Grief and Laughter

This morning began like most of the other mornings. HG wakes up and begins to say "hmmm. Hmmmm.." She's ready to eat. After breakfast, HV and I sat down with HG to work the Legos and the tools. She gets frustrated when she can't make things do what she wants them to do or what she knows they can do. We push gently for her to do it herself and she is then successful. Well, after that, HG got angry. She turned into a "baby dinosaur" roaring and screeching at me. Now, the whole time she is doing this, she is laying on me, not wanting to get off but yet if you did not see that, you would have thought I was killing her. The wailing continued for about 45 minutes. Intense and deep sadness. While I know she is happy for the attention and her current life situation, I also know that she misses the life that she had. She misses the people. She's confused. You read about this sort of thing in a book but I had not ever experienced it to this level. With HV and HM coming to us as babies, they did experience some grief, but it was not displayed like this. So, I simply sat and held her while she screamed, cried, snotted on me, and continued to lay on me. Suddenly, she stopped but continued to lay there. She was quite tired but wasn't ready to give up for a nap. She stayed pretty close to my side for the remainder of the morning. She got in the backpack without any fussing (she's been wanting to walk herself, not wanting to hold hands or anything). She played with my hair as we walked to Pollo Campero to play on the playground. At Pollo Campero, she wanted to hug the "waitress." Up to this point, she hasn't wanted anyone to pick her up except for me. She'll allow HV to do it to a certain degree, but usually we get the cry for "Monny" (my name today) to do it. The waitress sort of looked and me and patted HG. I'm sure she is still sorting it all out. After Pollo Campero, we picked up some eggs and bread at the grocery and then grabbed a tuk-tuk home. A tuk-tuk is like a 3-wheeled motorcycle and people can ride in the back seat. It's like a short term taxi of sorts. Anyway, from the sound of the laughs coming from HG, you would have thought we were at Six Flags on the best roller coaster. She loved it! Her laugh is quite loud and when she laughs like that, you can tell that she is so excited. Now, she is trying to nap. I don't know if she will do it today or not. I think she has a lot going on in her little mind. Please pray for peace and understanding for her. It's hard enough to be 4 years old but changing families, cultures, and languages makes it even harder.