Monday

I have four subjects to talk about today:

About the apartment vs. the resort.
About meeting Jordan.
About Vince.
About night sounds.

And then I will follow with a narration of pictures.

Obviously, meeting Jordan is the most exciting subject so I will write about it last so that I don’t lose momentum in my writing.

We visited the resort where our team is staying. I can see now why they felt uncomfortable leaving us at our little apartment. They were able to get a deal at a fabulous resort… it is really very nice and fancy and they felt bad to be leaving us at a poor apartment. Although we miss the chance at a special vacation with many pools and other accomodations, we still prefer the apartment. We will try to explain to Elena better tomorrow that we know already what it feels like to be a tourist. But we do not know what it is like to live here in Bulgaria. We want to know more about the people here… at their homes with their families, not what it is like to be a pampered tourist.

We are being very pampered just the same. Our hostess Nina showed up after we had eaten a modest breakfast of bread, feta cheese and juice that we had bought from the supermarket with fried bread (like french toast), jelly, cherry juice and some cinnamon bread. We hadn’t had a chance to talk with her before, so we didn’t know she was planning on feeding us! We are thrilled, though and look forward to dinner tonight at 7pm. I hope to have time to post this blog tonight (your morning) but will post it tomorrow if we do not have time.

I slept better last night; sleeping from 8:30pm until almost 4am… and then falling asleep again for 45 minutes at 5:30. I am a little tired, but I don’t feel “jet lagged.” When I woke up at 4 this morning, I listed to the sounds coming through our open window as I rested. There were the early morning birds singing out their hearts as they flew around… like birds at home, but with different songs. There were roosters that talked with each other, thankfully not very close. The loudest sound that came and went were the dogs. Sure, there were occasional cat meows and howls, but the dogs when they fought in the night are very loud. People here have dogs for pets, but there are also many stray dogs. They barked and growled… climaxing in what sounded more like a roar than a growl. It was very strange to hear these sounds coming from what must have been dogs. They roared deeply and loudly and eventually must have parted ways again.

We heard from the MOJ today about whether we would be allowed to visit Vince. They did not give us permission to visit him, because we do not have an official referral. However, they made a compromise and said that either Elena or Chevdar (her husband and director of their agency) would be permitted to visit, ask questions, and take pictures/video on our behalf. So on Friday one of them will visit him on our way back to where we fly out of. This will make our travel significantly longer that day, but unless we decide we are not adopting him, then it is very much worth it. We do not fly out until Sunday morning early.

We feel the great weight of this decision regarding Vince. It is no easy matter to decide to adopt a second child whom you know less about and whom you do not get to meet. We know that he is not growing or learning as well as Jordan and we do not know why. Elena suggested it is because he was premature, but since he is 3 1/2 years old, that seems unlikely. But what we really feel the need for, is the Lord’s guidance. We did not feel personally capable of providing for two children before… but God clearly led us to both James and Jordan and told us that He would provide us with what we need. Then the Lord took James home to him. We have not had time to seek His will about Vince yet… we sometimes feel confident that we should and sometimes feel more comfortable and settled on focusing on Jordan (though how hard it is to reject a child, for any reason!). Please pray for us that our Father and Shepherd would guide us in His way. We are encouraged to take our time making the decision, even waiting until we have gone home. We hope to decide before we leave on Sunday, though, as we do not want to make Jordan wait at all more than we must. There is NO doubt in our minds or hearts that Jordan is meant to be our son.

And on to meeting our boy! Brian and I were both shaking as we drove to our visit today and even as we left again. It was an incredible experience to be permitted to meet our future son, here on the other side of the world. Everybody we met, from the director to the orphanage staff were very kind and very caring. We were very encouraged by this, since Jordan will be remaining here for another 6 months until we are clear to bring him home.

We met the director and first learned more about James’ death as we sat in her office. When they noticed the symptoms, they brought him straight to a children’s hospital. They found that his blood sugars were very off (Type A diabetes) and within an hour, he had passed away. They mentioned that he was more succeptible to diabetes because of his Down Syndrome, but I don’t think this is true. (Down Syndrome is less understood here) Before you feel upset with the orphanage staff, I believe that childhood diabetes is difficult to spot even when there is a parent paying a healthy amount of attention to a child. I need to research this, but I believe lethargy and increased urination are some of the first signs… and for a child who often gets colds and who is part of an orphanage… it would be easy to think it was just a cold or something else. I cried a little and we offered a printout that I made that has James’ picture on it and is a thank you to them for all their every day care to the children.

