The people that got us through

Last night we drew the line at the rocking. This may seem a little harsh to some, but after 4 days of watching our boy thrash about finding no comfort in it we said enough was enough. We also realized that Pickle was not only a rocker, but a head banger too. This is not Head Banger as in 80’s butt rocker, but a child that rocks so violently he eventually finds something (ie. the side of the crib) to bang his head against.

How did we discover this? Well when watching him rock we observed that he throws himself violently to one side. He will also scooch around the bed finding something to throw himself against. In this case it was a pillow. He tried to repeatedly scoot up toward the headboard only to be met by one of us pulling him back. The final clue was that when we picked him up from the orphanage I noticed that he had 2 little cut shaped scabs on his head. We thought this might be due to typical orphanage child play, but figured out they may have come from him hitting his head on the crib bars.

When you figure this out about your child it is enough to break your heart. We want Pickle to come for us for comfort. Right now he does a bit, but not as much as he should.

Like I said this may seem harsh to some, but this is what we are choosing to do. It really does seem to be working. I held him last night and let him scream his little head off until he fell asleep. Then in the night, when he was restless, I put a hand on him and he would fall back to sleep. He spent most of the night sleeping, but on occasion he would roll to one of us for a cuddle or put a hand or foot on one of us. Today at naptime I did the same. He only cried for about 5 minutes and fell asleep.

So we are progressing quite nicely.

This afternoon we took a walk to the Gold church with Kathou, Paypay and Wobbles. (Their daughter is 15 months and still a little unsteady on her feet. I did like G's suggestion of SweetPea, but that is what I call both Pickle and kitty.) Pickle still isn’t too sure about Wobbles. He did run around Glory Square and all around the WW2 memorial again. He played with another child’s toys and seemed happy about it.

Tomorrow morning we will take our Gulag Express trip to Lenin Square.

So far Pickle’s favorite things are the sand box (hint hint Babushka), bananas, outside, books, bath time, peas and my comb. At first it was a shoehorn he found in the apartment, but the comb won him over.

His dislikes are sleeping, chicken (man is he going to be hungry when we get home) and new places.

The likes list is longer than the dislikes and that is a good thing. A very good thing.

A quick note to say Happy Birthday to Pickle’s Great-Grandpa. We really do wish we were home for it, but we will celebrate is a big way once we do get home.

Only 11 more days!!!