Dear Family and Friends,
You have been our cheerleaders, our councilors, our comforters, our encouragers, our prayer warriors and the list goes on and on! We would not be crossing this finish line if it were not for you all! We are so grateful for and humbled by your love and support.
In mere days we will board a plane – a plane that will not only take us to India but will also take us to the starting point of a new journey. The waiting and pining will come to an end and the work in the trenches will begin. This will be the real journey. This will be the hard journey. This will be the worthy journey that God has called us to. We will still desperately need your continued love and support in this new journey, if not more so. We won't stop needing your prayers or your encouragements just because we have our girls in our arms.
I wanted to share some info with you that will help our girls and us transition once we get home. We will likely stay home for good month or so. This is called "cocooning" in the adoption world. We know that all of you will be excited to meet our girls and we will be excited for you to meet them, but we will need to take some time to bond as a family. However, once we do start to socialize a bit more, this information will be helpful for those who interact with us. Honestly, I debated even posting this stuff but I've decided it might be a good idea since damage control for three kids would be pretty hard. We need help from every direction and if you are aware then you can help us on your end!
I'm not reinventing the wheel here. All of these things have been addressed by other adoptive parents before us. You can used these as guidelines for basically all adopting families. Here it goes...
Yes, they are super cute, but please don't hug or hold our girls just yet. We will be trying to teach our girls that WE are their family and WE are the ones who should give and get affection. This is a tough one because we know so many of you love our girls and just want to show that. Please show them through smiles, handshakes and high-fives. That is how we will be teaching our girls to interact with people outside our immediate family and it will be SO much easier if everyone was onboard so we don't have to play defense. Once we feel attachment is secure, then we will allow them to hug and be held by our extended family and very close friends, but this may take a while.
Please don't feed our girls. This is sort of the same concept as above. We will be teaching our girls that WE are their family and that WE meet all their needs. Only Lance and I should be providing food or drink to our girls. If you want to give them a cookie, give it to me or Lance first and we will give it to the child. In the same way, they need to know that we comfort them and help them when they get hurt, so always direct them back to us for any needs that need to be met.
How to give gifts. Consider meals or deserts that all of our family can enjoy. We don't want our girls to grow an expectation of getting gifts every time somebody new walks in the door. If you really want to give them new toys or new clothes, we can collect the gifts from you on the down-low and slowly introduce them to the girls when we feel it's appropriate. We also don't want our Boys to feel left out or less than important. We truly appreciate your kindness, though!
Remember that little ears are always open. Please think about the things you say and ask around our girls and even our boys. You all know that we are passionate about adoption and we are more than willing to tell you all about it. However, conversations about our children's past aren't really appropriate, especially in front of the children. I have a very bad habit of letting words just fly out of my mouth and I have asked curious questions to adoptive families before without realizing the answers I was seeking might be private to the family. Our girls mother passed away and that is the extent of what we will share. The rest of the details are theirs to share or keep as they choose. Also, there may be times where talking about the adoption in general in front of the kids is just not a great idea. We will let you know when that's the case. We encourage you all to ask questions if you have them. Don't be scared. We promise we won't jump down your throat if you use the wrong word or something. We just ask that you consider how your words could effect our kids before you let them go. Thank you for respecting our girls in this way.
Help our girls feel comfortable in their skin. Obviously, our girls are NOT going to look like us. We would really appreciate it if folks don't make comments (as innocent as they may be) about their skin tone or anything that would make them feel more different than they already do. Also, if you haven't already, talk to your children about transracial adoption. Explain how families can look different in many ways.
And one again... Please don't stop praying for us! Adoption is hard and we will no doubt face a lot of tough stuff in the future. We need your continued prayers!
We cannot wait to get our babies home and introduce them to all the wonderful people in our lives! We are so excited to share our journey to India and beyond!
Love,
Kristian
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