The First Day of School

Chae wrote:

Are you 8 years old?
Have you left the only life you have known and flown more than 9,000 miles with strangers?
Are you going through a 100% change in your lifestyle?
Are you in a place where no one understands what you are saying?
Are you in place that you don’t understand what others are saying to you?

Our son did all of the above and more!!

He came to “America” on 9/12.
He went to Walmart and got too excited at seeing all the toys and groceries.
He experienced his first worship service at church on 9/20.
His first day of school was on 9/23 (11 days after he got home).
His first trip to Great Clips for a haircut on 9/26

He did everything so bravely!!

Today, he met his cousin for the first time and received a batman as a gift. He buckled-up the batman for his safety on the way to the toy store. We decided to introduce him to Toys-R-Us today. We were afraid since the Walmart toy section was too overwhelming for him and he gets too excited every time we visit (we buy food there so we go often…).

Today at Toys-R-Us, we let him know he could pick two toys. We started walking around from the entrance to the end of the store. He studied each toy very carefully, very thoughtfully, very seriously, and very CALMLY. He picked two first and traded as he saw something he liked better. It was amazing how he did today. He has changed so much since 9/1. We had a lot of fun today!

Larry's Blues

Chae Wrote:

Joshua singing “Larry’s Blue” on a microphone made out of TinkerToys.

He loves to sing “If you like to talk to Tomatos…” a VeggieTales song and singing the blues with Larry the Cucumber also from VeggieTales. He giggles and laughs as he is singing and he also shakes his leg. Totally Elvis P.!!!!!

Todd Wrote:

Sorry it has taken awhile to post an update. We got home around 8:30pm Saturday night. After going without sleep for around 36 hours and spending 20+ hours in the air we were exhausted. You can see in the picture who got sleep and who didn’t. It was taken at the Bangkok airport around 3:30am. Joshua handled the trip really well considering it was his first time. It will take time for all of us to adjust and we have our ups and downs. We haven’t done much this week except let Joshua get used to his new home and to having a dog in the house. He has already tried out the pool even though it was cold, too cold for me. He liked the pool noodles Angela bought for him. We went to the park yesterday and then to get ice cream.

A special thanks to our friends from North Carolina for meeting us at the airport and staying the night with us. Joshua was reunited with a friend that he grew up with and to have someone he knew meet him at the airport and also to accompany him home was a big comfort to him but it was more a blessing to us. We can never thank them enough!

Signing Off From Bangkok!

Todd Wrote:

I’m writing this at 10:00pm on Friday (Bangkok Time). We leave for the airport at 2:00am so I doubt we will get much sleep. We arrive back in Lexington at 8:30pm Saturday. We didn’t do much today but work on packing all of our stuff and trying to keep below the weight limit. It’s hard to believe we have been here two weeks. Joshua is worried about the trip; he had a hard time falling to sleep tonight. I think he was afraid we wouldn’t wake him up even though we assured him we would through the social worker. His social workers visited us here at the hotel and brought lunch and a few more gifts for Joshua. You can really tell they sincerely loved him and will miss him a lot. They also brought us a 4GB thumb drive and 4 CDs full of Joshua’s pictures from when he was a baby, his birthday parties, and other special events in his life. We were really thankful to get those so that he will always have them. Also, several of the toys we brought with us for Joshua, he decided to leave for the other children (except the army men, he is taking those with him). He never hesitated in this decision. We thought that was really generous of him. We told him we would buy him the exact toys when we got home.

This is our last post until we get home. Again, I would like to thank everyone for their encouraging comments and prayers during our stay here. They were needed and very much appreciated.

Chae Wrote:

You Have Not Because You Ask Not

Absolutely for no reason, I didn’t even bribe him. All I did was put my face in front of his and point my finger to my cheek and got a noisy kiss. I’m still second but am slowly catching up. I will be the favorite one of these days.

Thank you for all of your comments and prayers, they made a difference.

We're Outta Here!

