We venture out of our Simferopol apartment in the morning.  There’s a river parkway a block away, with gardens and ponds and waterfalls and ducks.  Liliana explores, sings, babbles, and picks up more trash.

We’re not sure which baby we’ll get from second to second.  One minute Liliana’s saying “spa-SEE-bah” (“thank you” in Russian) to everything we give her, and being an all-around angel, and then the storm clouds roll in, and she begins to scream–if she’s told “nyet,” if she doesn’t get to keep something she wants, if Dan sits next to her.

We’ve been able to observe her behaviors now close-up for 48 hours.  She has this thing she does while screaming or throwing a fit in her bed, where she whips her head from side to side, glancing to the far left, then the far right, and so on, so you think she’d get dizzy or sick, whichever comes first.  She looks like she’s on a psych ward.  It’s obviously a coping mechanism, and I’m not sure how to make it stop.  [That’s not quite what I mean.  I want to know what the root problem is.]

I know the University of Minnesota has an International Adoption medical center, and I’ll probably have to rely on their expertise as soon as we get home.  She sucks on the first two fingers on her right hand and makes a clicking noise with her tongue.  This puts her to sleep.  I’ve been sitting with her until she drifts off to sleep, and I’ve been able to prevent some of what she’s doing, but again, it’s not the behavior I’m concerned about.  It’s what’s causing it.  She’s under stress, and I’m sure she hasn’t had a full night’s sleep in a long time (all the toddlers slept in one room in the orphanage…can you imagine how poorly one might sleep?).

The one who this hurts the most is Dan.  She is an absolute sweetheart with him for hours, then in one split second, she gets it into her mind that she wants mama and not papa.  If you’ve not gone through something like this, I won’t be able to explain it to you, but it’s very difficult to bond with a child who’s screaming while you’re holding him or her.  And when it’s repetitive, like it’s been with Liliana, all I can say is that it pains me to watch how much Dan hurts.  I keep telling him it will get better.  But the look on his face says it all, and I don’t blame him.  We’ve spent thousands of dollars more than we expected; he’s losing more money by not working, and he wants to feel that it’s all worth it.  He knows it; it’s just painful to see her push him away, for no reason.  He loves her with all his heart.  May I just say that the most delicious feeling in the world is having someone choose you?  It goes without saying that the opposite is true, too.

That’s how it is right now, and I just want to be on the other side of it.