If you have any spare patience, please send it our way, both for us and for the boys.
We had a good morning yesterday, but by late morning Elisey was throwing rocks, which meant Donna had to keep him in his room while I scoured the backyard for rocks and put them all in the locked garden shed. A little later, however, Donna ran out for groceries, and Elisey broke down in tears, despite my reassurances that Mama would come home soon. Clearly and understandably some abandonment issues; we'll take more care the next time one of us leaves the house.
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We are slowly and unsurely starting to do better here, always trying to keep in mind that the boys are scared and and confused. It was a rough week in Sofia, as well. As I mentioned we quickly learned we had to keep their room stripped at night not only of toys and the TV but of any additional furniture, pictures, and so on. Even the lamp was a big power struggle. (And power struggles are what we should be trying to avoid right now.)
On Monday we had the appointment for their passports. Tuesday afternoon we went to the clinic where an approved doctor filled out their medical form for the US embassy. In the meantime we filled our time going to a little playground down the street from our apartment, or a little further to the large park surrounds the "National Palace of Culture." The rest of the time was in the apartment, much of it spent with the boys trying to turn on the TV or slamming doors. We hadn't quite realized at this point that we would have to teach them even simple things such as how to play with blocks. We are now doing that.
Wednesday we went to the US Embassy. The normal schedule would be to go on Thursday, but it was Thanksgiving so the Embassy was closed. So on Wednesday we got picked up along with the boys' new Bulgarian passports and their medical documents and driven to the very very nice (your tax dollars at work) US Embassy. Aside from a somewhat brusque security check, the person doing the actual interview was quite nice. He talked to the boys for a while, who informed him their favorite food so far was fish. We were puzzled by this, and only later realized they were referring to the "goldfish" crackers we had used to keep them quiet in the waiting room.
At the embassy we were told the boys would keep dual EU/Bulgarian-US citizenship, giving them education and occupational rights in the EU, a nice thing for them.
After a bit more discussion, we were done, and we went home.
Thursday was a totally free day for us. A Bulgarian friend of ours, the widow of a colleague of mine, came to visit, and was totally charmed by the boys (they tended to be on much better behavior for people who could speak proper Bulgarian), and we had a simple "Thanksgiving" lunch, mostly of cooked chicken, cut into small pieces for the boys.
Elisey did keep pushing buttons, plugging and unplugging appliances and trying to talk on the telephone. Around this time Donna caught enough to realize he was calling back to the orphanage to report on his new family, telling them what good food Mama was cooking. The flip side of this is when he was mad at us, he pretended to call the police to report us; we're pretty certain the Bulgarian caregivers sometimes threatened to call the police to get the children to behave. (We weren't totally above this ourselves; on the flight home we told the boys the flight stewards were "airplane police" they had to obey about buckling in and so on.)
It was hard, because even though we knew we were supposed to "redirect" the boys when they acted out, we had really almost no tools to do so. We are now learning better, but it has been stressful, on-the-job training. That first week, getting them to sleep and staying asleep was a battle. We lay down in their bed with them, as that helped to calm them a bit, though not completely. If this sound strange, it was recommended by our agency; in fact they suggested we put the boys in our bed, but our bedroom both in Sofia and here in the US is too cluttered and distracting. Other battles were over the lights. Elisey is afraid of the dark and probably always slept in a lit room.
Fortunately we had no battles over food (aside from some minor stealing, despite a locked kitchen, but we had better tools for dealing with that and now at home we think we've mostly solved that) or the toilet, both of which are common issues with newly adopted kids.
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It's interesting to talk to people. Most, understandably, have no idea what newly adopted children need. They tend to be focused on the need for language acquisition, or in "welcoming" the boys in more mainstream ways such as through gifts or taking them to the zoo, the beach, to see Santa. (Santa Claus would probably freak them out.) But what they need, and we are struggling to meet this need, is parents who show them basic, basic, basic love. It's hard to understand, and we didn't really at first despite our training, just how basic and simple love they needed. I will feed you. I will keep you safe. I will help you be unafraid. (Not easy when a child provokes you to anger, almost certainly subconsciously in an attempt to see if you will abandon them as has everyone else.) I will be patient with you. I will teach you how to manage both freedom and rules. I will show you how to stack blocks, how to climb on a jungle gym, how to swing on a swing, how to play with a ball, how to make a superhero cape from a towel, how to dig in the sand, how to ask for more food. They boys came to us knowing almost none of that. Most children their ages can play by themselves for a while, but we need to focus nearly every minute on them. Part of this is teaching them that we are always nearby, at first physically and then later emotionally. It's hard work, even harder than we imagined.