Todd Wrote:

We have Joshua’s visa and will be on the plane Saturday morning. We went to the visa interview this morning at 8:00am and waited for about 45 minutes for the interview to begin. It really wasn’t an interview at all; we were called to the window, signed some papers, and were told to come back at 3:00pm to pick up the visa. I went back and picked it up with no problems. We will spend the day tomorrow getting everything packed up and will leave for the airport at 2:00am Saturday morning. We’re ready to get home and get Joshua settled. We appreciate everyone’s prayers during our stay here. It has been an experience I will never forget.

Chae Wrote:

Crayola Color Explosion!!

I presented it to Joshua today at the embassy while we were waiting for his Visa interview. He rested his head on my shoulder with a sweet looking face while I was opening the package for him. He was clinging to my arm. Ahh, it was a very short 2 minutes of fame but it was all worth it.
We brought DVDs, toys and coloring books and I surprise him whenever he gets bored. I have run out of all my bribe items except I still have a Barrel of Monkeys. I don’t know if the Monkeys will work or not!!

Today, after the Visa interview, we went back to the facility for Joshua to see his friends and caregivers. We weren’t going to do that at first because the first goodbye was too emotional for all of them. But we realized that Joshua needs it as the time gets closer. We are glad we did it. We bought McDonalds for all the young ones and his friends. They had food together and his rival at the facility gave his t-shirt to Joshua because Joshua wanted to have it (they normally are not friendly to each other). They played some, wrestled some, and group hugged some. No one cried but I saw the sadness behind their smiles. My heart ached. It was thundering and raining while we were there. There was also heavy rain the first day we met Joshua and the director told us that they were very happy for him but also sad that he is leaving. They will miss him so much. She said “even the sky is crying.” The sky is crying again today.

We didn’t see Joshua afraid of rain and thunder during our time together but he was this evening. I think the reality finally hit him. That he is leaving all his mamas, friends, his only home and life he has known for 8 yrs. We didn’t see tears nor did he admit that he is scared but we saw it behind his smile. I look forward to the day when he will be able to freely express his feelings.

PS: Todd and I both have had colds all week and haven't felt well. We are worried that we will pass it on to Joshua which would make the plane ride home even more miserable for him. Please continue to keep us in your prayers.

It's Official!

Todd Wrote:

Joshua is now officially part of our family! The DSDW meeting went well. We met our social workers at 8:40am and rode with them to the meeting. We arrived at the meeting around 9:30am and only had to wait around 20 minutes. The actual meeting with the board members only lasted around 10 minutes and everything went well. Joshua did very well. Since we are under the new rules, it takes a little longer to get the final documents from the board so we weren’t able to get Joshua’s visa today. We are scheduled for his visa interview tomorrow (Thurs) morning at 8:00am at the embassy. Hopefully, if all goes well, when we post tomorrow we will have Joshua’s visa in hand. We have been here almost two weeks and are ready to go home.

Chae Wrote:

The kiss that almost stole the DSDW thunder.

This evening mommy got a noisy kiss on the chic, hugs, and “I love you” with a welcome invitation to join the bed time story with Dad. Every evening, Todd has been reading to Joshua from Todd’s NIV Bible and we join hands together to pray. Then I leave the bed and Todd continues with a bed time story from a Children’s Bible. To help us to bond, we both have been laying down with him but normally I wasn’t welcome. But this evening, he made ROOM for me to join in with a hand patting on the bed and gesture to “come on”. The reason? Not the DSDW but the new pool float. Oh, he was happy over the DSDW approval but for Joshua, the float definitely stole the DSDW’s thunder. He not only enjoys his new float he is sleeping with it.

DSDW Tomorrow

Todd Wrote:

Yesterday was a tough day for all of us but especially for Joshua. The social workers came in the evening and helped us communicate with each other. They spent a couple hours with us and then we had dinner together. This was a big help for Joshua and us. Today was much better. The social workers came again today to watch Joshua swim and he was very proud of himself.

