Tuesday, December 27

The rest of Monday went well. One thing we are learning is that Hope fights sleep with everything in her little body. She fights naps, and she REALLY fights bedtime. Last night we started putting her down around 6:40 or so, and she fought hard for an hour, slept about 45 minutes, woke up screaming and fought it again. The rest of the night she would sleep for 30-60 minutes and just wake up crying so hard, wanting me to hold her, but pushing me away, hitting me, arching her back and use every ounce of energy to keep herself awake. Aaron said last night in the midst of it, that she is a fighter, and she really is! Finally around 3:30am she passed out for good and slept until a little after 7. She only wants me to hold her, so Aaron and I can't really take turns, and I am feeling the exhaustion setting in. When she is awake during the day she is so happy, but she kind of transforms into another little person at night. I just keep praying for strength, grace, and patience.

She also is eating a lot better. She has wanted nothing to do with any of the baby food we brought, so one of the girls who works at the guest house made her some ground chickpeas with injera, and she ate a ton of that! She took a 2 ½ hour nap this morning from 10:30-1:00, after fighting it for about an hour. After having three boys who never had any sleep issues at all, this has definitely been the hardest part so far. I think that either she is grieving, and it comes out at night, or she is afraid. They brought her to us during her nap, so I don't know if she is afraid of falling asleep? Not to mention every other aspect of her life is totally different, so I'm sure is is incredibly insecure.

We are also seeing more of her personality come out, and she is quite the little spit fire! We have had a few tantrums, and discovered she is quite adept at hitting. :) We have spent our days so far at the guesthouse, playing in our room or outside in the yard, or in the living room of the main house. There are three other families staying here too, and one of them picked up their daughter today. She is basically like Hope was her first day, pretty scared and unresponsive. But, hopefully they will have chances to play together later on.

It's been fun to see Hope get a little braver about exploring her world too. The first day she didn't move around much, but today she is everywhere, opening things, putting things in her mouth, and acting more and more just like any other 17 month old.

It's been weird to really have no where to go, or nothing on the agenda except to be with each other. I am so thankful we are getting this time, and praying for the bonding to continue and grow. It's so surreal thinking about where we were even two weeks ago, and so comforting that God knew all along when this next part of our lives would begin. And He is here with us now, in the midst of getting to know our daughter and her getting to know us. It is definitely not an easy process, but it is good.