**Uhm, if you're really close to travel you might just want to close
your eyes, hum, think about puppies frolicking in golden fields for a
few minutes, and then close the browser.**
Just a quick reminder, I don't have travel notes from these days. I will try to remember this as accurately as possible, but I'm doing this "dry" without talking to Andrew about what he remembers or checking our schedule or anything like that so consider this a draft subject to revision. Once we had custody of Little Miss it was almost physically impossible for me to be far enough away from her to write and I couldn't stand to dredge up the emotions that it would have required. I don't want to write this post, but I will because it's kinda my thing. I'm hoping that enough time has passed now that I can handle it. But honestly? I'm already on the verge of tears and feel like I could throw up. I guess I'm just a pansy.
Wednesday, May 5th 2010
I think I remember Little Miss waking up early this morning. Everything was status quo as far as her hating still and being totally scared out of her ever-lovin' mind. We knew then that she was scared. It was obvious, but NOW, looking back, I can see how absolutely terrified she was. It is so sad to look back through our pictures and see her fear. It's just sad. The pictures I've shared on this post and the the previous ones are the ones where she is actually the least distressed looking.
Anyway, so we were upstairs in our room and we would have done the typical morning things. Changing diapers, getting her dressed, getting ourselves dressed as long as I didn't leave her alone with Andrew. I know I was scared and homesick for my boys.
Have I talked about when Peanut disabled our brand new minivan and we're trying to get someone out there to fix it while we're in Africa? Hmmm, I'll have to talk to Andrew about when that happened.
Anyway, I have this one picture of Little Miss from that morning. It was hard to take pictures for the same reason that it was hard to write.
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| I have NO idea how I got that bow in her hair as she basically had none. I'm fairly sure I didn't glue it there... |
The "Farewell Ceremony" at the care center was mid-morning. This morning will go down in my personal history of one of the worst mornings of my life.
As soon as we walked into the care center Little Miss began getting upset. The nannies wanted to hold her, and they talked to her, but I don't think she spoke to any of them. I only remember hearing her speak to
one nanny the entire time we were there. She would interact with them, smile sometimes, we heard a few laughs, and she certainly appeared to understand what they were saying to her, but she wouldn't speak.
She was antsy, but right away they were motioning for me to come back into one of the baby rooms and change her clothes into a traditional outfit. I tried to take the bow off of her head because they wanted to tie one the scarves around her head, but she started to freak out, and so they laughed indulgently and left it be.
We went back into the living room and the more attention that she got the more upset she became. She got to the point where if I let her down she was going over to the other families and trying to join their family. Of course everyone else was trying to have their own moment and memories with their kids (all of whom were happy) and so to try and keep that from happening I would hold her. And it's not like I'm a complete idiot I wasn't just holding her...I was talking to her, jiggling, trying to play, distracting, mom-tricks, you know? She wasn't having anything to do with it. She was just getting mad.
The madder that she got the more that she wanted down and whenever I would try to put her down and she was mad the worse she acted while she was down. At one point she was going over to the chairs that were set up for the other kids to watch and trying to push them all down. So then I picked her up and I wouldn't put her back down because I didn't want her wrecking the joint....
She starts a huge fit now and then I start crying because this is awful. Everyone else is having a great time and we are awful, terrible, a hot mess. Andrew can't help because she won't let him talk to her, let alone hold her. I am trying so hard NOT to cry, but I can't stop myself. Everyone else is caught up with their own thing (and well they should be), but all I can think is
"What have we done?" and
"I want to go home." and
"I am a complete and utterly epic failure."
It would get to the point where Little Miss was starting to settle down in my arms a little bit and then a nanny would come over (completely well-meaning) to try and make her feel better. They would take her out of my arms, bounce her, talk to her for a few minutes, and then when she was calm they would bring her back to me. To me, the object of her rage, and she would FLIP! OUT! all over again. The more this went on the more that I cried.
And nannies and the staff would come over and try and make me (the crazy white "mom") feel better. Most of them didn't speak English, but they'd say, "No worry" or "no cry", or "okay okay" and smile at me and pat Little Miss on the back. To top it off the Holt videographer was coming over and trying to get footage for our video. I am bawling. My daughter is screaming. My husband is watching us in agony. And he's trying to ask me what I think about Holt and how has our trip been. He came over three different times and three different times Andrew (with lessening politeness) told him to get lost.
I hate to think about the footage of us that he edited out of our video!!