Tomorrow is our DSDW board meeting. We have to be there at 9:00am which will be 10:00pm Tuesday evening in the US. We were told we will be going second which means we should be done fairly early. This was surprising because most of the time the older children go towards the end which would have meant waiting a couple hours. We had hoped to be able to get the documents we need from the board meeting and go to the embassy in the afternoon but we were told that because we are under the new rules we won’t receive the final document until late in the evening so we will go to the embassy first thing the next morning. When I was there last week they told me they could finish everything the same day. I hope that is the case and we can fly out as scheduled early Saturday morning. We have a very early flight and will have to leave the hotel around 2:30am.

The picture is of the hotel door man. They are making the Thai sign for hello/thank you. He is a very lively person and is always talking to Joshua. Joshua has come to look forward to seeing him every day. As soon as he sees Joshua coming he yells his name and they shake hands. All of the hotel staff are extremely friendly and helpful and have made our stay here easier.

Chae Wrote:

The first thing we did today was go shopping for Joshua’s shoes before he got too tired. We had a hard time finding shoes for him. Bangkok has many places to shop from several malls to street venders but very few sold children’s shoes and then the selection was extremely limited. The shoes in the picture were the best we could find but Joshua didn’t seem to care much. He said “yes” to any new shoes we showed him. He has been working with the Rosetta Stone English software this week and he was able to tell us the color of his shoes in English-- “Gray”, “Orange”, and “Black.”

We are fascinated by how smart he is and how fast he learns. The Rosetta Stone Software has a word selection game with photos and he will play it for hours. Throughout the day he repeats the words he learns. Today he learned country names. He walked around saying “Germany” “Finland” “England” “Italy”. He started saying “come on mommy” “Excuse me”, “Thank you very much”, “no hungry”, and “full” on the 2nd day.

Unlike many other older child adoptions, our Joshua trusted us from the beginning. He doesn’t care where he goes as long as he is with us. He likes to play ball and swim with us. But he also likes to play alone. He spent at least 2-3 hours at different times playing with his cars and army toys. His caregivers mentioned to us that he liked to do it at the facility but never was able to because of so many little ones. He played for hours with his new Lego Pirates set his friend he has known for a long time who now lives in the US sent to me to give him. He said “Wasin” when we showed him the photo that was taped on the box.

Today, mommy scored big time by surprising Joshua with swimming goggles. He is so determined to learn how to swim. He seemed very frustrated the first day at the pool. I think he believed he would be able to swim automatically once he got in the water. Today he started to put his face in the water and had fun repeating that. He started out covering his whole face with his hands when he went underwater but after a while he did it without covering his face. He doesn’t want us to help him. He just wants us to stand back and watch what he can do. So we just stood around and cheered as he tried to learn.

PS:
Joshua let me help him get ready for bed tonight. At first he didn’t want me to but gave in later. I think we are making progress.

Todd Wrote:

Joshua is very curious about any type of electronics. He loves the computer and will play the language game for hours. We also had a little incident with the electronic safe in the room. We keep our wallets, laptop, video camera, etc in there and just make sure it is locked whenever we leave the room. Today I went to get something from the safe and when I entered the code I had set it wouldn’t unlock. Turns out, at some point, Joshua figured out how to punch in the key sequence to lock it but couldn’t tell us what the code was to unlock it. We had to get hotel security to come up and unlock it for us. Will have to remember his curiosity toward electronics when we get home or who knows what could happen—I’m picturing microwave and fork for starters.

Todd wrote;

