I hope you did not miss our awesome post from yesterday about our new little girl, Rihanna! Our blog website lost a bunch of posts from all over the place and really, can a new mother of 3 be expected to re-create what was lost??!!
Anyways, this is day 3 with Ri (or Ri-Ri, as she calls herself...or Ri-na-na, as Will calls her). We are doing some "cocooning", as my caseworker calls it, trying to stay together and home a lot so that Rihanna feels safe and taken care of, and so she is not afraid of us going anywhere or giving her to another family. She is really enjoying having a brother and sister, except when one of them is playing with a toy that she wants! I am doing a lot of role-playing and coaching to teach them how to handle these situations. This has been 3 days of intense mothering, and I am so thankful for my small group (from church) who came and cleaned our house and brought us meals this week.
The hardest time for Rihanna has been bedtime. Either she just doesn't like bedtime in general (like most kids) or she may be afraid of Troy and I leaving her alone, although she still has Cate to keep her company. When we leave the room for bedtime or naptime, she screams until I return. I have to scratch her back to calm her down and then she falls asleep.
I keep looking at my THREE kids and thinking, oh my gosh, this is crazy! We know up's and down's are coming, but I have to say that it feels so good to know that we are giving a real home to a girl who did not have one. It makes me think of the Bible verses, "God defends the cause of the fatherless" and "he sets the lonely in families".