First Day of Forever

There were not many other families waiting when we arrived so we stalked the front door waiting for the first glimpse of him...

He was not happy to see us.  This picture says it all...

They say that a child who grieves strongly in the beginning is a good thing. They are attached to someone and they know you are not that person. That is what I kept telling myself over and over as he cried and cried. This is pain that will be redeemed. Unlike in the US, foster parents are very rarely allowed or able to adopt the children they care for. Carter's orphanage is very large and often children are sent to live with foster families around one year of age. Eventually, most of the children who are not adopted will be moved back to the orphanage once they are a little older. Knowing this makes it a little easier to see so much sadness in this boy I love, but only a little. I am certain, too, that his grief is matched even more so by the woman who has clearly loved him. We can see from photos we received and the food and treats she sent that he was her joy. We also know that she tried her best to prepare him for what lied ahead. The photo albums we sent show signs that he has spent countless hours looking at his new family. When we pulled them out he got very calm and started flipping through the pages as if they were his most favorite books and he pointed at each one of us in every photo. We are not yet the people in the photos to him but maybe his toddler brain will start to make connections soon. 

I love this photo. It captures all of our emotions in one picture...

His orphanage gave us a photo album of pictures of him since he was a baby. It is a treasure!

Inspite of his anger, he very clearly told us he wanted to go outside (which we figured out with the help of a Chinese translator). If we went inside, he screamed louder and pointed back to the door saying, "Over there! Over there!"

We sent him this bunny in a care package and it has a recording of us telling him in Chinese, "Baba loves you! Mama loves you! Sister loves you! Brother loves you!" His foster mother sent it with him and he would not let it go. Every so often he would rub it against his cheek and stop crying for just a few seconds. Right now he is even sleeping in my arms with his head resting on the bunny. He loves to squeeze it and hear us talk and will look at us as if he is starting to figure out that we match the bunny voices.  Then he starts crying again.  Between the lollipop, the bunny, the sweat, snot, and tears, we were all on big sticky mess before it was time to go. 

It took less than five minutes in the hotel for a game of catch to start...

And of course playing catch brought us the first smile...

He loves his Baba and doesn't want him out of his site...

FaceTime with Papa....

Big sister introducing him to Instagram...

Being silly with his sister...