I did it, I broke down in the frozen food aisle of the grocery store and bought Jun Jun the ridiculous giant stuffed dog that he had grabbed, hugged, and kissed before I could stop it… and he loves it so much I can’t believe it. For the past 5 weeks Todd and I have been very careful NOT to buy him things he likes in the store. We just don’t want him to expect that we will buy him every little thing he likes when we’re in a store, but this time I just couldn’t say no, he just loved the dog too much. Now the dog has turned into “Jun Jun’s baby”, a riding toy, a doggie, and even a blanket.

In other news, we are working on daycare for Jun. It will not be long before he's in daycare full time. I know he'll eventually love it since he's such a social person, but for now he is not interested in meeting other kids, playing with other kids, or leaving our house for more than a few hours at a time. The first time Jun saw his daycare he loved it because of all the toys, the nice classroom, and big playground, but that visist the other kids were not there. Yesterday we went to the playground to meet the other kids. This visit did not go so well, Jun did not want to meet the other kids and did not want to play on any equipment with other kids. I told him we're going back this morning and he's not impressed... Hopefully it gets a little better each day.

More Ducks!

Last weekend Uncle Keith and Aunt Esther came up to visit us and see Jun for the first time. It was a beautiful summer day in NH so we sat outside and had a cookout. Keith brought some local corn which was awesome. We had kebobs, rice and corn. Esther’s parents were nice and gave Jun a present. He got his favorite, more ducks! He was so happy with the ducks that he wanted us to put the ducks in a “river” which was a large cooking pot. He played with these ducks all day, night, and the next day. When he went to bed he wanted the ducks to go with him. Kim had to put the ducks to sleep in the tub with a hand towel blanket on them to keep them warm. Of course when he woke up the first word was duckies.
Jun is increasing his vocabulary every day. He is starting to link three words together now and grunts less, which is good. His general attitude is happy but is still insecure. Yesterday he noticed a picture of me with one of my nephews. He was not happy to see me with another kid. He was so upset that he cried himself to sleep. Kim and I can’t imagine what must be going thru his mind but all things considered he is doing very well.

It's late in the summer, but I've been looking for crocs for Jun Jun and haven't been able to find them. Yesterday I was going to the grocery store with Jun (our first solo trip since Todd is now back at work) and we passed by a Walmart so I thought we could run in quickly to see if they had any crocs. I made a couple of big mistakes: I thought I could quickly run into a huge store like Walmart with a 3 year old. I also didn't know that I should grab a cart to put him in even if we were only going to buy one item. When we first got to the store Jun Jun ran around with delight! He seemed to be playing a game of tag with me and screamed with joy each time I ALMOST caught him, then he wanted to look at every item that has an animal on it (you wouldn't believe the number of items in Walmart that have animals on them), then when I finally grabbed him and carried him around the store he pouted and screamed, "No" about a million times. He thought it was a great trip to the store while I tried to sprint to the exit as quickly as I could.

We weren't successful in finding crocs, but we did find a great new umbrella for Jun. He loves it! Once we got home we took a walk and I let him carry it with him on our walk despite the fact that it was a perfect sunny blue sky day. He's so proud of his umbrella I just couldn't try to make him put it away. Anyway, he's so cute people just look at him and smile when they see this little boy with the huge smile stomping down the street proudly carrying his umbrella.

Oh, we did accomplish one important thing yesterday: we went to the Farmer's Market and Jun enjoyed his first whoopie pie. I know a whoopie pie is far from a proper dinner and we shouldn't have allowed him to eat it only about 1/2 hour before dinner, but we thought we would allow it this one time... also, Todd and I wanted one too :) Just as we had hoped, Jun Jun just loved his whoopie pie. He looked at it from all angles, took a bite, said, "ummm", smiled, then repeated this process 'til it was gone. I think I enjoyed watching him eat it as much as he enjoyed eating it!

