It's Puzzle Time

If we made a mistake after adopting Jun it was that we paid him too much attention.  He was the center of our world and there was no doubt about that.  We both woke him up each morning, we both helped him get dressed, we both made his breakfast, we both ate dinner with him, we both got him ready for bed, we both sat with him when it was time for a book at the end of the day… you get the point, we both spent all of our free time making Jun feel special.    

We adopted Lena for many reasons, but the biggest was that we felt like our family was “un-finished” with only one child.  We felt like Jun really needed a sibling.  We knew he was happy with just us, but we also thought he needed more than just the 2 of us in his family.  After China pre-approved our application to adopt Lena I started to worry.  All I kept thinking it, “Jun is gonna freak”.  In many ways he adjusted better than we expected after his adoption, but he is so possessive of us that my mom has joked that she doesn’t usually hug Todd when she sees him for fear that the hug may upset Jun.  

I know Jun wants to want to be a big brother, I can see him trying to like being a big brother, but then his sister squeezes her way onto my lap by pushing him over a little and he just freaks out.  He wants her gone, he wants his mother back, his toys back, his house back… She doesn’t help matters any because she usually grunts at him a bunch of times and then tries to push him off my lap.  This scene turns into a giant grunting/pushing match which then ends in tears for both kids.

I’m told this is all very normal so I’m trying my hardest not to freak out about it.  But I’m also trying to help/force their relationship along by forcing everyone into family activities on a daily basis.  We mostly build puzzles and play games.  I can’t say this has really done anything to help the situation so far.  Jun usually tries to grab puzzle pieces from Lena and she often removes whatever piece he just added, but there are also lots of moments when they forget to fight and just work together so for now I’m going to keep forcing the family/team building exercises each night :)