Yesterday, (Friday, 9/4) was an interesting day. To give you a little background, ever since we began the adoption process for Joshua we knew he had eye glasses and was supposed to wear them all the time but in all the pictures we received of him, only a couple showed him actually wearing them. During his Visa medical exam, the doctor told us it was important for him to wear them all the time so today we told him through hand gestures that he needed to wear them. He didn’t want to but we persisted and he agreed to put them on. He seems to be very self conscience about them and didn’t want to wear them in public but again we talked him into it. He would put them on and when we weren’t looking would take them off and put them in his pocket. We would remind him again and he would put them on only to take them off when we weren’t looking. Finally, we had someone who could speak English ask him why he didn’t want to wear them and he told them they hurt his eyes. We took him to a vision center to have them check the glasses and they told us they were the wrong prescription and tried to test his eyes to determine the correct one. They weren’t able to do it and told us we needed to take him to an optometrist. We took him back to the same hospital where we got his medical exam and they did an eye exam and gave us the correct prescription and explained to him we were going to get him new glasses. He was happy and we think he will wear them once he gets the new ones. They are supposed to be ready next Thursday. We felt bad about pushing him to wear the old ones but we had no idea they were the wrong prescription. We bought him some Thai/English books and he loves to read them. The picture is of him reading while waiting on his eye exam.

Chae Wrote:

We still didn’t make it shopping for Joshua’s new shoes. We went to the mall after the eye exam but as soon we got out of the cab we turned around and left. Everywhere we go we are the center of attention and everyday we see more and more different behavior and we are not sure how to respond. We expected some adjustment and bonding issues but this seems to be different behavior that we are seeing. We think he is behaving this way due to adjustment and bonding issues and also the communication barrier but it could also be a medical issue. It is very hard because we don’t know. We had to avoid dinner out and shopping yesterday and come back to the hotel to eat because it was getting too hard. Going to the optical store and hospital was enough public attention for him and us. He seems to be fonder of Todd than me and we have to deliberately remind him constantly that I’m also part of the family. He hasn’t fully rejected me, but he would rather Todd do everything for him than me. I researched this a lot and heard it from other adoptive mothers and know it is common in adoptions but didn’t expect it to actually be this hard. I thought the people I had read about were just whining :-) I know this is a journey and that everything will not always be smooth sailing but it is hard when you are in the middle of it. Please continue to keep Joshua and us in your prayers.

Visa Medical Exam/Long Conversations!

Todd Wrote:

Didn’t do much yesterday but hang out at the hotel. Joshua had fun with his legos and army men. We also went to the pool for the first time. I don’t think he had ever been to a pool so it took him a while to get used to it. Once he did he had a blast. We went to McDonalds for dinner, he loves eating there. He is a big eater!

When he woke up this morning the first thing he said was that he wanted to go swimming. We told him he had to wait (the best way we knew how by saying 6 and showing him my watch) until this evening because we had to go get his Visa Medical Exam. He was really worried because he knew he might have to get a vaccination. When he found out he needed to get a shot he got really scared but he knew he had to get it or he couldn’t leave with us. I thought I was going to have to hold him but he told me no, and gave me a stand back hand gesture. His whole body was shaking with fear and he and the nurse had a long conversation in Thai. We have no idea what they talked about but he looked really concerned and it sounded like he was asking her a bunch of questions. In the end he let her give him the shot with no problems. He was really brave.
Also, when he was in an exam room getting his height/weight and eyes checked he walked past a machine that looked like a blood pressure machine in a Walmart pharmacy and he started another long conversation with the nurse and the next thing we knew he was sitting down at the machine and she checked his blood pressure. He is a very curious boy and wants to understand things around him.

After finishing with the exam, we went to lunch at McDonalds (again) and afterwards were going to the shopping center to buy him his own tennis shoes and sun glasses so he wouldn’t have to wear dads in the hotel room. The McDonalds was connected to the shopping center and as we were eating he showed us his palm in a stopping gesture, pointed to the connecting door to the shopping center, and said “no”, followed by a swimming gesture. So we came back to the hotel and went swimming. I guess he can wear mine for another day.

Forgot to mention in yesterday's post that Joshua is in the second grade.

Yesterday

Chae wrote.

Yesterday (Tuesday, Sep 2nd), we visited Joshua’s school. We met and said thanks to his principle and his teachers. Joshua passed around snacks that we bought for his classmates and said goodbye to them. They said “Ooooh” when the teacher announced he will be going to the US with his mom and dad. The whole class lined up for a group photo. It was very nice and thoughtful of his teacher!!

