expects you to say, "Oh, it's going beautifully! We love her sooooooooooo much and it has been everything we've dreamed to have her home!"  It's hard to suddenly have a toddler with free range in your 3-level house that grew up in an orphanage that was completely baby-proofed and nothing at all was off-limits.  And to top it all off, it's hard to experience something exactly like post-partum depression after bringing home an adopted child instead of giving birth to her.

With all that said, things have gotten MUCH better. Sleep has gotten better. Helen is really starting to trust us and open up. We got our first babysitter this past weekend and went on our first date since May. We've put Helen in the church nursery twice now and she has done great!  She still does a decent amount of screaming and biting, but we're definitely making progress :)  Sorry it's been so long since we've blogged, but we're just finally feeling like we've found our "new normal." We promise it won't be so long before the next one!