Not enough caffeine in the world

So, basically, my first week back at work SUCKED. Work stuff was fine, but Sergeant is not doing well with it. She will have been home for three years in October, and I really thought we were past the point where any significant attachment issues would appear, but clearly, I was wrong. She had another "fit" last night at 3:00 AM, and another one mid-morning. These tantrums are pretty obviously attachment-related, from the reading I've been doing. She's angry with me, but she wants me. She tries to hurt me and then she cries for me to pick her up. But when I do pick her up, she tries to hurt me again. She often complains that I've hurt her when I try to comfort her during these episodes. She has a comfort blanket that has never failed to bring her comfort, but during these episodes, not even the blanket helps. In fact, sometimes when I hand it to her, she won't even take it. That. has. never. happened. before. She's a thumb sucker and she doesn't suck her thumb during these episodes, either. I've decided I need to let everything go but work and kids until things get better. Cutting back my hours is not an option, but I am going to cut out my twice a week workouts and come straight home after work every day. Luckily I'm done at 4:00, so that gives me a pretty big chunk of time with the girls in the evenings. I'm also considering hiring someone to do some cleaning a couple times a month, at least until things calm down. And I've decided not to start Sergeant in preschool next week as I had planned. I think adding another transition/change to her life at this point would be very ill-advised. I'm hoping to find an attachment therapist who is willing to do some phone consultation. We live in a very rural area, so there is no one locally. Trying to do this alone sucks and I would like to know if I'm on the right track.

SOS

Well, I've nearly finished up my first full week back at work (I work for a school and have summers off). Because of the divorce, I've increased my hours to virtually full-time. To say that things have sucked this week would be an understatement. Sunny and Smartie are back in school, so it hasn't affected them, but Sergeant is struggling. I haven't worked full-time since Sunny was born, way back in 1999. The most I've worked has been 28 hours per week. Now I'm up to 36 hours and Sergeant is having a very hard time adjusting. She's very obviously quite pissed at me and letting me know in some extremely unpleasant ways. Last night, at 11:00, when I was just about to turn off the light and go to sleep, I heard her crying in her bed and yelling, "no, no, no!" I went to her room, but she wasn't really awake. I tried to comfort her, but she just kept getting more and more upset. At some point, she was awake, but then she continued to tantrum - kicking, screaming, hysterical. She was yelling, "I don't want to go to daycare!!!" Which scared the crap out of me, thinking she'd had some big trauma there that I don't know about (I checked it out today, and I don't think so). This went on for about 45 minutes and there was nothing I could do to calm her down. She was quite combative toward me, but when I would put her down, she wanted me to pick her up (hmmm, ambivalent attachment?). She woke up Smartie, who was crying because she was tired and Sergeant was kinda scaring her. So, I finally put the two of them in the vehicle (Sunny was at her dad's - lucky her) and we drove around for about 20 minutes and Sergeant finally calmed down. So, I put her back to bed and read until 1:30, because I was too wired to go to sleep. Then, she started back up with the same behavior at 3:00 AM. Only this time, she seemed even more pissed at me and I was quite a bit less patient than I was the first time. It went on until nearly 4:00 AM. I finally got her to go back to bed and tried to lie down next to her, but she wanted nothing to do with me. It broke my heart and scared the crap out of me. So, I dug out some of my adoption and attachment books and did a little reading (and crying). I think the transition of me going back to work, probably coupled with the divorce, has triggered some attachment-related anxiety. But even though I understand where the tantrums are coming from and I feel horrible that Sergeant feels horrible, I have a really, really hard time coping with such difficult, nasty behavior in the middle of the fucking night. Then I felt really bad, because I started comparing Sergeant with her sisters at her age, and, of course, they did none of this. Because they didn't spend the first nine months of their lives in an orphanage and I didn't have to work full-time when they were smaller. So, guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt. On so many levels. So, now Sergeant is asleep. In my bed. Because tonight she did want to snuggle with me and said, "Mommy, I wish you could sleep in my bed with me." But, my bed is bigger, so there you go.

Swaddling

Despite having graduated from toddler to preschooler, Sergeant still has the occasional meltdown when she doesn't get her way. They usually involve yelling, crying, screaming, and a combination of hitting me and telling me to get away, but at the same time, wanting me near. Over the months, I've tried many tactics to stop the madness, including holding her and rocking her, but nothing has been very successful. Then, a few days ago, in the midst of a meltdown, I laid Sergeant down on a fleece blanket and swaddled her like an infant. She stopped instantly. I sat in the rocking chair with her for a few minutes and cuddled her, then we discussed the issue at hand and worked it out peacefully. Since then, I've tried it twice more with the same results. It makes me wonder if some of her meltdowns are attachment-related instead of just three-year-old stinker-related.

