I thought today would be a wonderful day to update the blog since it has been a year since we received our official match for our son, Gabriel. I still remember that day vividly. Howie and I were awaiting news from our agency to see if we had been chosen to be Gabriel's parents. You see, there were other families interested in him. We all presented information to Bethany, and they prayed about who they thought would be the best family for him. I envisioned getting the phone call at home and celebrating immediately with Howie in our house. Instead, I received the call right after the school day had ended. I yelled with delight and then immediately called Howie. Then, I shared the news with one of my best friends from school, Joanie, who was located next door. She had followed our story from the beginning, and it was so nice to be able to celebrate with someone who knew our ups and downs. Anyway, that was then. This is now!
What has happened after China?! Wow... too much to mention here, but I'll give you the highlights. I think I'll go by topic instead of chronologically for the most part, because some of what we first dealt with upon coming home, we are still dealing with seven months later!! I will say this, though. Despite all the challenges and adjustments that come with adopting a two-year-old child with a special condition from overseas, we love our son, Gabriel, with every fiber of our being. Our lives have been forever changed for the better. He has blessed us beyond measure.
Let me start with some of the positives. First, our son, despite being the cutest kid we've ever seen, has quite a personality!! He loves making us laugh, and his laughter and smile are contagious. We've never experienced this kind of joy before-- the joy that comes from raising a child. At dinner, he'll sometimes play a game with us where he will look very serious or sad, and we'll say, "Oh no... Are you sad?" And then he'll give the biggest smile you've ever seen in your life, and he'll throw his head back and laugh like he tricked us, and he must think we're not very smart, because he'll do it over and over again. Each time, we pretend to fall for it. :) He also experiments with using different voices. He'll usually say, "Mama" in a sweet, innocent voice, and then sometimes he'll say, "Baba" (baba means daddy in Chinese) in a deep voice with eyebrows to match. That makes us laugh every time. Oh... and he expresses every emotion he has with those eyebrows of his. I've never seen anyone else use their eyebrows like he does!! I love that about him.
He's also a very sweet little boy. Sometimes, for no reason whatsoever, he'll just come up to us, hug our legs, and give us a kiss. Lately, when we're building towers with his blocks and my tower falls over, I'll laugh , but he'll come up and give me a consoling hug. So sweet!! He loves "group hugs and kisses" when Baba comes home from work, too. He's also very sensitive. When we first introduced him to a kid's bowling game, for example, he felt bad for the pins that were knocked down and would say, "Oh no!!" and make a sad face. I think he understands now that "things" don't have feelings, but at first, he thought that everything did. He'll also try to help us around the house. He loves putting away his clean laundry, and he is delighted when I vacuum, and helps by moving the cord around for me. :) Sometimes, he's too helpful, like at diaper changes and when loading the dishwasher, but overall, he knows when to help, and he'll usually listen when we tell him that we need to do something on our own. He also loves to pray at dinner time and will remind us to pray sometimes when we're in a hurry and have forgotten. He usually listens to the prayer but chimes in with a definite, "Amen" at the end and then starts clapping and sings an Amen or two, because we once sang the "Amen" song after praying, and well, it stuck just like that. He loves it. He'll sing a little bit of it, and now he even claps along with the beat. We sing it every single night now for our enjoyment. :)
Just as we assumed from the first video that we saw of him at the orphanage in China, he is very smart. He already recognizes his ABCs (capital letters) and can count to five if we help him out with the number three. He can sort objects by color but is still learning the names of colors, except for purple. That one, he knows very well. He loves puzzles and books!! He'll bring me enough books to read to him for half an hour. He has a pretty long attention span for a two-year-old. He also loves playing with play dough, coloring, and dancing with Mama and Baba. Right now, his favorite song is "The Hokey Pokey," and he can do the movements (but doesn't know his right from left, obviously). He can say, "Go Colts" and recently said, "Go Seahawks" very clearly, which surprised us. He says, "I love you" something like, "Lalalalovelu" and says various other short phrases like, "Right there," "See ya," "There it is," etc. His speech is a little delayed, but he was evaluated by First Steps, and they think he'll catch up in time and will accelerate especially when he enters daycare in the fall. They weren't too concerned with it yet. He can't say many blended consonants and can't say words with "s" in them, and never says plurals, but then again, they don't use plurals in China, so I've heard. He'll catch on, I'm sure. If not, we'll get some early intervention from the school system when he's three.
