Tough Days

Most of my posts have been pretty positive, but I have always said that I need to keep it real for all of you following our journey. We are very lucky. We have had very few issues compared to what we could have. There are days where things are down right tough. The hardest days for us is when Kobe has "trama anniversaries." Our agency forewarned us of days like this, but I didn't totally believe it until we started to live these days. The trama part of a person's memory is very strong. When someone experiences trama, it is embedded into their memory. Since Kobe is so little, he won't be able to verbalize what the trama was. This "trama" that I'm referring to could be the day he was brought into the orphanage or the day he came into Hannah's Hope etc... There are so many things we may never know. While their little minds don't know WHAT happened, their little hearts know that SOMETHING happened. I used to think this was the craziest thing, but now we have lived it. He may not know the exact date, but his internal time frame is usually within a few days. Monday was a tough, tough day for our little guy. From the time we picked him up from daycare until he went to bed, he had random crabby times. This isn't the usual crabby times. This is full fledge throw himself crying and screaming. Yes he sometimes will do this when he doesn't get his way, but this is so different. There is nothing we can do to console him. Nothing!! It is so heartbreaking! Monday night he was up at 11:30pm until 3am. He wasn't crying the whole time, but had periods of the total unconsolable screaming/crying. It amazes me that they "know" these things. We were told they wouldn't be able to verbalize their feelings even once they got older b/c the may not actually know what is making them sad. We may have some rough days ahead. We are at the one year anniversary of us leaving him in Ethiopia. We are within a week of him being in the hospital in Ethiopia. So we expect some different behaviors. My heart aches for him when he is like this. He is just so sad. The cries are so different than normal. It is hard as a Mom to not be able to "fix" the hurt. It is just another thing that makes our days with an adoptive child a bit harder. In general, I think that people assume once we get that child home that everything is peachy. That isn't the case. There are many things that are different with an adopted child rather than a biological child. We love him just the same. When our patience wear thin on these days when we see such behaviors, we must realize that his little heart is aching so much. We must LOVE BIG!!!