The whole school gathered in the school yard at the end of the day and lined-up nicely in a sitting position. The children cheered each time the principle said something on the loud speaker. Then they sang a song (I think it was the school anthem). After the song, each line got up and marched out to the school buses. Joshua and the other school aged children who also stay at the facility marched to the white minivan. The white minivan has the facility name written in red. We rode with them back to the facility.

At the facility, Joshua had a farewell party with his friends. We had one of Joshua’s favorite foods for dinner at the party. It was called sticky rice and roasted pork from a street vender. I tried each to capture the flavor so I can cook for him at home. So far, it was the best Thai food I have tasted.

After dinner, we just hung out with the other kids. Some played ball with Todd. Some did group dancing. Some played with balloons. Then they got very loud and I enjoyed every minute of it. I pray to God for them, for their forever home and for their reunion after they get older.

After the party, we got a taxi back to our hotel as his friends and caregivers waved good-bye. We were going to visit them frequently while we are here but I don’t think I can do that anymore. One emotional goodbye is enough for them.

Joshua was loved by so many people. We were told that he had only one backpack full of things (mostly gifts). So untrue!! We brought a big suit case with us just for him but I think either we will have to ship some stuff home or buy another suit case for all his belongings.

My favorites of his things are a kindergarten graduation photo, a small blue Christmas tree (I know, I am not kidding. It is sitting on our hotel desk right now), a stuffed Santa Clause, his baby blanket, school uniform, school journals and a tiny Spiderman T-Shirt. He will needs a huge memory box when we get home. Most were gifts but some belonged to the facility but they allowed him to take things he wanted to keep for his memory. This was so unexpected and I am so thankful for all the ladies at the facility. They were unbelievably nice and full of compassion for the children.

Joshua has a very tender heart. We thank God for His blessing to us.

Thumbs Up!

We are writing this post at around 4:30am on Wednesday, still not fully adjusted to the time difference. No words can truly describe yesterday so I will just give a quick run down of how the day went.

We arrived at the facility at around 9:20am and before we could make it all the way inside, Joshua came running out to meet us with a big hug! There was no hesitation, no fear, just joy to see us and the feeling was mutual! We went inside, gave him a gift that we brought, and spent about an hour playing with him. We then met with the director and went over some information. After that, we played some more with Joshua and his new gift. We then toured the facility and met all of the caregivers. What an amazing group of ladies.

We were told that Joshua would probably need time to adjust to us and may get to leave with us on Thursday or Friday depending on how things went. Well, Joshua wasn’t having any of that, he told his caregiver he was ready to go and so we packed up his stuff and he came with us yesterday! He needed a few things so we decided to go shopping and two of his caregivers volunteered to come with us. It was raining when we got ready to leave and his caregiver commented that Joshua needed a hat. It just so happened that we brought a couple with us for just such an occasion so we stopped by the hotel on the way to get them. As you can see by the picture, they proved to be adequate. We had a fun afternoon at the mall and picked up everything he needed. We had a late lunch there together and then we grabbed a taxi back to the facility to drop off the caregivers and came back to the hotel.

We hung out in the room for a little while getting things situated and realized the room was way too small for the three us and the nerf football that dad just happened to bring with us. We decided to go downstairs to have dinner and then see if there were any larger rooms available. Our first dinner together went well as you can see by the pictures. His main course selection was excellent but the caffeinated drink, not so much. After dinner, we were able to get a larger room and went back upstairs to move our stuff. Joshua was a big help carrying everything to the new room which was just down the hall.

Once we got settled in the new room, Joshua was pretty wound up (again, caffeine was not a good idea) so we broke out the legos and tried out the football in the new space and after a few hours he finally fell asleep. He was exhausted.

Today we plan to go back to the facility and his school for a couple of farewell parties, one with his caregivers and one with his teachers and friends at school. We are glad we got here a few days early as we get to do all of this and not worry about starting on any of the paperwork we have to get done for the embassy until Thursday.

Thanks to everyone for all your prayers. The only way to sum up yesterday is that God is good!

Continued from previous post.