11

One year ago yesterday, Abel turned 10. For the first time in his life he had a Mama and Papa there to show him love on his birthday. Here is what I wrote on his big day last year:

Today our son turns 10 years old.
For 10 years he has never known love. He has never had a mother, a father, a family, a home.
He has never seen food prepared.
He has never seen a kitchen.
He has never seen a refrigerator full of food.
He has never had a real bath.
He has never gotten to lay in a tub full of water and watch the bubbles float around him.
He has never been tucked in at night with a kiss and a hug.
He has never had anyone to calm his fears in the middle of the night.
He has never NOT been thirsty.
His 10 years of waiting are over.

This birthday party was done for our benefit. It wasn't something Abel was used to seeing. Only the children who had families or regular visitors had birthday celebrations. Abel was scared to death by the attention. (the frosting on the nose is a tradition but I don't know it's meaning. When I find out, I'll edit here.)



That years seems forever ago. The scared little boy, who ruled his world by intimidating his caregivers, threatening them with tears, or heavy pieces of furniture.

Today he is 11. In one year his life has changed so much!

He has a mother, a father, a family, a home to call his own. A bed that ONLY he has ever slept in.

He helps prepare the food, and set the table and clear it too!

He loves to be in the kitchen.

He carries groceries in from the car and puts them away where they belong with very little help.

He enjoys a bath for a few minutes, but Abel is "all business" about most things in life so his baths are pretty quick. Splish, splash, rinse and get out!

He gets tucked in every single night, with a hug and a kiss, and "I love you."

You may remember this video, taken the first night we had custody of him. We are very familiar with institutional self-soothing behaviors, but we were shocked by the intensity of Abel's. He did this off and on all night long.


Every morning when Abel wakes up, the hair on the back of his head is a matted mess from this rolling, and once it got longer than an inch it would break off. Then one day about 3 months ago I realized the previous two mornings Abel's hair was not knotted. We watched him that night. Sure enough, Abel had quit rolling in the night! He sleeps soundly most of the night now.

Abel had no way to communicate when we met him, though he had come up with some gestures the institution staff recognized to have certain meaning but mostly he just mimed everything.

And now, one year later, he uses ASL sentences! "I need bathroom." and "I want drink please." "Outside go please." etc. He signs more than Axel and Asher do!

Abel has severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and anxiety associated with it. He is still hyper-vigilant but we have seen improvement from one year ago. In school he is trying so hard to be good, but the fact he is back in an institutional setting is very difficult for him. I debated keeping him home and homeschooling him. I know I could do a good job, but there will come a day when Abel will need to be with a caregiver other than Dean or I, and he is going to have to behave. Better for him to learn this now than in a couple of years when he is much bigger and stronger. Thankfully our school district has been very understanding of the challenges Abel faces due to his traumatic past. We are in very close communication, and there have been times when I'm at school every day of the week. It was especially rough for Abel while I was gone to complete Audrey's adoption. Not because he missed me, but because Mom, aka "the cop" was gone!

As far as attachment goes, this is a rough area for Abel. We do see see tiny glimpses that he is attaching to us, but he still struggles.  He is starting to give affection (this is new for him) but he doesn't know who to give it to. Dean is his first choice, but a teacher, or school support staff, or a stranger who comes to our door will do too! This is probably one of the most difficult skills to teach our adopted kids.  I have to say, in many ways Dean and I feel like we are tools to Abel's existence and nothing more.  We love him, we care for him with love, and we know that in his own way he loves us, but love is hard for Abel. Its something he isn't used to and so he resists it. It doesn't really matter to us if he never attaches to us. Our job is still the same.  Our job is to be his parents, whether he loves us or not. To teach him the skills he needs to be as independent as he is capable of being. At certain times it is clear Abel needs to disconnect from us and spend some time doing his own thing (usually stimming with a toy or ball) because that is what he spent 10 years doing and it is his default now. Every day we give him some time for this, particularly right after he comes home from school, and then we encourage him to join the family. Over the past year we have seen his alone time decreasing, and more often he brings his stimming toy out to the family area to be near us in his alone time. It is good to see, and gives us hope that one day he will let us in even more.

I've said it a thousand times, but I'm going to say it again. Adoption isn't easy. Adoption is trauma. Is Abel better off here than the institution? Absolutely! But the transition to a good place came with its own set of traumatic events. Abel had 10 years of nutritional, social, environmental and educational neglect. We will give him years of positive experiences to learn the things he was never given exposure to before.

And with that, I leave you with the birthday boy, so different in just one year. (please excuse my horrid singing!)

Abel was a bit annoyed when he came to breakfast and found balloons tied to his chair. 

Abel LOVES vehicles that little people can fit into. He gets very frustrated with vehicles that don't have people in them! He spends a lot of time looking inside them and trying to squeeze toy people that are too big into the tiny holes. He has really enjoyed these two vehicles so far, because he can open the doors and sit the people in seats. He tried to put his big toe in the bus, an attempt to get on, I think!

And of course, Audrey loved the birthday cake from her first American birthday party! 

Happy Birthday Abel! 

We are so proud of how far you've come! 

He Doesn't Always See

Sometimes Abel is blind. He is people blind. It comes from years of living in an institution where he was severely lacking in attention and stimulation. Let me explain.