There was a prayer, a little speech by Sister Marta, and everyone was able to cut a piece of cake. Andrew and I didn't take a single picture. These pictures are ones that were given to use by travel friends. They pretty much speak for themselves and you can probably tell from the expressions on our faces that they are not in order.
After the cake-cutting (first picture posted there, last one taken) we devolved even more. We were the Family That Will Not Be Named and our daughter had the Temper Tantrum of 2010 (or 2003 in Ethiopia and probably really it was big enough that she could carry the title from 2003-2010, at least).
In the group picture, do you see the woman in the front row wearing the blue shirt? She's not an adoptive parent. She works for Holt. She is a consultant for them (and a former full-time employee), but she was there with a few nice women from the Uganda program who were there for staff training. She was absolutely a life-saver. If I ever see her again I will give her a gigantic hug.
She noticed our terrible situation and my crying and how the nannies were inadvertently making the situation worse by taking her away from me. She came over to us and lent emotional support and tried to help us and keep people from taking Little Miss away. She was so nice.
So, the cake was cut. Little Miss had a piece. She was trying to sit in a big chair and balance the plate and eat and she wasn't able to do it herself. She was tipping the plate and was going to lose it all over the floor. I was trying to hold the plate for her.
She lost it.
Kicking. Screaming. Wailing. HYSTERICAL. (and I was almost as bad)
And then Sister Marta came over to us. She was trying to reassure me that Little Miss was just tired, I was just tired and Little Miss was just independent. She said that she was crying because she wanted to be able to hold the plate by herself.
That was just total BS. I obviously didn't say that to her. I just nodded and tried to smile and tried to stop crying. I have seen children cry because they're frustrated, angry, unable to do something on their own. This was not that kind of crying. This was Major Issue crying.
And then we learned something very very telling.
Sister Marta told us that it would be best for us if we just let Little Miss 'do whatever it is that she wants to do' because she is strong willed and if we don't she will have fits. She told us that she was like that with them and they handled it by 'letting her do as she pleases because she's going to do it anyway'.
Little Miss' rage continued. I couldn't stop crying. We were all miserable. Nice Lady whose name I'm drawing a blank on suggested that we just take Little Miss back to the hotel and get away from everyone else. We were very happy to do that and we just escaped.
We went up to the room. I changed Little Miss into regular clothes. The group was scheduled to leave the children at the care center while we went out shopping. We were leery about taking her back over there and leaving her there, but frankly, we were more leery to stay with her at that point.
I don't know how long we were in the room. I don't think it was too long. We took Little Miss back to the care center. We went back up to the room. Andrew is much less into emotion than I am. I know I asked him to hug me and I cried. It was the first time that I verbalized to him what I'd been thinking the entire time we were in our hellish Farewell Ceremony. I said,
"I want to go home without her." Like strong husbands around the world he held me and assured me it was okay and it would get better and we would be fine. (Still waiting on some of that, honey...)
I don't remember much more about that day. We went shopping. It felt really good to be away from her for awhile and decompress a little bit. The lunch at the restaurant we went to that day was not good. When we were shopping one of our friends bought chocolate croissants from a bakery next to one of the shops for everyone in our van and that was the first time that I'd had one. I always think that's funny because most people don't necessarily associate Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with chocolate croissants, but I do now!
edited in: I remembered this last night while I was laying in bed sick and miserable and not sleeping so I'm adding it now. We had to pack that night. I got Little Miss to sleep and was eventually able to sneak off the bed to help Andrew pack. The power was off that night and we were trying to pack by flashlight, get all of our purchased items safely wrapped and packed (I brought bubble wrap, but everything clay that we bought broke anyway) without waking up our new daughter. It was slightly hair raising as any parent can testify that when you're trying to get stuff done in the same room as your child without waking them you move around and talk with this old-movie-slow-motion-three-stooges-extra-deliberate-but-noisy-anyway-with-exaggerated-winces-style. So we have that times like a million because we REALLY don't want to wake her up and we're working by flashlight.
I can look back at
that part at least now and think that's kind of comical, but then it was just one more thing to stress about.
That's really all I remember. I don't remember going back for Little Miss or anything about that night. The more I try to think about it something might pop up and I'll ask Andrew what he remembers, but for now... I think that's enough.
I don't know if I'm getting through, if I'm explaining it well. I
don't know if I can fully transmit how scared I was, how emotional it
was, how helpless and alone I felt. It was just heart wrenching in so many different ways. I wish it could have been different for everyone, but alas, this is the start that we were given.
