She's With Us for Good Now.....

Admittedly, we didn’t take any new pictures today, but we posted a brief slideshow below with some shots from yesterday, including our visit to M’s foster family – and M playing with her foster sister Baan. They are great buddies!

Today was the most challenging day yet. M arrived at the hotel a little after 10:30 am, and as we expected, she began to cry at the mere sight of us. After saying goodbyes to her social worker, she cried for a long time – and we spent the first hour or so walking every inch of the hotel. She cried a lot, particularly in our hotel room – which we know is so very different than anything she is used to. In fact, if there’s one thing we learned today, it’s that our hotel room is absolutely the worst place for M to be – we think it’s because it makes her realize that she’s not going home. More on that in a minute.

So we decided to get out of the hotel – and hit the great outdoors of Bangkok with little M. With no real clue what we are doing, we walked a few blocks in the blazing heat (and surviving the onslaught of taxi drivers, tuk tuk operators and prostitutes – all interested in getting our attention) – and ended up at a local bank which has a nice fountain and plants – with a little seating area. We hung there for about 30 minutes – the crying subsided for a bit – and M looked around at all the sights. Once that scene got old, we walked a little more – through some markets and then boarded the sky train to head over to a bookstore where Amy had a book on hold. M actually did pretty well through most of this… periodic sobbing, but actually seemed relatively “ok” with us holding her and walking around. No sitting for us yet – we try that with her and all hell breaks loose – so we’re in a “standing/walking” mode at the moment. She let us feed her some fried rice for lunch (as long as we were standing) – and the most trying moments were when we returned to the hotel room.

After walking next door to the hotel for some Pad Thai (standing) for dinner, we came back the hotel… and endured what was a couple of hours of chaos in our room. But after this first full day with her, we’ve realized this: First, M is a smart little girl. She knows that she’s not going back to see her foster family again, she is not happy about it, and she is letting us know it. Second, she knows who we are. She’s letting us hold her and feed her, and carry her. She’s also smart enough to know that if we stop holding her, and she starts to cry, that we’re likely to pick her up again. Smart of her, indeed. Third, we know she’s hurting inside – and as much as we hate to do it, there’s got to be a little tough love, or we’re gonna drive ourselves batty. So after dinner, Amy left for a little “mind clearing walk” (we’ve been trading off to give each other some brief “alone” time to keep us sane) and Carter played with M in the room. Use the term “played” loosely. He basically let her scream as much as she wanted, but decided not to pick her up… which is really all she wanted. She walked over to the door a bunch of times (which our social worker told us is common) and stood there screaming at it. When she realized that wasn’t going to help, she returned to the bed – wanting to be picked up. Carter got down on the floor with her – with some stacking cups – which she promptly threw at him – she went over to the window, then came back to Carter, then back to the window… crying the whole time. But eventually, she sat down and started playing with the cups. The crying stopped. Amy came back to the room – sat down on the floor too – and suddenly, she just conked out – fast asleep. she's had such a long and traumatic day, we can only imagine how tire she is. She’s on the bed now, sleeping, with her head on Amy – and we’re just wondering 1) how long will this last, and 2) what will happen after the normal 1:00 0am feeding she has. Should be interesting.

So, it was a hard day over all, but we’re realizing that she seems to know what’s going on – and she’s just taking every opportunity to let us know how she feels about it. We know she will forget about what’s bothering her in due time – and transition to becoming more comfortable with us… it’s just a heck of an hour-by-hour journey at the moment.

Tomorrow is our meeting in front of the Thai adoption board. We expect things to go smoothly. Fingers crossed.