So Much to Say...

We have been home 2 weeks now. It has flown by, but also seems like forever ago that we were in Ethiopia.

I have no idea where to start. This adoption is so different from our last. There are so many more layers involved because of the girls' ages. There is so much more that I feel protective about. I'm not sure where the lines are about what is okay to share publicly. This isn't just my story, or Chris and my story. It is theirs - possibly even more. I've been tempted to end this blog with their arrival. (It doesn't help that blogger has some changes, and for some reason I can't log into my blog anymore! I can only get in by clicking on a link when someone responds to a post. So if I disappear completely, that is is what happened). I'm just unsure how to proceed, and how to have a family blog with older kids, whose friends all have access to the information!

So I don't know how this will all work out long-term. But for right now, I'm coming to the conclusion that our story needs to be told, somehow. There are older kids aging out of orphanages and transition centers everyday. If we can encourage even a few people to take this leap, and take a chance on changing a young person's future forever, then it is worth it to me to try to figure out a way to protect my kids, and still tell our story.

So let me sort this out over the next couple of days, and then I promise pictures and updates for everyone that is trying not to hound me. :)

We are doing great overall. I always tell the families I work with that the first 2 weeks of placement are the absolute hardest. Post-placement panic is real, and can affect everyone in different ways. And then there is the grief factor, and language barrier, and cultural differences, and the hard work of becoming a new family that is a bit different from what everyone knew before. That is where we are at.

This is different than a younger child adoption. And by younger, I mean 10 and under. It is deeper, more confusing, and in some ways scarier for all of us. Our girls can cook, and we are committed that they often have food that is familiar to them. They are fluent in their native language, Amharic, and we are committed to it always remaining their first language. Our phone rings off the hook with calls from friends around the country. It means a lot to Chris and I to see their faces light up at the familiar voice of friends they shared their lives with.

Lots of the attachment advice we treaded through with E.R., just doesn't seem to apply in this adoption, with our teenage girls. They needed school quickly, and jumped in. They need old friends, and deeply need new ones as well. Yes, I'm all for grieving and making sure there is space for that, but at their ages, they also need joy, and memories, and new adventures. So Chris and I are formulating our own attachment philosophy for way-older kids. It is much less clear than the theories we are used to, and much more interesting to think about in so many ways.

With E.R.'s adoption, we were an American family, committed to embracing Ethiopian culture in our family. With this adoption, we are becoming a sort of blended Ethiopian-American family. Since we are committed to the girls keeping their Amharic, the girls speak Amharic to each other and to their friends. The hard part of that is that the rest of us are left out of their intense joy, humor, and probably sadness. The things that are too hard to translate in the moment. But we are getting used to that. And I enjoy seeing their lively expressions, when they can talk to each other, and not have to think about how to say something. They can just "be". And they both need that right now.

So we are great. And this is hard. It is hard in ways I was prepared for, and in ways I wasn't . And we love both these girls so much more deeply than we could have imagined.