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We slept in until 6:00! 🙂 That’s almost normal. Today was breakfast, as usual, followed by a couple of “dates” with people back home. It was so good to see their smiling faces again and we got to tell them all about the day yesterday. Today was shopping day here which basically means that the social workers wanted to put the kids in a new situation with us that they weren’t familiar with. Our son was definitely timid again as we came down to greet him, but he started to warm up to us in the van ride over to the department store (which is huge, by the way). As we were walking in, it was another transition, so he was a little nervous, but we got to see some huge smiles and laughing today! I’m not sure what we were even doing, but coming down the escalator, nothing but smiles. We put him in the shopping cart and he was nervous but then realized it was kind of like a race car, so we had great fun there. We walked around the store as the social workers helped us find some last minute needs for the kiddos like diapers and shoes. It was all going so so well… and then it didn’t. The theme for the second half of our time at the store with him was a tantrum on a large scale. Yes, we were that family. He wants to run, I pick him up. He flails, I walk with him, but don’t let go. He can’t just go running free through a department store. Had a whole lot of Thai people staring at me today, but I realized that I can handle it. Thank you, Mom, for that little bit of fight and stubbornness. It came in handy today. 🙂 It wasn’t the highlight of my life, but we made it through.
After the meltdown of a lifetime, we went to McDonalds and all had lunch together and he was back to fantastic! He really enjoyed his first experience with chicken nuggets and fries. He is really good at just sitting and eating his meal quietly. We got lots of giggles and smiles out of him and played little games at the table together. We came back in the van together and he was all excited to see traffic again. As we were getting ready to come into the hotel, I helped him out of the van and he was trying to beat box like Aaron does. 🙂 So cute!
We came back up to the room to spend some more time with him and again, it was really great for about 10 minutes – playing and having a really good time, but then the reality of the situation hit and it was lots more tears and crying to go home… inconsolably. The good news is that I now know what it looks like to grieve and what it looks like to throw a tantrum. Didn’t know what either of those would look like and they are both very different. We waited it out for about a half hour and he let us hold him through that time, but we thought it would be best to get him out of the room, so we spent the next 1 1/2 hours in the courtyard; talking to the fish, checking out the fountain, and watching cars go by and he was much better. We had one tired little boy on our hands, but the social workers told us to keep him awake, so we did. At 2:30, it was time for him to head home. He hurried into the van and eagerly waved goodbye. 🙂 I don’t know what we are going to do when going to see “Mae” isn’t an option anymore. I don’t know how to make him understand that we are home to him now.
Please continue to pray for us! I know you all have been and I can’t tell you how much we value your prayers. It is going to get a lot harder in the next few days before it gets easier. We have a lot of tears and grief to work though in the next few weeks and not being able to be on our own schedule makes that troublesome to me. He hates being in the room, but he is going to need lots of rest. Tomorrow he will be placed with us permanently at around 10:30. We will have a free day to hang out with him and then Wednesday we have a meeting with the Thai adoption board. Hoping for a good night’s rest in there, but don’t know that it will come. Don’t know that I can promise much on blogging from here on out. I hope to keep it up, but his needs come first and these puppies take me a few hours every day to keep updated. We’ll do our best!
It’s kind of surreal, knowing that this is the last night of just Aaron and I. I was feeling kind of sappy and got a little choked up on our way back from dinner tonight. Looking forward to the days ahead, but it is still the end of an era and that’s sad for me.