A few weeks after Abel came home he came up with a game he developed on the stairs. He would throw his block down the steps (remember the block?) then scramble down to get it, then repeat the sequence. He did a lot of vocalization while playing this game, but he also shut out the world. We didn't know just how closed out we were.

Eventually the walls along the steps started to get wrecked so we had to put an end to the game. He was surprisingly accepting of this new restriction. But occasionally something would come over him. He would enter this trance-like state and move himself to top of the stairs. He would sit there a few minutes and eventually the familiar sound of the block hitting the walls on it's way down would reach my ears. I would stop the game and he would move on to other things.

One day I decided to sneak around the corner to watch his game very closely, and possibly surprise him with my presence so we could finally end this game that was now annoying the heck out of me. When Abel was at the bottom of the steps, I quietly moved to stand at the top. My plan was that when he returned to the top he would see me, be surprised I was there, and stop the game.

Only he didn't see me.

Abel tossed the toy to the top of the steps, watching it as it bounced around me feet. He scrambled to the top, gave it a dangle, then tossed it back down. When he moved to retrieve it once again he crawled around my feet to do so. He never knew I was there.

That is when I had a flashback to one of our visits at the institution. I blogged about it here. What I didn't say in that post is what I saw. Two little boys I had met three years before, who had been full of life, now sat nearly motionless in the corner of a room. They had become one another's stimming objects. One child lay on the floor, knees up, one foot crossed over his knee while he methodically tapped the head of the other. Over and over and over and over and over. The other boy lay motionless except for his hand which was straight in the air, tapping the foot of the other over and over and over and over. This was it. This was their life. They had become nothing but objects to one another; objects to be used for the only stimulation they could find in a world full of nothing.

Standing at the top of the stairs I realized Abel had slipped back to that world. In that moment I was nothing but an object to him. Something that got in his way and must be maneuvered around. Like the children who lay motionless in his room back in the institution, I was nothing to him.

Similar instances have happened countless times over the last few months. Today Asher and Abel were playing in the bedroom. I could hear that Abel was tossing a toy around the room (no throwing allowed) I moved to their doorway and stood still. Abel tossed the toy right at me, yet didn't see me. He moved to pick up the toy, reaching around my legs to get it out of the corner.

"Abel." I said, gently.

He blinked, grinned to himself, then tossed the toy again.

"Abel" I said, in a different tone of voice.

He blinked, then I could see his eyes focus and he saw me, standing directly in front of him. He looked confused, as if to say "Where did you come from?"

Abel still spends a lot of time in his own world, unable to see those around him, but each day he is with us a little more. Maybe one day he will choose to spend his entire life with us.

The Lost Key

There is a key missing from our house. Dean and I have searched everywhere for it. We have asked God for help and still nothing. We are at a loss, coming up empty regardless of where we look.

This key holds so many answers for us.

It is the key to Asher.

Asher is the easiest child I have ever parented, and I there have been many! He is so easy to please and very compliant. All we have to do is give him something to dangle and we won't see him the rest of the day. People would think having a child who is extremely easy to parent a good thing, but in the world of international adoption, this "easiness" has nothing to do with the child's personality and everything to do with his inability to leave the isolation he was accustomed in order to interact with the world around him.

When I first met Asher, he spent most of his day doing this:


But he had a lot of spunk. You can see it at the beginning of this video. The turning away and making faces.


This loss of 'spunk' is bothersome to me. Where did it go? Were the demands we put upon him just too much?

Still today, at 7 months home, he will spend most of his day doing this: (he's a little miffed here as to why I'm not telling him to stop like I normally do.)


But, as you can see at the end of the video he is easily stopped. I bet 30 times a day I go looking for him because he's hiding some where so he can stim undisturbed.

Every kid is so different. Axel came home CRAVING information. Asher? He came home happy to be in a family and to have a variety of things to dangle. If anything requires real thought - like learning to match colors - forget it. Not only does he have zero interest, but he just shuts down. And no, it's NOT too hard for him, he just doesn't WANT to. Keep in mind this is a boy who I can say, "Go get your shoes and your glasses." And he'll come back to me with his shoes, glasses AND socks because HELLO you don't wear shoes without socks Mom! He follows all kinds of directions. He is a very bright little boy.

We have discovered that if there are small kids around (developmentally 2-3 years old.) he becomes quite animated, making all kinds of sounds and very curious about what they're doing and wanting to participate. We don't have many of those kids around here. He has also started initiating communication. Signing "up" and making a noise to get me to pick him up. Signing "eat" and "more" when I'm eating something and he wants a bite, "shoes" when he wants to go somewhere, "all done" when he wants to be done with something.

A couple days ago, at 4:30 a.m. I decided that Asher isn't going to summer school. He would only be going for a couple of weeks before we leave for D.C., with teachers who don't know him (or the "rules" about hugging, etc.) and we'd just be handing him over to total strangers, reinforcing to him he can just go to anyone. Nope....all of that can do more harm than good at this point. And so the big kids with be headed off on 7:00 a.m. busses and Asher and I will be hanging out.

And while we're hanging out we will continue on the quest to find Asher's Key.