Developmentally, he's doing very well. He's above and beyond outstanding in his fine motor skills, which we guessed from the video in China. (They give them toys that they could choke on, so they're used to handling small objects from an early age.) He's very social. It looks like we have an extroverted little one on our hands, which will be interesting for two introverted parents!! His gross motor is behind that of his peers, but again, we hope that he will catch up when the weather gets warmer, his special condition is more managed, and he can play on the playground more. He's doing pretty well considering that he was not walking steadily when we first met him in China, at age two. (He had showed marked improvement by the time we left China, though. We think he was held quite a bit by the workers there. He still loves to be held "up," but with his weight increasing, we won't be able to do this much longer!)
Emotionally, there are some things that orphanage kids deal with that other kids don't have an experience with. We've seen some of these things and are working through them little by little. He's used to running the show, so we're letting him know that we're in charge. He's used to throwing his leftover food on the floor, so we have him do "do-overs" to pick up the food, and those are very effective. We haven't seen him throw food on the floor in probably a week or two now. Victory!! Sleep is different for him. He's not left alone in a room of about 15 other kids at night, but he still feels anxious. A lot of orphanage kids have trouble sleeping at night, and Gabriel is no exception. This is a hard one to overcome, but we're working on it. Diaper changes can also be hard for him. This could stem from his special condition, his first six months of life at a hospital in China, the orphanage, or just something new that he's feeling now that he's actually on medication for his condition. It's hard to say.
He's seen some of his friends from the orphanage in their new homes and seems to recognize them, and a picture of one of his friends from the orphanage is hanging on our fridge, because he'll soon be coming home to a family that lives very close to us. We're excited for them to meet up again and hope that they will become good friends once more. To be able to grow up with another adopted boy from China is wonderful in itself, but to grow up with one from his orphanage?! Wow... what a blessing!!
He's also really enjoyed the holidays that he's experienced-- the Chinese festival, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas!! Next up, Chinese New Year!!!!!
I'll also let everyone know about Gabriel's health, since this is something we've dealt with on a daily basis since welcoming him into our family. A few months after arriving home, we went to see a specialist at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio and found out that Gabriel's intestinal surgery that was performed in China was done correctly by the surgeon there. This is extremely rare, and in addition to that, he has only one minor, related diagnosis (a low level reflux of his left kidney) that he will likely outgrow in time. This is excellent news for our son and for us, since his condition can often come with a host of other problems.
Even with the good surgery, though, we still have to manage our son's condition with a very strict diet and over-the-counter medication which has to be tweaked and re-tweaked. We're still tweaking, in fact, mostly because he's recently developed another gastrointestinal problem that will be checked out by a couple of specialists and will hopefully be resolved soon. The down side to his special condition is that regular GI doctors really don't know much about it, but to solve this related problem, they HAVE to know something about it or at least how we have to treat it. Altogether, despite the good surgery, it's been a rough journey with this condition, and right now especially, it's pretty socially isolating, too. There aren't many days that we can venture out of the house for fear of some big messes occurring. We do most of our outings when Howie is at home so that at least two of us are there to deal with it. Things should get better eventually, but we have a ways to go on this journey before that happens. Our hope is that these problems get better before he has to go to daycare next fall.
I do have to say that I am blessed to belong to a Facebook group of other mamas who have adopted children (mostly from China) with this same condition. Without their support and advice and the support of other close friends and family, I really don't know how we would have managed such a complex condition. We are so thankful to those who have kept our son and us in your prayers. With God, we will overcome these difficulties
Well, that's the short version of everything that we've experienced since China!! :) We are so thankful that we were matched with our son. God has truly blessed us with his life. Never far from our minds and hearts are his other parents-- the ones who were unable to raise him, most likely due to his medical condition and the expense that the surgery would have cost. We hope that, deep down, they know that he is alive and is with another family who loves him very much.
This journey and our son continue to amaze and inspire us... and I'll try to do a better job at updating the blog more often so that you can continue to share in our journey.
No comments:
Post a Comment