To our
family & friends,
Your love and support through this journey
has meant more to us than you could ever know.
We feel so blessed and honored that God would call us to this journey,
and we are glad to have you all holding our hands along the way! It is almost
time for us to come home, and we would like to give you an honest idea of what
to expect. We also want to let you know
about what our family will be going through.
What this
will be like for Eliana:
Unlike bringing a newborn home, Eliana
already has a view of the world. Before she
left the orphanage, she already knew from where she would get her meal, how it
would be presented to her, who would clean her, change her, and be the source
of her care. She already had friends,
had favorite toys, and had shared laughs with her peers. Her life may not have been ideal to this
point, but it has been HER life. She has
learned to cope with an unnatural situation of not having parents. She didn’t even realize she was “coping” with
anything, though. This was just life as
she knew it.
While we have had years to prepare for our new
addition, only your prayers and what little the orphanage caregivers were able
to do have helped Eliana prepare. At her
young age, her caregivers couldn’t fully get across to her that those people in
the pictures she was given are her new parents.
She’s never even understood what parents are. For almost every day of
her life, she slept in the same spot and stared at the same ceiling when she was
trying to fall asleep. She had only ridden
in a car a few times. She had probably seen some of her friends leave the
orphanage, but never quite understood why they didn’t return. This new shift in her reality is
monumental. What was the happiest day
for us was to her a traumatic day.
Because of the trauma she has faced and the
need to heal those wounds, life for the Stoves family will be…let’s just call
it weird. We will go through some
details about this weirdness in the remainder of this post.
First, we want you to know that this is only
a season. Lord-willing it will be a
short season followed by a much, much longer season of quasi-normalcy. Also, please understand that we are leaning
on YEARS of expert opinions on adoption; some by professional experts, some by
friends who’ve adopted even from the same orphanage. It may not make sense to you, and that’s
okay. We want your support, and part of
earning that support is helping you understand, so questions
are always okay!
What to
expect when we come home:
We are
excited to meet family and friends at the airport (our airport party). We welcome anyone who wants to be there! “Welcome Home” signs, taking pictures and making
video would be a great blessing to us!
We hope that our
flight will be relatively uneventful, and that we will have been able to
sleep. However, even at its best, it
will be a tough trip. We will have spent
around 24 hours in airplanes and airports by the time we land in Birmingham.
We will be very
tired when we come home. It is a 13 hour
time difference from China to Central time.
We anticipate jet lag for us and for Eliana for the first 2 weeks home.
We will be taking
Eliana to the International Adoption Clinic at Children’s Hospital in
Birmingham in the first couple of weeks after we get home. We are praying for a healthy report, and we
are prepared to meet any issues with strength from God.
Things will also be
a bit different than when we brought the boys home from the hospital. We'll need a different kind of support.
Our approach
to the first few months home:
We do
ask that you don't ask to hold her or give her anything
at the airport. If you
have special gifts, we can save those for later. Her brothers will have a gift for her. And she will have a gift for her new
brothers. Other than that, we feel that
it would be best to wait for other gifts (or give them to us, and we will give
them to Eliana once we are home).
We also ask that you allow us to
spend our first moments in the airport introducing our children to each other
and reconnecting. After the boys have
had their opportunity to meet their new sister and to hug mommy & daddy,
then we will invite others to hug us and to meet Eliana (while she is being
held in our arms).
Eliana has a pretty strong case of
stranger anxiety. Please don’t be
offended if your offer to hug us is met with tears or a blank stare. Even if
she’s had weeks to talk with you via Skype!
This will be her first taste of “foreigners” en masse. As of now, these “foreigners” have been the
minority. Every outing we have here in
China she sees people groups she expects to see. Things you may not even think are scary may
scare her. For example, some sweet
friends of ours warned us before we went that when they adopted from China,
their daughter will now tell them that her mom’s blue eyes scared her. She had never seen blue eyes before. Just remember, you can do everything right,
and she will likely still be scared of you.
This is okay.
After the airport,
we're going to try to lay low for a while.
