Eight Weeks Home

We’ve been home with Evelyn for two months already! We are still working hard getting to know each other and establish trust among us all. Our days are pretty simple and consistent, and it seems like Evelyn in catching on and contributing quickly to the culture of our family. 

Our most praiseworthy updates is that after a full evaluation at the U of M Adoption Medicine Clinic, they confirmed that Evelyn has no medical needs and is negative for what she was originally diagnosed with. We are so thankful for her sake that she does not have to endure a litany of appointments, labs and meds! That being said, I am always so grateful for the care we receive at the U. The angels who worked in the lab at her evaluation managed to draw 20+ ml of blood and Evelyn didn’t even cry! It was all amazingly best-case scenario. Her medical status again shows the miracle that it is that she is in our family. Children without identified needs are supposed to be adopted in-country. She technically shouldn’t be in our family. But she is, and we couldn’t be more grateful!!

In the six weeks since my last post, Evelyn has picked up more language. She can do signs for more, all done, water, food, milk, and help. And most of these signs are accompanied by an attempt at pronouncing the word. She responds to being told to find her shoes, to go outside, or to change her diaper. She is also developing a pretty clear “stop” with a stop hand and I can tell that’s something she’s hearing a lot. It’s an important thing for her to understand when she’s about to jump down the stairs, or the slide, or off the couch, which have all happened with some regularity. But overall, being able to communicate is huge! It is making such a difference in our day. 

Evelyn is catching on to some household rhythms and will hold the dog’s bowl while Kira scoops the food into it, a few times trying to sample it herself. She also knows that if she makes a kissing sound and says “good dog”, then Copper will come and eat up whatever she has spilled. One day she was hindering my attempts to unload the dishwasher (by trying to climb into it), so I taught her how to unload the silverware and put it in the drawer. It’s not sorted and it looks like a tossed salad of utensils, but she did it! And I got the rest put away. I often remind myself that if I want my kids to help with something when they’re older then I need to be ok with them learning now to do it now, whatever it looks like. Step one is the silverware is in the drawer. Later she’ll figure out how to lay it sorted and in the meantime I hold my tongue from shooing her out of the kitchen. She knows the flow of our days now, with morning walks and play, and snacks and naps. Just in time for it all to change with the start of the school year. 

I still feel like food is an area we are making very little progress in. She still favors Indian dishes with rice. When she doesn’t like what’s being served, we get to play a fun game where we guess if Evelyn is not hungry yet, if she doesn’t like this food, if her teeth hurt, if she has gas, or if she is just being stubborn. Sometimes three guesses can be correct at once. She is two, after all, and has opinions and pains like any two-year-old, on top of adjusting her entire palate. There’s nothing to do but keep trying, but it is getting tiring to prepare secondary options to keep her belly full, much as I love to cook. If my 13-year-old wedding gift rice cooker stops working, we will be in the car to buy a new one in minutes. It’s an essential appliance right now. 

We will be sticking together the rest of the summer and giving the sisters as much time together as they can get before Kira sets out for school. I think they’re really going to miss each other. Praise the Lord for all the answered prayers for bonding and attachment. Even though Evelyn will always choose David if we’re both in the room, it’s a different life now than when she would cry if I looked at her.

We are thankful for answered prayers and a faithful God and that we get to be mom and dad to these little ones!!