Bittersweet

Today was our last visit before our return home, so we wanted it to be great. Little Man must have felt the same way. He was in a great mood today for another afternoon, post-nap visit! We started out by giving him a little blanket that Alyssa had made for him. He was very excited to find out that this was his to keep. You would have never guessed how fun a blanket could be!

After the blanket, we played with bubbles for a short bit - sorry no pictures of the bubbles. After bubbles came a little coloring.

Then we did a wardrobe change -- new pants!

Then a new shirt.

We had a bow tie like dad's, but it made a better lasso than a tie.

After the wardrobe change, we had a couple of cookies and did some more playing.

First, we played with a plastic toy that bobbed around.

Then we rode around the room on a great looking scooter. 

    

We were pretty tired by then, so we settled down with a little bit of Old McDonald on the iPad.

Before we knew it, our time was up! So we got one more family pic, and it was sadly time for us to leave.

Please pray that everything will go smoothly as we work to get back here for our court hearing! We have some more parent training ahead of us, and then there are some variables that we aren't quite sure about. We hope to be back here in late January or early February. It can't be soon enough! We can't express how amazing this experience has been. God has clearly been with us this entire journey. Our hearts are overcome with joy right now. We have met our Little Man, and he is healthy and happy. We could not ask for a greater blessing.

Ps. Alyssa wants to know how many of you are now subconsciously craving chocolate or chocolate chip cookies due to the post title? Oh, you weren't? How about now?

A new play room

Sorry for any grammatical errors you will have to endure with today's post. It is already bed time here and Alyssa is fast asleep, but I knew that many of you would not be happy to wake without new pictures, so here it goes.

Today we went for an afternoon visit. We arrived right after nap time and the afternoon snack. We got to play in a different play room today which was a welcome change. This room was bigger and had lots of fun slides and other toys. It has colorful murals on the wall and you can tell this is a happy place.

 

We introduced a few new toys and let Little Man spend a little time with the iPad today. His favorite is still carrying around Alyssa's iPhone while it plays music (he will have to have his own iPod Touch when we get him home I'm sure). You will see him with the iPhone in almost every picture. Today we listened to a variety of pop hits and folk songs. He also continues to enjoy a Fisher Price toy that Grand Mary sent along. It plays different songs that he likes to dance to.

He also enjoyed a squishy green air ball today for a while. Nothing is exciting for that long when you are three though.

We also brought along a play tool belt with fun tools. The hammer makes some great sound as you move it back and forth and hit it on a surface. You'll also notice that while not holding tools the belt became an acceptable place to carry the iPhone so that Little Man always had his tunes with him. 

  

  

There are a variety of slides in the room that we got to enjoy today. Little Man seems to enjoy taking the head first route down the slide most often.

There are also slides into a small ball area that Little Man enjoyed for a few minutes. It was a big room though so we had to keep moving so we wouldn't miss anything.

We also had a good time behind the exercise bars. There proved to be just enough room for Little Man to slide back and fourth between the wall and the bars.

We also spent a little more time with our picture book today, he really likes to be in charge of the book and turning the pages.

Tomorrow will be our last visit for this trip. Please ask God to prepare our and Little Man's hearts for this. I know that saying goodbye tomorrow will probably be tearful for us, but most importantly we want Little Man to remember that we will be back for him very soon!

Swagger

Well, he has definitely figured out this whole visiting thing. Today he walked into the room with a big smile and a definite swagger and wanted to know, "Where are my toys?"

I'm here!

We will be a little light on stories and pictures today. Little Man has gotten pretty tired of staying in the same little room the whole time, so we spent a lot of our time entertaining and corralling.

Looking for the tongue...

Now you try to find mine!

He discovered music on the iPhone today, and it was pretty funny. Once he had the phone going, he carried it around with him for pretty much the rest of the visit. To some extent, we are the people that bring toys and leave with them, so we had to work with him a little this morning to show him we wouldn't take the phone from him. At one point, we were playing with the ring stacking toy, and he was holding the phone in one hand and trying to play with the other. I asked him to set the phone down to play with both hands, so he promptly stuck the phone under his leg to keep it safe! Smart boy! He eventually decided to trust me and would set it on my leg while we worked on something else.

Wanting to be tickled while holding onto the phone.

Dancing!!

Hold on a minute while I take this call. (He definitely gets that from Drew!)

We've given him a couple little baby cookies that we brought with us, and he enjoys those. He was also very interested in having his feet traced. I brought some new fat twist-up crayon type things, but they ended up being kind of messy. I guess they're a little gel-like or something. So whenever we tried coloring with them, we ended up spending an equal amount of the time with him holding his hands out to be wiped off. He did really enjoy taking them out of the package and putting them back in. I think we'll have to bring some wooden puzzles and wooden stringing toys on our next visit. And maybe some kind of blocks or something, so that we can spend more time taking things apart and putting them back together.

Just being silly.

The custody worker arrived toward the end of the visit. We really think she observed us for less than ten minutes before they came to get him for lunch. On the bright side, he was pretty content with whatever game we were playing for that whole time. After Little Man left, we all talked for a little while and then went and got back in the car. Our facilitator had picked the custody worker up from a nearby city after we settled in at the orphanage that morning, so we drove her back home before heading back to the hotel.

Best free toy ever!

Tomorrow we will go visit again, but we are waiting until the afternoon. It will be interesting to see his post-nap personality, now that he is so comfortable. We are hoping for sunshine so that we can venture outside again and break the routine! Plus, that little body needs some space to move!