In the adoption community it is called cocooning.
We
understand that this is going to be hard for you guys and for us. However, we are trusting all of the
attachment/adoption experts on this. We
will focus our time on connecting as a family of five.
It will take time
for her to understand that we are her parents now. We are starting at a place where she has no
concept of parents or family.
Also our parenting will
look very different. She has lived her
life, up until this point, in an orphanage.
She has shared a room with around 20 other babies, and she has had to do
what has been necessary to survive and to thrive. Once we are home, helping her find security
in her new family (mommy, daddy & brothers) is very important to her
attachment in the long run.
What do
we mean by attachment? There are many articles and studies and professionals
who can speak to this; but for a child who has experienced loss, finding a
secure place is very important. Even if she is very happy and energetic, at the
core she is still not sure what is going on yet. For her to thrive she needs to
know that we will take care of
her. She needs to know that she
doesn't have to charm her way into being fed or getting a toy or being
held. She needs to know that she can give up her
survival mode.
As infants, our boys
figured that out, on their own, very quickly. We were purposeful
about getting them used to lots of people who fed them, cared for them, and gave
them things.
Well,
with adoption, it's backwards.
So, we
don't want anyone to have their feelings hurt or feel that we are keeping her
from all of you. Everyone in our family & community has been a huge part of
this journey! From helping us
financially and physically to helping us emotionally and spiritually, we are
grateful for you. So, we are asking you to
join us on the second part of this journey. This isn't the glamorous part. This is when we parent and love and grow into
a forever family with a new child who has come from a hard place. The reality of her past doesn't go away, even when
she maintains a playful disposition.
What you can do:
*Please allow us to
feed her, change her, hand her toys, food, and anything else she needs. It is important that we are the only ones to
meet her needs (ALL of her needs) at
this time.
*If she reaches for
you, please go ahead and smile at her and point to us.
*Please don't give
her any gifts at this time. If you want to give her something so she knows it
is from you, you can hang on to it, and we will let you know when it is
appropriate to start giving her gifts.
If you do have a special gift that you want her to have now, you can give it to
us, and we will give it to her at home.
*Please
pay special attention to our boys. They will need lots of extra attention. Their world is changing too!
*Please feel free to bring meals, call or text to check up on
us, or anything else you would normally do for a family that has just added a
child. Just bear with us and understand
that we will need to limit visits to very short/front door meetings. (This will keep Eliana from getting confused
and/or nervous with lots of people coming in and out of the house as she has
severe stranger anxiety. Again, we will
be focusing on teaching her who our immediate family is.)
We know
that this is a lot to ask. And we know this is going to be hard
for the first few months. We've always worked very hard for our boys to
connect and have special relationships with family & friends, and we want
the same for Eliana. However, it's going to have to come at a slower pace. We have
been taught that if a child connects more with someone else, rather than the
parents, in the first few months, it can delay their attachment by months. So,
we are grateful that you all understand and are going to allow us to have a
different approach for a few months.
As her parents, we
have to make the best decision for her and help her to thrive in the best way
possible. We really appreciate all of
your support in this adjustment. Thank
you for loving us, giving us so much grace, and being with us through all of
this. We invite you to the next phase with us!
We
don't know exactly how long this will take; but we've been advised to cocoon
(lay low) for the first three months home. So, that's where we will start. It is really going to depend on Eliana, and how
she adapts. We will be following her
queues. Please keep praying for us! We will be posting updates on the blog and
sharing on Facebook.
Please
feel free to message us or ask us if you have any questions on attachment or cocooning. We aren't sure how crazy things will be; but
we promise to be open and honest. We
appreciate all of your grace during this next phase.
Living
in a hotel with Eliana as an only child for 2 weeks has been a great
opportunity for us to bond! But when we get home, it will get real! We say, bring
it on!
Love,
Randall &
Candice
********************************************************
As for our BIG NEWS today: We received Eliana's Visa! We are going HOME!
Eliana's excited about finally getting her visa, while Daddy is less than excited about using his visa to change flights.