A Visit from the Cousins

My sister and her 2 boys and my parents came for a visit over the past couple of days. We were a bit worried about how Jun Jun would handle meeting the boys, but he a great time! The cousins are ages 2 and 4 so Jun Jun fits right in the middle, I think they’ll all be good friends.
For the first few hours no one played together, but we saw some good potential when Jackson (the older cousin) gave Jun Jun his airplane to look at. Jun Jun reciprocated by letting Jackson use his Play-Doh. After that the kids played pretty well together for 2 days.
The only thing that made Jun Jun a little unhappy was when one of the cousins would dare to touch us… this was a bit difficult also for the cousins because we have always been very affectionate with them. If Jackson or Gabe touched even our hands Jun Jun would give them a dirty look, grab onto us, and say, “Jun Jun’s Mama/Baba”. He’s still very worried that we’ll leave him, but that seems to lessen a little each day.
For me this visit was a little strange because I felt like I never even got to talk to my sister. –It was the first time we’ve been together with both of us having children. I loved to hear Jun Jun call her Aunt Nicole and I loved to see her play with all the boys, but I still sort of missed sitting with her and a cup of coffee and having a long conversation about all that’s going on… a little selfish sounding considering how lucky I am, but… well, I wouldn’t trade my new life for anything, but I can miss some aspects of my old life too.

Much better day

Yesterday was a much better day. We stayed around the house, read books, listened to music, ate lots of food, and watched a baseball game. Everyone had a much better day!

Not all days are good days...

We got up early yesterday with the plans of visiting a local farm. The farm is open to the public and sounded like the perfect place for our little boy who loves all things animals. We looked at pictures of the farm early in the morning and he was very excited to be going.

The visit started off well and Jun Jun was excited to see the horses, cows, sheep, and chickens. He looks at pictures of all these animals in books all the time, but seeing them live seemed to scare him a little. He didn't want to let go of our hands and didn't want to be put down to walk on his own. For the first couple of hours we indulged him and carried every step of the way. -But then we thought it would be a good idea if he walked a bit on his own... this is where things started to fall apart.

By the time we got to the icecream stand Jun Jun was in a bad mood and was screaming about little things that we couldn't even begin to understand. We went ahead and ordered icecream and sat down to eat it... we didn't get very far before Jun Jun was having an all-out tantrum -complete with foot stomping, red face, screaming, arm flailing, and tears. We tried to let it go for a few minutes, but it was soon obvious we just had to admit defeat, throw out the icecream and hit the road.

We decided to stop at the grocery store and pick up food for a "real lunch". We sort of felt guilty for trying to turn a bowl of icecream and animal crackers into lunch. (We thought we'd have real food for lunch after Jun's nap). We stopped to have a picnic lunch and Jun seemed to be in a better mood so we thought the rest of the day would go well. I felt terrible for trying to teach Jun my bad eating habits. -But then when we were leaving the picnic area another tantrum began. I'm not even sure what started this one, but it was much worse than the previous one so we just got in the car and started the trip home. It didn't take long for Jun to fall asleep and we hoped he'd sleep for a couple of hours and mabye wake up in a better mood.

When we got home we took him into the house, but that was a big mistake because he woke up and started screaming again. After about 1/2 hour he fell asleep laying on me. -I had things to do, but for the sake of a little peace I decided sitting in one place for a while would be fine. This was working out just fine until Jun Jun peed on me! -He's potty trained, but when he sleeps we usually put a diaper on him because he has "accidents". I tried to wake him up calmly, but before I knew it he was once again screaming, crying, kicking his legs, flailing his arms...

The day pretty much continued like this and finally ended with a monumental meltdown that took about 1 1/2 hour to come to an end.

We've done some thinking and realize that all 3 year old children have off days and all 3 year old children have lots of tantrums, but we also want to make sure we are sensitive to the fact that it was only about a month ago that he was removed from his orphanage and only about 2 weeks ago that we arrived home so we're going to slow down a bit and we're going to try to tighten up our daily schedule a bit, we're also going to be a bit more sensitive to the fact that our having to carry him usually only happens in new places now, so if he's feeling a little uncomfortable and wants us to carry him in new places we'll just have to do that. We've been taking a lot of little day trips and he's probably just as happy to sit at home with his new parents. Maybe this won't make a bit of difference and maybe he was just having a bad day, but he doesn't seem to need or want a big adventure on a daily basis.