Genetics

I've spent a lot of time thinking about the myriad of losses our little Sergeant has faced in her short life. Loss of her birth parents, before she had a chance to know them, loss of her birth country and culture, and loss of her caretakers at the orphanage, just to name a few. But, although I feel strongly that "open" adoptions are in the best interest of the child (although not possible in the case of China adoption), I can see some benefits for Sergeant in not being our biological child. You see, I had a set of expectations, both positive and negative, for our biological daughters based on genetics. I have none of those expectations for Sergeant - I have no idea if her parents were athletically gifted, or very intelligent, or musically inclined, or learning disabled, or hyperactive, or prone to allergies. It seems like she may be "more free" to develop into her own little person free of the "box" we tend to place children in based on their parentage. I know my parents had that "box" for me, and I spent my teenage years trying to bust out of it. I try not to place my biological daughters in that "box," but it's harder than it is with Sergeant. Sergeant, who is just such a little individual and a bit of a mystery. When she's "telling you how it is" she will do a kind of head shake that reminds me of Claire Huxtable on the Cosby show when she was pissed off with Cliff (I know, I'm dating myself). This is not a gesture I use, nor have I seen anyone else in Sergeant's life use it. So where did that come from? I have to wonder if there's a beautiful, smart, stubborn, opinionated woman in China telling off her husband with a Sergeant-like head shake. I wish I could meet that woman. I wish Sergeant could meet her.

Stupidity

I was "catching up" with an old friend last night after not speaking with her for nearly a year. Of course, we talked about my recent separation and impending divorce and how the kids are doing, yada, yada, yada. I mentioned that I'm increasing my work hours to nearly full-time when I return to work this fall and I'm worried that it will be difficult for Sergeant. My friend gave the usual response about how kids are resilient, etc, but then she drops the bombshell and says "she's better off then she would have been in the orphanage!" WTF - like it's somehow more okay for her to be in daycare full-time because she spent her first nine months in an orphange. My "friend" clearly thinks that Sergeant would still be in an orphanage, had we not "rescued" her. She clearly doesn't understand that, had we not adopted her, there were, oh, 30,000 people in line behind us who would have gladly taken her home. I think I feel more guilty about the divorce and my increase in work hours on her behalf than I do on behalf of her sisters. I feel guilty that we adopted her and now she is not going to grow up in an intact nuclear family. Not that I would ever change it in a hundred million years. I'm grateful every day for her presence in my life...but still....maybe she'll be pissed someday that we adopted her and then 2.5 years later, broke up.

First night as a "single" mom

Well, my soon-to-be ex-husband is officially moved out. He's spending his first night in his new apartment. It feels anti-climatic - we decided it would happen over a month ago. I wondered how the kids would take it when the actual move happened, but they, um, didn't really even seem to notice. We got home from swim team practice at 7:00, had dinner, went to buy some drops for Sunny's "watery" ear, came home, watched some TV and I tucked the kids into bed. Not one of the three even mentioned that their dad is not here! I guess my feeling that he had been involved in our family in a purely peripheral way was relatively accurate. I know he loves the kids, but family life seems to be a bit "much" for him. I think he will probably spend more quality time with them now that we are separated. At least I hope so. So, onward and upward.
Smartie had a great swim team practice. The coach had her swim with the older kids, and she did well. After practice, Sergeant ran out into the street after her sisters (who, thankfully, had checked for traffic before stepping off the curb) tripped over her flip-flop, and had an unfortunate encounter with the asphalt. When I picked her up, my focus was on her nose, which had a bit of road rash. But when I buckled her into her car seat, I realized that her mouth was bleeding quite a bit. By the time we got home, she had a huge fat lip. Then, while I was icing her mouth (ha- I just read that back and it sounds like I was putting frosting on her, like a cake - she would love that), she complained about her tooth and I realized that her top front tooth is loose. I called our dentist at home (gotta love a small town) and he said it will probably "tighten up," but if not, she'll just have a gap until her permanent tooth comes in. I'm working on a post about some behavior issues that Sergeant has been having - today was a great day, though, because I changed my own behavior. Funny how that works.

Sink or Swim

From the moment our kids are born (or adopted), we begin to "let go," in small ways and in big ones. The major moments are obvious - giving up nursing (or bottles), potty-training, going off to kindergarten (or, gasp, college!), that first sleep-over, and on and on and on... But we had a smaller "letting go" moment this weekend at the first swim meet of the season. Sunny swam last year, but this is Smartie's first year on the swim team. There are swim meets every weekend for about eight weeks. Smartie's first meet was this weekend. Due to terrible weather and pool maintenance issues, she had only had a total of two hours of practice prior to the meet. And she's seven. And she's never swam competitively before. The night before the meet, she had a major melt-down, after Sunny told her (in a not-so-"sunny" moment), that she's "stupid, and she'll never make finals in the swim meet." Then, Saturday morning, prior to her first event, she cried and cried and cried and said she wasn't going to swim. The first event was a relay, with three other girls, who could not have competed without her. And I knew that I couldn't let her give in to the fear and back out. So, I gave her a hug and lots of encouragement and walked away to the bleachers. I asked some of the older swimmers to talk to her, crossed my fingers, and sat down with a Texas-sized lump in my throat. One of the other parents on the team is a stroke-judge, and was standing by Smartie while she got ready to swim the relay. She later told me that Smartie told her, "I'm not ready! There's no way I can swim all the way to the other side of the pool." She kept repeating that sentiment until it was her turn to swim. Then, as soon as her team-mate touched the side of the pool, she dived in and swam like hell to the other side. She was awesome! She wasn't the fastest, but she surely was the bravest. Because the definition of bravery is not the absence of fear, but facing fear and plunging forward despite it.