None of us slept well.
Jaclyn wet her bed; the first night accident. She doesn’t want to wear her pull-ups and we decided to give it a go without diapers, when she moved in full time, a week and a half ago. When we hear stirring in her bed, we call out and asks if she needs to go pee. She says yes, and we take her.
In the middle of the night she woke up wet and she cried. She cried as I washed her, and changed her clothes. We took her up in our bed (which she loves! She usually gets to snuggle in our bed in the morning). But all night she kept kicking conrad in her sleep, and wiggled and tossed and turned. In the morning, spent as we were we tried to go to church again. She was determined she didn’t want to go. Last time she said she liked it though, so I couldn’t understand why the reluctance. I’m sure she was tired as well…
Getting dressed, getting to the car, getting in the car, getting to church and at church she kept fussing/half crying (very unlike her). Then when Sunday school started she didn’t want to go. She started crying louder. We went into the cry room and waited for her to settle. Conrad came later after us. He asked her if she wants to go say hi to the girls she met there last Sunday. Eventually she agreed but only wanted to go with me. Jaclyn usually wants only my arms, my hand, my help, but today was especially clingy. She wouldn’t let me out of sight. We went down and she didn’t want to be there either. I was tempted to just go home. But we stayed a bit longer. Every few minutes she would come to me and say: “Mommy didn’t leave!” -“No darling, I’m here and I’m not going anywhere without you!” Truth be told, it is the one time I left her with Daddy to go back to the church sermon, and she may associate church with me “abandoning” her. My fault. But the fussing didn’t stop. She didn’t like being without me.
I had no idea it’s this constricting. We want to reassure her and be available but also want to help her embrace independence and me to take a breather, and be alone for a few minutes.
At Sunday school a mom asked me about her age. And then where we are from and if Jaclyn speaks Romanian. Ha. I told her we are working on her speaking English. Adoption unavoidably came up. Then I got to share about the process of adoption in România. Conrad told me every parent in the room stared listening to our conversation. The mom said she considered adoption but heard it takes years and it’s very complicated. We now proved her otherwise.
We stand out. I don’t want the attention. The less I want of it, the more I seem to get. Don’t get me wrong, I get the best kind of admiring attention, but I am weary of its effect on me. I learned in my teenage days how “pride comes before the fall” from the book of Proverb. It doesn’t serve me in any constructive way to take credit for facts of life. I lived in California. My husband is American. We adopted a daughter. We have stories, yes. But I’m afraid that I’m just a human who struggles and has ups and downs. And I’d rather go from being last to first, than from being praised to disappointing strangers. Peoples’ opinions don’t or shouldn’t weigh so heavily on us.