I’d like to take a bit of your reading time and talk about how our attachment and relationship growth has gone with the girls. I think a bunch of you will be interested, especially our family, and all our readers who have or who are waiting to adopt kids.

We’re almost at the 6th month mark now, if you count our time in Ethiopia together. So that’s not quite five months for Jrock but more than that for me and the rugrats.

Straight to the point of the title – I don’t think that the girls really realized who we were until about a month and a half ago. I mean, I think they thought we were just people called “Mommy” and “Daddy”, despite knowing that we had other names. It was only when they started the conversation one day about ababas and mamas that they started to solidify our roles. (Ababa is Daddy in Amharic and Mama is Mommy in Amharic/Oromo.) It delighted them to call us by these new titles, and now, they probably call us Mama and Ababa at least half the time – especially if they are feeling close or cuddly. Jrock especially really likes his new name.

So how did we get to where we are now? We knew that we wouldn’t necessarily love our kids the moment we met them. I mean, I was enamoured with the idea of them, since I had poured over pictures of them for 10 months before we met. But we didn’t really know them. So three things have evolved over the course of 6 months: loving each other, liking each other, and feeling like we are each others’ Mama, daughter, and Ababa.

The loving stuff is easy to talk about. I think I was already in love with them when I met them, but loving each other as individuals has grown over time. Because I saw them through the very very difficult grieving process in the first few weeks, I think that bonded me to the girls in a significant way. Jrock, he’s never had that intensity of time and needing. So it’s been slower but steady with him. For the girls – well, they said they loved us early on. But I think we had totally unrealistic expectations of this and promoted it. I mean, as new adoptive parents, you fake it on your side until you make it. You say “we love you” way way before you actually do, because you know the kids need that safety net to trust and grow to love you. But kids shouldn’t have to fake it. I think we expected it too soon, and I would advise you not to prompt your kids about “I love you”s until they spontaneously say it for themselves. In a humble way, I can tell you that Gramma got the first genuine “I love you” from Sugar on the phone when she had flown back to Canada, leaving the girls with me in ET. I was jealous, and genuinely pleased. I think we can pinpoint the real milestones of love along the way as the girls grow to love us – like the first time Sugar volunteered to give Daddy a good night kiss, and when Spice played her first practical joke on us.

Now the liking stuff. Well. That’s more difficult. First you have to understand that Spice’s coping strategy in tough spots is to turn on the charm, be compliant and sweet. Very easy to like. Just like her Dad. And then you have to understand that Sugar is like me – tough on the surface, doesn’t like to risk getting hurt, but feels things really deeply. Two peas in a pod, actually. So as we came home to Canada and I got sick and tension mounted, oh! what a clash of forces. That kid is a contender. It’s hard to like a mom/daughter who is sharp and takes everything really personally and seriously. That said, now that I’m feeling better and we have sorted ourselves out to a large degree, I think Sugar and I are really really close. And I understand her very well. And speaking for myself, I really like her (now.) I think the feeling is mutual. Spice I’ve always got along with, so it was just easier to like her right off the bat. Jrock and I both now delight in their eccentricities, behaviours, growth and personalities. We look at old pictures of them a have a new insight into what they were feeling or going through at that time, because we know and understand them so much more.

And to the “feeling like a family” business. For myself, I felt like their mom from day 1. I can say that honestly. Maybe because I saw them through that terrible emotionally-wrought transition time. I can also say that when we arrived in Canada, I felt like my home had been invaded by aliens. Ah, the juxtaposition. And both true. Jrock, it’s been more steady and consistent (just like him!) At first, he said it was like “they’re the kids that live with me.” Then, slowly, they started to feel more like his daughters.

On the other hand, as I started this post with the Mama / Ababa discussion, I think the girls are becoming more aware of what a family is. Remember, they don’t recall every having one before. We still have huge permanency issues. I mean, they haven’t lived with us longer than any one of their stops along the way (1.5 +/- year with birth family, 6 months in orphanage, 10 months in the transition home.) They used to ask me several times a day if Daddy was coming back home again from work. And I mean every day, several times a day. Since about a month ago, that asking stopped – I think they realize Ababa is always coming home. But if they will stay with us forever? Well, if I go out shopping by myself or even when the two of us leave their room at night, they still ask if we are going “far away.” And we’ve have three notable stumbles, including my family members (Poor D and B, you’re just too darn lovable,) and a complete stranger.