Next, she said that they were going to get Jordan for us. Oh, how impossible it seemed, that we would actually see a child on this great trip! We had a few moments to ask questions while we waited and I also gave a small gift to the director and handed her a bag full of gifts for the staff. We also brought the gifts of clothing, diaper cream, and cloth diapers. We didn’t think they would want the cloth diapers, but when she saw them she said, “Da, Da” and something about how this kind of diaper is very good. Hooray! We will bring more diapers on our second trip as we can support an orphanage in China when we order diapers from them… and they will pack into a suitcase nicely to give to the orphanage. Those of you who have offered to pass on your used diapers… we will have to find a time to meet. (The diapers we buy are from assuntastore.com which may be out of stock right now, but they were going to make a new order soon.)

When Jordan came, we forgot to ask what they would like us to purchase with the donated money we have brought. So, we will ask that tomorrow and will share with you what we purchase. Some of the money we will donate directly to the orphanage account for them to buy things themselves, since it’s likely they can get many of their consumables cheaper wholesale.

Then there he was. He is a handsome little boy who looks very little like his referral photo. He is lightweight, but does not feel malnourished. He has a bad haircut and oversized shoes, but he was dressed very nicely. They had put him in cute blue overalls, nice brown shoes and a t-shirt. He also had a vest put on for going outside. He didn’t seem very happy about being set onto our lap, but he was very quiet.

He spends most of his time quietly in his own world, sucking constantly on his fingers, leaving them soggy and almost with sores from the wetness. He has two front teeth, top and bottom, and most of his four first molars. He found us interesting, I think and although he was not very reactive to our attempts at being interesting and cute, he did watch us and mimic us a little bit. We aren’t worried about this… he is much like a one-year-old and he has very normal behaviors for a child living in an orphanage. Being in a family where his actions are greeted with reactions from his parents and siblings all day instead of being alone so much, will slowly bring his social awareness to life.

He can stand leaning on something quite well… just like a child standing in a crib. He sits very well and got on his hands and knees and rocked too. He has a few self-stimulation behaviors… chewing on his hands, tapping his head with his fingers, a little bit of humming, and when we gave him a slinky, he finally found a toy that was interesting to him. He held it up to his face and bounced it lightly against his lips as he watched it. Truly, slinkies can cross all language barriers. Our first guess is that he is left-handed. Pappy, we thought you’d be glad to hear that!

We visited in the office a little and then spent at least an hour outside. There is a very nice playground there. (The house holds hundreds of children, age 0-3. Some are adopatable and others are there just like foster children in the US, hoping to go back to their parents.) We met Jordan around 10:30am and we visited until 12pm. At that time, we were permitted to feed him! We went up to a visiting room (I’ll have to talk about the tiny elevator with no door on it sometime later) and he sat in a high chair and i fed him a warm bottle of soup. He refuses to use a spoon… which I was not surprised to hear. He drank without sounds of aspirating (breathing the food), which I was happy for. He did choke on it a little…. but that was because he was falling asleep! We tired the little guy out! The bottle contained a delicious smelling soup of beans, bread, sausage… it smelled like a savory stew. They also make soups of chicken and other things that they puree into very small pieces, although it’s not smooth, to feed with the bottles. Elena says they have three meals and two snacks per day, per the rules of the MOJ, making sure to get a balanced diet, so that is good to hear. (yogurt, fruit, fish, etc.)

I picked him up after he finished his dinner and he stayed asleep, so I was happy to hold him until I handed him to a caretaker to take back to his room. Tomorrow we will be permitted to see where he sleeps. We were also allowed to give him the photo album and the little dog… although I don’t know how much he’ll play with it. They said they’d take one of the family photos out and hang it by/over his crib so that he’d see it more.

We love our handsome little boy so much and he is going to be such a blessing to us and to our daughters.

We have some great videos as well as the pictures, but they are too large to upload here. We will share them when we get home!

Our cool old van:

The pool at the hotel on Saturday:

Hemedex. Say it out loud.:

Meeting Magdalena (Magi):

…
Our comfy bedroom:

…

Very first meeting:

Very first smile:

Feeling Mama’s face:

Elena and Chevdar are so wonderful and they love the children!!!:

Just one playground:

Another little smile when we got his soggy fingers out of his mouth long enough for a bit of a walk:

Falling asleep at lunchtime.

Mama is very much in love. (Papa too!)

Mom – it says we can’t talk with you on skype yet. We cannot do more on the internet tonight. Please give our love to the girls and send us an email. We will check it in the morning (your night). Love you!