The Fallout from Two Weeks Away from Home

We made it home from our road trip safely on Wednesday, but not without a whole lot of drama.  About an hour from my mom's (and roughly 25 hours from home), Sarah had a major meltdown.  She screamed and cried for about 20 minutes.  We pulled into a parking lot, and I struggled with her to get her out of the carseat, thinking a little walk might help.  It didn't, and 10 minutes later, I had to struggle with her to get her back into the seat.  She was distraught.  She finally fell asleep down the road a bit. 

She had a couple of other screaming fits over the next couple of days.   She had clearly had enough traveling.  Tuesday night, she had her toys strewn all over the hotel room.  When I picked up a couple of books to make a path to the bathroom, she screamed, ran over, grabbed the books from my hand, and put them back exactly where they'd been.  I ended up riding in the back seat with her for a while on Wednesday because she was begging to come into the front seat with me.

Needless to say, she was thrilled to be home and quite content spending time in familiar surroundings with just Mom and Dad on Thursday and Friday.  Then, Omar, Emily, Sophia, Rachel, and Matt arrived on Saturday to celebrate her birthday.  She was having so much fun that she refused to take a nap, which turned out to be disastrous.

She had a meltdown before dinner, then two in the evening before Omar, Emily, and Sophia left.  She was inconsolable and irrational.  After a poor night's sleep, she was up at 5:45 Sunday morning.  By lunchtime, she had become hysterical.  Poor Rachel and Matt wisely hit the road.  She refused to eat lunch but finally drank some warm milk and went to sleep.  When she woke three hours later and found just Don and me, she seemed to regain her footing.  Today, she's back to her chipper self.

Although two-year-olds are notorious for their emotional tirades, I think there was more at work for Sarah.  Over the last few weeks, she's spent time with many different people, getting comfortable with them, then being taken away from them.  I think this may have triggered some traumatic memories for her -- of spending her first year with a foster mother she loved, then being taken from her.  She had no control over that situation, and she was feeling the same way about the last few weeks.  She was emotionally and physically exhausted.

My last post was about the anniversary of our becoming a family.  Some people feel the day is definitely one to celebrate for adoptive parents but may be bittersweet for adopted children.  After all, it was the day the world as they knew it crumbled around them...probably the scariest one of their lives.  I have mixed emotions about commemorating it.  It's sadly ironic that, as we honored our first year together, Sarah was struggling to deal with new feelings of loss and maybe re-experiencing old ones.  She doesn't have the language to talk about such things, so she showed her feelings the only way she could -- by screaming.

I don't regret our trip because I think the pluses outweighed the minuses for her.  She got to know many important people in her life, and that's valuable.  I'm sorry for her pain, but I think it will be easier for her to deal with such feelings in the future, when she can talk about them.  It will be my job to be open to discussing them with her and validating them.  As she grows, she will also have more say in how we honor our Family Day.  We're all in this together.

I'm a little late posting this; I wrote it almost a week ago. Sarah seemed to adjust to being home again and was pretty happy the last few days -- no meltdowns, thank goodness.  She went to bed beautifully but struggled with sleep, crying out and waking in the middle of the night.  I'm afraid trips will be stressful for her for a long time.

We arrived yesterday at a resort in northern Minnesota for a week . After the fallout of the last trip, I was really worried about this one and regretting our scheduling. I think it will be okay, though, since it will be just the three of us (plus Cadi), and we're staying in one place. I hope it will be a chance for us all to relax. We'll see....