This week

This has been a pretty hectic week. I enrolled Brookelyn in a home school program, started Zhao Lei at her school on Wednesday, learned about the curriculum for new home school, purchased uniforms for new school ( some classes during the week for home school are held on campus and students wear uniforms), signed Zhao Lei up for Saturday afternoon classes at a local Chinese school so she keeps progressing with her Mandarin, signed up at our local Families with Children from Ch@na, paid all of our mortgage bills, had our one month post adoption visit (which entails papers to be filled out and new photographs of Zhao Lei), and went to two practices and two games for Brayden's baseball and soccer teams. Long week. It didn't help that I haven't slept much at night because each of the kids wakes up at night and wants me, so I have been going from room to room all night. A couple of nights Zhao Lei woke up no less than 15 times and wanted to wake everyone else up. One night I only slept for an hour. One night I was awake with two kids from 1 to 5 because Zhao Lei managed to wake up Brayden. I think we are finally back to our normal pattern of sleep though. At least, getting the kids to bed on time and them each only waking up once a night. I can handle that. I don't need a ton of sleep, six hours will work. Because of my not sleeping, I caught the cold that a couple of the kids had when we got home. The kind of itchy eyes, sneezing, awful colds. And none of these really were that bad.
The thing that has really made this week hectic is that Zhao Lei has been pushing the boundaries with us. I had read a lot of books and a lot of blogs, so I wasn't shocked by the little bit of defiance and testing that she displayed at the end of the se nod week in China. There were times when she would do things like pour salt in her drink or bang the silverware together to be annoying. Or say no when I asked her to do something. The day before we lefts to come home was hard. She got more annoying as the day went on. I actually had to leave dinner with her so everyone else could enjoy the meal and stop trying to ignore her acting out. I know she was just testing me and was probably very anxious about the next step of flying to our house and meeting all of the kids. I wasn't shocked, but it was irritating and it was hard to deal with since we were all tired of being away from home and living out of a suitcase. It doesn't compare to the changes in her life, but it was a bummer.
When we got home we realized that we had to teach her all of the rules. I knew that she would have to learn how to be part of a family, but I mean basic things like not barking in our dog's face, not jumping on our couch, not racing around the house screaming...things that every almost ten year old should know. It makes me sad and angry that no one took the time to teach her those things. It seems like she was basically allowed to do whatever she wanted and if she was told no, there was no follow through. I cannot count the number of times I have told her no this week. Nsure I could use a word besides no, but she wouldn't understand me. She understands no. I try to pant amine the reason most of the time, the dog biting her face, covering my earsnwhen she yells...she gets it. She smiles and many times does it again with a smile on her face until I say it again in a sterner voice and then she says okay. I'm going to be honest, it's harder to bond with a child who is defiant a lot of the time. I wanted to be honest with my social worker about it so she could tell other parent what behavior they could possibly expect from an older child adoption. Not to scare them off, but I do think knowledge is power and I wish I could have learned more about it. She said that it was better to have her do this than have her be timid and act right out of fear we wouldnt keep her. I don't know. I appreciate and admire Zhao Lei' s confidence. I know that it will help her a lot later in life. But I have to admit that I think it would be easier to bond with her if I felt more protective of her instead of at odds with her. Here's an example. I needed eight pictures of her and us for our post adoption report. I had a few that I had taken throughout the week of her playing with the kids. They were very cute and perfect for the report. One of the oictures needed to be of all the family members that live in the home. Ray has been getting home about 8:30 or so every night, so that one was kind od tricky. I asked my oldest daughter to take a couple of all of us. Zhao Lei made a mean, mad or crazy face in each one. It took me, Ray and Dakota being very firm before she stopped and just looked at the camera. The behavior is not from communication issues, just her wanting to do something else.
Zhao Lei is a very smart, funny, nice, caring girl and I know we will work through this. It is actually amazing how well she has handled all of the changes. And I know it may take a few months to work this out. Or longer. A lot of it will be cleared up when we speak the same language. Not because she will understand she is misbehaving, because she already does, but because she will be more aware of the consequences to her behavior. When we were in China we only saw three older children besides Lei being adopted. One family adopted two thirteen year old boys and one family adopted a seven year old boy. The rest were three years and under. I don't think that is bad, I'm just thinking that is because it can be harder to adopt an older child. They come with years if history that helped determine who they are and how they react. And they are basically who they are. It isn't the instantaneous love you feel for an infant or small child. I have heard that your affection grows as you make memories witan the older child. I believe that and Ray and I already have some nice memories with Zhao
Lei. I had gone into this expecting the best and prepared (somewhat) for the worst. I felt educated. I guess I would compare it to an expecting parent who hears about colic. Even though you had read about it and heard about it, you are still shocked and upset if your child has it. I read a lot of blogs that glossed over any troubles they had adopting older children, but really appreciated it when parents told the truth about the hard times.
I want to clarify that we are not sorry we adopted Zhao Lei, she is great and we truly believe we will work through this eventually. Tonight she, Brookelyn and Sasha made bracelets in bed before going to sleep. There are many, many things are good about Lei. Brayden and Sasha act as if she has always been in our family. It's only Brookelyn who follows her sound and wants to be sound her all of the time. And tonight, Brookelyn didn't even ask to sleep right next to Zha Lei. So, overall, we are doing pretty well as we all settle ibto our new normal.nb