Letting Go

It's been five weeks and I feel like we're starting to see breakthrough.  

It's funny to me that "Let it Go" has taken the world by storm, as it parallels the emotions were experiencing inside our home. Sweet Boy's version of letting go comes through various degrees of tears that surface every few minutes...but at least he's feeling...and starting to let us in. His road to recovery is going to be much longer than his sister's and I don't believe it will, fully, start until we can tell him our plans/ask if he will let us adopt him.

Getting Little Miss to "let go" has been curious because I can't, directly, put my finger on what has changed, other than her attitude toward us.

It's amazing to me that even at her young age, she feels and expresses life-altering change. We didn't do anything different this week, than we did the first four weeks, but something clicked. She's still a firecracker and only knows how to scream when she's not happy, but most of the time...she's happy.

And our complete non-snuggler let us rock her almost every night, this weekend.  

She lost her rigidness and instead, buries her head into my neck when she wants love. And she started giving those ever-precious open-mouthed kisses!

Every time I lay her down to sleep, I've made a practice of leaning in to kiss her cheek, whispering, "Mama loves you...". She giggled every time I did it, this weekend.

I can't believe the transformation.

It's as if she let her guard down to say, "Ok, I feel safe...now, I can just be a baby."

We've embraced the change and are soaking in those cuddles! We got out the Baby Bjorn and started wearing her around the house to help bond and encourage security. 

Here is Ben wearing her, yesterday, during family cleaning.

 

  

I am so grateful for this glimmer of hope for better things to come. We have such a long way to go with Sweet Boy, but this encourages my heart that we can do it -- that what we're doing matters.

I love when weekends end on a high note!