I was checking on the kids before I went to bed tonight and a picture of Luke as a toddler hanging in the hall caught my eye. I stared at the picture and my memory was flooded with all of the days of his babyhood and preschool years. The picture of him is so sweet. It brought me to tears...
Maybe I reacted this way because I just watched an episode of The Baby Borrowers with a couple of terrible teenagers. Could my sweet little angelic faced little boy ever be so horrible? God, I hope not! I am sure the mothers of those teens probably thought the same thing though of their sweet toddlers. And maybe I am just PMS'ing!
I looked at Luke in his swim suit the other day and noticed he had lost all of the baby fat. He was tall, thin and lean now. 9 years has passed in the blink of an eye and I know the next 9 year will go just as fast. How do you live each moment with your children like it is the last? How can absorb as much as possible? How can I etch every single moment into my memory?
Which all brings me to wonder if the lack of the history is why I am not feeling bonded to Tetyana. It weighs heavily on my mind every single minute of the day. Will it just take time? Will all of these new memories that we are making form the bond? Maybe it will happen when I am not looking....
Hug your children tight....it all goes by so fast!
5 comments:
What a sweet post! And what a beautiful baby Luke was. I know what you mean, I wish I knew what Mia looked like as a baby, I have that for Haley and Kyan but not for her. It pains me so much!
Time flies, that is for sure. I can't even remember Haley coming home to us at 20 months, she was such a baby then and such a big girl now. I don't know where the time goes but you are right that we need to cherish it.
You've struck a chord with me.
Our Sarah starts kindergarten this year, so I've been thinking a lot about how quickly the time has gone since she was born.
It is so important to cherish the time with them. Thanks for the reminder!
What a nice post. So honest. We are in the process of adopting older children and every now and then a glimpse of a small child playing or a baby in a stroller makes me sad to have missed so many moments in our childen's lives. All we can do is treasure the time we have with them, feel the present and look to the future.
Love your blog!
I look at my bio's baby books and grieve over the missing sibling pics. I rejoice I had the time with my first two, and then am left wondering how I didn't know there was a child, or two, missing from that picture at that point in time.
As for bonding and connecting, we got "The Five Love Languages" by Gary Chapman because we had difficulty connecting with a bio kid. It helped us understand the way we expressed and accepted love was different from theirs...
Also, we are still in our first year home with Z and treat it much like the first year of a newborn, responding to every cry, holding him at every opportunity and giving added attention normal for an infant. It is difficult to see him as emotionally needy as a baby, since he looks like a seven year old! God Bless your journey!
I too struggle with the daily pain of not having the strong bond with my older adopted child as I do with my biological children. This is something that seems to consume my mind less as time passes, but also makes always ask "how much longer until it all feels normal?"
I also find my heart in pain sometimes watching my kids grow. Is this how fast life really moves from now on?
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