Goodbye Orphanage Hair!

The boy got another haircut tonight. If anything is growing on him it is his hair. He is a cute little blonde, but his hair was a bit lack luster from the obvious lack of nutrition. After his haircut tonight it was soft and bright blonde. I think I finally cut off the last of the orphanage hair. Good riddens. That is the last of the physical remnants of orphanage. The first to go was the smell. The first night we had him we were only too happy to scrub that smell off. It isn?t that it is a bad smell. It?s just very distinct. Oh the sweet smell of baby that first night was heavenly.

I also wanted to clarify why we are trying yet another technique at bedtime. Our boy is smart. Scary smart. It doesn?t take him long to figure anything out. One of the only things he has yet to master is door handles. And even then it is close. He did figure it out one day while CS was in the bathroom. So back to bedtime. Naptime works great. We rock him, he falls asleep and we?re done. Bedtime is horrible. Remember no crying here. We rock him totally to sleep and go to put him in the bed. As soon as we lay him down in the bed he wakes up. No drowsy slightly awake here. AWAKE! So he lays there and stares at us and does a lip smacking thing that makes me want to scream. At this point our original battle of rocking, leaving, rocking, laughing ensures again. He won?t sleep at night. WILL NOT!!! So hence we are trying a new technique. This is in no way a substitue for rocking. I still rock him. I just don?t rock him totally to sleep. This still takes upwards of 15-20 minutes. Last night the quiet music trick worked ok. Not flawless, but ok. He was distracted by the music and nearly asleep and then the music quit. Then he started rocking. Once he starts rocking at bedtime we can?t go in his room or else we start the whole cycle all over again. So I am downloading a few more songs onto my iPod and trying it again tonight.

Out of our whole parenting experience this rocking thing seems to be the most frustrating. Everything I read about attachment and post institutionalized children say that the rocking will eventually subside. There are no clear directives on how to deal with this. It is not an RAD behavior so the literature about it is very limited. We also play other types of eye contact and touch contact games throughout the day. My child is certainly not lacking in the bonding department. In fact this afternoon while I was trying to attempt 10 minutes of rest in front of the boob tube he asked to get up on my lap. He layed down on me and just snuggled. He has never done this voluntarily before.

So we are going to keep trying things until we find something that works for us. Right now he is only very lightly rocking whild the iCrib light changes colors. Good sign here. Light rocking I can deal with. The side to side rolling rock is what gets me all worked up.

I will say that besides the laying on me this afternoon the boy is showing all kinds of positive attachment signs. He regularly comes to us for kisses and hugs when he bumps his head or biffs it while running in the house. He also wants up everytime there is a noise that he is uncertain about. And… we get frequent unsolicited hugs and the occasional kiss. We have family bonding time every morning in the bed. When he wakes up (and starts rocking) one of us goes to get him and puts him in the bed beteween us. He then proceeds to put his arms around our necks and hugs us tight. He also now knows his name, but doesn?t quite understand the question, “what is your name?” He says his name if we point to one of us and say, Mama or Papa then point to him. Then he?ll say his name.

Every day has it?s little challenges. We work through them the best we can. And maybe, just maybe I?ll get some rest one of these days. Yeah right, who am I kidding.