Attachment

Sweet Grace.

Fearless Faith.

Grace waving "hi."

Grace trying out Faith's crib.

This week, two things have changed for the girls. The first thing is that they are not taking their full one hour nap in the afternoon like they used to for the past few weeks. They go down at about 3:30 and only sleep for about 30-40 minutes. That means, instead of going to bed at 8:00 every night, they are going to bed between 7:00 and 7:30! More mommy and daddy time in the evening, yeah! They are still sleeping 'til 8:00 in the morning, which is just awesome! The second thing that we've noticed over the last week is that when we put them in their cribs, they do not cry at all! In the past, they may have cried for just a few minutes before falling asleep. Now, they stay up to play in their cribs before dozing off! We can hear the quiet music that they've turned on their aquariums as well as their dolls rattling around. We've also noticed on the video monitor that sometimes in the mornings, they get up a few minutes before we go in to wake them and they just sit quietly and play until we come in. Simply amazing! We hope and pray that this means our girls are feeling more secure with us everyday.

Adoption agencies do their best to inform and educate you on attachment and there are many resources available to help families through this process. Even though at this age, our girls will not likely remember anything as they grow older, believe it or not, they still suffer loss, grief, and the trauma of losing life as they knew it before. In order to promote attachment, it is often recommended that only the household family members be the ones to hold, bath, feed and change the baby for a couple of months. We didn't really want this to be the case and thank God, we didn't have to go to these measures. Since we are both home everyday with them, we felt it was OK to have family and friends drop in to say hello once in a while. We hope that each day, we are making them feel confident that we are their forever family, that we love them and will never leave them. Attachment happens only when we earn their trust and this takes time. Of course, we are no professionals, but we think that the girls are doing wonderfully! Thank you so much for your love, support and most importantly, your prayers for a smooth and healthy transition for all of us!