Smiles

Cries

New foods

Lots of poos

Doctor’s visits

Pee and poo samples (multiple times, because the lab lost the first one!)

Meeting new friends

Playing with new toys

Responding to her own name (still working on that one)

Learning who mama and dada are (also still a work in progress)

Tizri has had so many changes in the last week!

We have been trying to be extremely aware of her feelings and emotions. She now tells us through whining when something is wrong. We know if she is whinny that she needs a diaper change or is hungry or tired. Besides these times she is very happy. We are teaching her to play close to us, and playing lots of back and forth games to encourage eye contact, mimicking and over all dependence on us. She is coming along, as are we.

There are days I get so discouraged, wondering if she will ever know me, or look to me for ultimate comfort and love. A very wise woman just wrote me (she has also adopted, her daughter is now a young adult) and said;

“I think of it as a progression.  Children have to be dependent before they can be independent and independent before they can be interdependent.”

For adopted children this is not a natural thing like it is with biological kids. Tizri has been in an orphanage, under stimulated for the last 10 months. The orphanage did the best job they possibly could! And to them we are so grateful, they saved her life and gave us the opportunity to find her.

She has had 5 major transitions that each included a new primary caregiver. Not to mention that in the orphanage alone she has 11 different mama’s caring for her at any given time (in the above number the orphanage is only one of those 5). While they were all nice, caring, and did the best they could, this has essentially taught her that people will leave her. She has come to expect change and transition.

So because of this, and many other changes and traumas she has experienced in her short life, we are trying to teach her we are her primary care givers. So we haven’t let others hold her, feed her, change her, or bathe her. Basically we are with her 24/7. This is a bit exhausting, but it is worth it for her to see us and her mom and dad, who she can trust, rely on and go to when she has needs.

She turns one year old on Saturday. And I think of all the hours a biological child has had to cuddle connect laugh play and grow with their biological parents by the time they turn one year.  She has missed out on those thousands of hours. So we are so happy we get to be intentional about her knowing us, now. We can’t get those months back but we can work to win her over now.

We still have no clue on the time frame of when the adoption will be complete and we can travel home. Please pray that the paper work the is not really moving right now, would be able to get to the right people and that they would move things along quickly. (Although that would be a miracle, but we believe God works miracles!)

Adoption is beautiful, and lots of work, and so rewarding. She is the picture of perfection to us! We are so content in the little one God has allowed us to raise. We are privileged to get to love her and call her our own.