The first one was when my brother visited us shortly after we got home to Canada. Five minutes after arriving (now take into account my brother is a kid magnet, warm and cuddly!) Sugar called him “Ababa” – which we had never heard her say before. So obviously Jrock’s role hadn’t quite occurred to her yet, and she was still majorly Daddy-shopping. She did repeat performances of this routine with other men to a lesser extent, ie: sidling up to interesting men of fatherly-age and doing the eye-lash fluttering… that was just the first time. I don’t think it was any coincidence that right around when she started asking from kisses from Jrock, the daddy-shopping stopped.

It was Sugar again who initiated the “no new mamas” discussion. In Calgary at a friend’s party, she looked up at an Indian lady she hadn’t even been introduced to and asked me “is this my mama?” Yikes. It caught me so flat-footed. So we started talking about how I was her mama now, and how there would be no more new mamas, etc.

Today – nothing’. At Xmas she spent 5 days with Uncle B and the rest of the fam, and clearly demonstrated her attachment to Jrock and I. It was AWESOME to see how well she did, and how she thrived in the extended family scene, without any confusion about who her parents were.

Not the same thing could be said for her sister – which leads me to the third milestone event. Spice has been a mush-pot cuddler from day 1. She attached much faster to Jrock, starting even in Ethiopia, and really never daddy-shopped at all. It was to our dismay and astonishment when at Christmas she started crawling all over her Auntie D (who she had just met in passing once before). Then she started waking up from her naps very upset, but refused to be comforted by Jrock or me (I mean back-arching, running way from us and everything!) which has never ever happened with her before. She started to reject me, like not letting me kiss her booboo but asking Auntie D to do it (and Auntie D, not knowing what was going on, kissed the finger instead of directing her back to me.) When we got home, it escalated. Spice told me in no uncertain terms that she wanted a new mama. And she wanted to go live with Auntie D (although note: she couldn’t remember her name.) She wouldn’t look me in the eye and didn’t laugh or joke like usual. It was a horrible few days. So we talked more and more about “no new mamas” until a few days ago, she conceded that she wanted to stay here after all. Several times a day, she runs up to me and says out of the blue “no new mama?” Seriously. And, at her request, we’ve been reading over and over “A Mother for Choco”, the story where a little mother-less bird gets a bear for a mama.

Now, as much as I was trying not to leap to the conclusion, the attachment specialist we went to see said that in both “mama” incidents, it was no coincidence that the anon Indian lady and my sis-in-law have medium-dark skin. Let me put it bluntly: they’re starting to notice skin colour, in a three-and-a-half year old way, and that my pink is not the same as their brown. And, the specialist thinks that the warm familial atmosphere at Xmas combined with a really nice, welcoming (and she is!) cinnamon-coloured auntie flashed our little Spice back to the first mama. And she was confused as all heck.

So that’s not to say “steer clear of all nice ladies who look like your kids,” AT ALL. I guess it just means that the subconscious is alive and well, the girls’ age is starting to raise some other questions, and attachment, permanency, and the role of the family are NOT linear processes. Although our girls are doing remarkably well in general in the attachment area (according to the specialist) it doesn’t mean that everything is clear and secure in their minds. They have questions as they grow and learn – some which can be voiced as succinctly as “is that my mama?” and some which are demonstrated behaviourally and unconsciously, like our daughter mixing up her auntie and her birth mom, and rejecting us.

We’ve come a LONG way in 6 months. We still have a ways to go, and these things will all fluctuate over time, as the girls develop. But we all love each other now. We like each other – most of the time, anyway! And Mama and Ababa will not “go far away” – something we reassure our daughters about every single day.

I know how much people like me posting pics of the girls’ hair – alas! We have no camera to speak of right now.  We lost our charger a month ago, the 1st replacement charger didn’t work and now we’re waiting for our second Ebay package to arrive in the mail.  But for your viewing pleasure, a wierd Skype shot – try getting 2 three year olds to look into the camera and not at the screen image! Bandu knots on Spice; Microbraids on Sugar.

The snow bear, a communal effort.

The "baby snowman" – it looked like an invading alien to us "Big People".

We’re all pretty settled in with each other now, and ALMOST at the point where we feel “normal” again.   I’m sending off some emails today to some people I told myself I “should” contact sometime over the next month, for a new work gig / resume builder. 

Things are trucking along and it feels good.