when Aya opened up the door to toby's room and he and the other kiddos saw us, he smiled and immediately started toddling over to me with his arms up! yaaaayyeeeeee! he knows us! like usual he just cuddled against me while i rubbed his back. boy, what could warm your heart more than that?
but all the other little kiddos...they all come to the door smiling at you too, with their big dark eyes, and you just think, it's not fair;where are the mommies and daddies for these? there's one very bright boy in that room, he's probably a little older than the others as he's a bit bigger; he gets at my heart the most, because i think he probably understands better than the others that some of these kids are getting mommies and daddies, and some of them aren't. it's so sad.
today we snuck in some food for Toby--just a few little bites of banana, a few sips of juice, and some little strawberry puffs. he loved it! really, it's so weird that you're bonding with this child and you haven't even had a chance to see them eat, or bathe them, or help them go to the poddy...i mean, i do totally understand that things would get out of hand if all the AP's were bringing in food and messing up the kids eating schedules every day, but i think it's also an important part of our bonding with him for us to feed him once or twice. so yes, i broke the rules, and i will argue for it. ;-]
we also got to change his diaper this time (they only wear diapers when the Adoptive Parents bring them in) so yes, it if official; we have seen all of him now, and we know he's a boy. :-)
we did our lotion routine, put a sweatshirt on him, and played with puppets, cars and stacking cups. he loves those little finger puppets! i'm thinking we've gotta save those guys so some day his kids can play with them too; the three generation Peanuts finger puppets!
we got lots of smiles today, and we even managed to get some photos of him smiling when we did the whole "drop the baby" routine. not many sounds and still no words, but he was having fun. when i carried when we took him upstairs, we took a photo with one of his caregivers. she was really nice and Aya thinks she is one of the better ones. she also invited us into the kids' room to take a few photos, which is almost unheard of anymore. they had a great display of kazakh toys and momentos in there, which will be great for the scrap book and also gives us some ideas of what we might pick up here.
we also took a few photos of the sleeping room and toby's bed. they are in toddler beds already at this age, but i think we'll follow the advice of some other AP's and sleep him in a crib for a while. hope he'll make the transition OK.
toby's bed is in the middle row, the bed closest to us. that's where our little guy sleeps! it's so weird to imagine all the little ones laying down there and going to sleep...
so we were feeling really happy about the visit, about getting to see his room, about his reaction to seeing us as we got in the van... and then other couple that visits at the same time got in, clearly discouraged. they are adopting siblings and have faced many more challenges than we during the bonding period. i feel so bad for them...i know everything will get better for them when they get their kids HOME and can parent them and help the older one to work through the confusion of this experience; but for now it's hard on them. they've had a great attitude about it, but it's hard...i wish we could help.
i also know that even though we are having an easy breezy time now during bonding, with our compliant, gentle, and shy child, it won't always be this way. i'm sure we'll have plenty of challenges ahead. but right now, it's not difficult; Toby's as easy to be with as you can imagine. so we're just gonna enjoy that for what it is and not worry too much about what's ahead.
Aya was free today so she came with us to the Bakery (ah, the bakery! mmmm...) for lunch. we love the bakery. the bakery is a very good Ust-ism (if you're on Facebook, you've probably seen my little Ust-ism posts; maybe i'll do a separate post of them here on my blog) anyway, i tried one of their little desserts with my cappuccino, a nice creamy sort of nutty, cakey thing--very tasty:
we had a really interesting afternoon after this, but i think i'll post that separately and get this online now.
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