The No Go Cocoon and Other Holiday Tales

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the kids over Christmas break so I haven’t been taking a lot of time to blog although there has been a lot on my mind I’d like to get down in writing so I thought I’d take  little time tonight.

I’ve read books and of course blog stalked tons of other families adopting and I always hear of people cocooning their child when they bring them home.  No visitors, no interactions with other adults basically hiding their child until they are well attached to their parents and understand their new life with them.  I had talked about this before we brought RJ home and had a plan to go forward with it but it just hasn’t happened.  The reason we let people come to the airport was so that we could get one big meeting over with and then go into our cocoon.  Well it just didn’t happen.  I didn’t push it and I wanted to share him with our family and friends and maybe that was selfish of me but he seemed like he was adjusting well and it seemed like since he wasn’t screaming and insecure, we could go ahead with life.  The more I read and the more I saw him leaning on and hugging other people I started to get worried that we’re doing it wrong.  Plus the fact that other adopting parents are all talking about their kids and cocooning and adopting is no different than biological children and we all compare and wonder if someone else is doing it better than us and are we going to scar our children for life by making a wrong mistake or decision.

Having RJ come home right before the holidays also made things hard.  We didn’t really set up any boundaries at Thanksgiving and let our families love on him.  As the weeks went on I knew that he was attaching to us and is secure here but I kept feeling like I may be doing something wrong since everyone else seems to be protecting their children more and maybe I wasn’t loving on him enough by letting him love others.  At Christmas it was one party after another and especially the days leading up to Christmas so I started to try to set up boundaries.  No hugging or holding hands or sitting with anyone except mommy and daddy.  High fives were fine but just a five.  This didn’t work.  How do I tell my son he can’t hug his Grandma and Grandpa?  How can I expect his Aunt to tell him no he can’t sit on her lap or hold her hand.  Maybe I didn’t do enough research on this beforehand and I definitely didn’t do it right from the beginning according to the books by having no visitors but I can tell you one thing, my son knows I’m his mommy.  Right or wrong, I have to stop comparing myself to others and know that I’m doing the best I can for RJ.  I think a lot of these feelings may have crept up also because I knew my time with him at home was coming to a close so I was trying my hardest to get any bit of bonding in before he goes to school next week.  We’re still trying to keep him close and limit physical contact with other adults but we’ll just have to see how it goes.

Another thing I wonder if I’m doing right is letting him look at pictures from before he came home.  I held off for a long time because I didn’t want it to trigger sadness or acting out but I finally let him and he loves it.  He does tell me he misses his friends and he is sad that he can’t see them but it’s nothing but normal feelings with no repercussions.  I want him to tell me his friends names and tell me about them and I absolutely love when he teaches me words in Marathi even though he laughs at me when I pronounce them.  I want so badly for him to remember who he is and where he came from and he’s old enough to remember his friends and I want him too.  There are a special few that I want him to pray for the rest of his life because I doubt we will ever see them again.  There are also others that live not far from us that I would like him to have contact with.  Again just another thing that is sometimes taboo that I’ve done and I terrify myself that I’m making wrong decisions and one day he’s going to explode with emotion and tell me I ruined him.

On a better lighter note, he loved Christmas!  He had lots of fun opening gifts and loved that we lit the Diwali candles on Christmas with our nativity scene.  He’s a bit confused because we took the Christmas tree down and keeps asking if Santa is coming.  This is yet another downfall of having him home at the holidays because almost immediately our house was full of lights and decorations and so fun and now it’s just normal and boring.  He got over it quickly though.  He’s really liking to play with his new toys and rarely plays with his train set anymore.  That shows me a huge sign of security because at first he would retreat to the train when I could tell he might be upset or overwhelmed like a security blanket, something that was comfortable and familiar from India.  He also cries without permission now.  I know it sounds crazy but many times I could just tell he wanted to burst with emotion but wouldn’t until I would say it was OK to cry.  Now he’ll cry if he’s hurt or mad at me or his siblings.  He’s comfortable in the fact that I’m not sending him away for having feelings or possibly being bad.  It’s good, very good.

We took a trip to the Shedd Aquarium because we didn’t have our membership renewed this year for Christmas (got the Field Museum instead, yay!!) and we wanted RJ to take a trip there while it was still free.  I’m noticing in crowds he stays very quiet but then as soon as we leave the situation it’s all he can talk about.  I kept waiting for him to ooh and aah and the aquatics show but he never did but then as soon as he got in the car and especially when he got home to daddy he was walking around like a penguin and telling people he touched a starfish and saw dolphins and jellyfish.  He’s just not used to the big crowds but he is definitely taking it all in.

His English is still coming along.  I’m trying to get him talking in more than one word commands so he now says everything with an “I’m a” in front of it to make it a sentence.  What a trickster!  When he tells me “I’m a toilet” to tell me he needs to go to the bathroom I say “You’re a toilet?  Nice to meet you toilet!” and he laughs and says “NO!”  I love that his mind works so differently than mine and he thinks the bird on the bird feeder is a parrot.  How interesting our house is these days and it’s so fun!  I need to stop worrying that I’m doing everything wrong and just enjoy these days because they’re going to be over before I know it.  Could he be this great or will he one day implode?  Hmmm ;)

Two things from today and then I gotta go to bed!  He had his first dentist appt and he did great, no cavities!  That just goes to show you the amazing care he was given at his orphanage.  The dentist also agreed that he is only 6 or 7.  He’s writing us a letter to add to our other information to petition USCIS about his birthdate.  Still waiting on his Certificate of Citizenship though.  AND since we had free time while Laila was in therapy today he got his first haircut (with me)!  He giggled the whole time and I soaked it all in like when I took my other babies for their first haircuts.  The lady styled it into a faux hawk which kinda made him look like a vampire but he looked cute :)

I hope you all had an amazing holiday season.  Be blessed this year and bless others and I’m praying so many of your kiddos home to their forever families in 2013!

PS – If you didn’t see it, the post right before this one has a slideshow of RJ and there are some adorable ones of him when he was younger on there :)