Day 6 in China

Hi everyone!  It's day 6 for us in China and day 3 with our beautiful, sweet son, Gabriel.  Today is our first free day with him, and boy are we glad.  Yesterday, we spent eight hours going from hot building to hot building doing paperwork on the China side of things.  By the
end of the day, we were all worn out, and Gabriel was bored to tears.  We learned our lesson.  Always bring toys, food, and water when travelling with kids--but we had no idea it was going to be a day long affair either.

Gabriel has had a much better day today.  He has had many smiles , which we love to see,  But when he gets tired, off go the smiles like a switch and on come the tears that only a nap can cure, and he is sticking to the orphanage nap schedule even when we think we have other plans, so we adjust.

We love him so much.  Here are some of the moments that we will treasure forever from our first few days with him.   Day one, we met him at the hotel.  He was in the lobby with the other little ones, and it was about nap time.  As Howie signed some papers, an orphanage worker gave me a biscuit cookie so I could hand it to Gabriel.  He ate a little bit and then offered the rest to me.  That was so sweet.  I handed it back to him, and he continud the ritual until he was done with the treat.  Then, since it was nap time, his legs turned into noodles, and he began to moan a little bit.  I tried to console him by holding him, but he just reached out for the orphanage worker who was there.  She and I then went to the little fish pond further away from everyone else in the lobby, and he stood there calmly watching the fish with us for several minutes.  While he was focused on that, the orphanage worker sneaked away and left the two of us together.  A little bit later, he became cranky again from the commotion of the day and his tiredness, and then Howie came by and took over while I went to sign the papers.  When I returned, Howie was holding our son, patting his back, and chanting a little song that he had made up for him.  He soon succeeded at getting our son to sleep.  At that point, our hotel rooms were ready for us, and Gabriel slept for about two hours before we had to get up and do the start of the official adoption work. That night, we Skyped with our families and Gabriel sat in my (Jenn's) lap and just smiled and laughed, esspecially when I tickled him.  We also went out to dinner that night and had to ask for a baby high chair and order food and ask for safe bottled water at a restaurant that was celebrating its grand opening.  We received some help from a man at the table next to us, thank goodness.  The Chinese people have been very kind to us everywhere we have gone.  After eating at the restaurant we asked the waiter to take a picture of us in front of the name of it.  He did, and then a couple of babas who were holding their young daughters in their arms came up to us, handed the waiter their phones and had him take a picture of all of us together.  LOL!!  Yesterday was kind of a wash because of all the busyness, but a lot of people came by to admire our son, and one gave his cheek an affectionate little pinch.

This morning, Gabriel woke up, and we finally saw some morning smiles out of him.  He found out how he could spritz his face with his sippy cup, and he thought that was just hilarious.   We thought it was cute and funny too.  He also played with his phone and loved hearing all the different sounds it made.  When he handed it to me, I would say , hello? And he would laugh.  Howie has had fun playing with him too, but when Gabriel wants to be consoled or held, he always wants his baba.  No one else will do.  He adores his daddy, andI love seeing the bond between them.  As of now, he seems to be bonding to both of us, which is nice.

Well, I imagine he's going to be up pretty soon, and then we'll have a small, late lunch so that we can have dinner on time and have him back to his night time sleep schedule.  Tomorrow is another busy day, but we get to visit his orphanage, which will be interesting.

I will leave you with some pictures of our sweet son.