So far today is a much better day. We started the day off with a nice breakfast, skipped church, and had a great little Etta James dance party! Not all days are good days and Todd and I won't always make the right choices. -Realizing that is not all that easy, we want to give Jun the best life we can give him.

We've been home for about 1 1/2 weeks and life with Jun Jun is starting to feel normal.

He still has a great fear of our leaving him, but other than that, things are going very well.

We have learned that we have to take him for a walk in the stoller immediately following lunch if we want him to take a nap, we have learned that if he doesn't get a nap he is no fun to be with at around 6PM, we have learned NOT to take him for a walk in his stroller after 6PM if he hasn't had a nap, we have learned that he doesn't like his vegatables, we have learned that he won't eat dinner if he thinks we're eating different foods than he is, we have learned to ignore him when he does certain naughty things and he corrects his behavior on his own... we're first time parents so obvious things to many are not so obvious to us.

Most of our days are filled with joy and I am amazed at how he's teaching me to slow down and enjoy the little things in life. The other day he was sitting in his stroller yelling at me when we passed a patch of yellow flowers. I stopped to pick one for him and was surprised that he was still screaming. As it turned out, he was looking at a dandelion that had passed. I picked it and gave it to him and watched his face light up when I blew on it. He screamed and laughed at seeing the flower blow away. I'm not really sure why we all think dandelions are so ugly, maybe we should enjoy them a bit more.

We have learned to communicate with one another pretty well, but I know he sometimes gets frustrated when he's trying to tell Todd and I something and we just don't understand. We see his little face get red and scrunched up as he stomps his feet. It usually passes, but I feel horrible that we can't respond to what may be a very simple question or statement. -Jun Jun's new favorite word is "beautiful". When we see the mountains or the lake he tells us it's beutiful, when we see the river he tells us it's beautiful, and when he sees an especially pretty flower he tells us it's beautiful. I love to hear him say the word and he uses it at just the right times.

Right now he's telling me he wants to go to the river so I've got to run!

Back Home

We left our hotel in Guangzhou, China at 6:30AM (China time) and we arrived at our door step at 1:00AM (EST). That means our journey took us over 30 hours to complete! We took a plane from Guangzhou to Beijing, then another plane from Beijing to Newark then it was a 6 hour drive home from there. -Jun handled the entire trip amazingly well except he wasn't happy about the seat belt in the plane and when he hit the car seat he freaked out. -I would bet he's never before had to deal with such things -no one in China wears a seat belt and the kids don't know anything about car seats.

I didn't sleep more than a couple of hours throughout the trip home so when we got here last night I couldn't even see straight. -Jun slept for over half the trip and his body is still on China time so when we got home at 1AM he was ready to play. He went crazy over the few toys we left out for the arrival. It was about 4AM before any of us got to sleep.

Todd and I were very worried about bringing Jun into our home since he was so upset when we arrived at the White Swan. Before we arrived in Inner Mongolia we sent Jun a picture book. We included lots of pictures of our house and cats in the book. When he arrived he had the book with him and it was obvious he had spent time looking at in preparation for joining our family. -He even recognized a shirt I wore in China from the picture book. He told me that by pointing at my shirt and then going to his picture book, finding the picture, and pointing at my shirt. Anyway, when we had free time throughout our trip we would look through the book. When we arrived here last night it was obvious he recognized the house, the rooms, and the cats. -He's a little afraid of the cats, but he was willing to pat the little girl cat today as long as Todd stood right next to him while doing it.

We picked 3 toys to leave out for him for our arrival home. We picked an elephant stuffed animal, a Tonka truck, and a Fisher Price farm set. The farm set was in the living room so we had to stop in the living room for about 20 minutes last night before heading upstairs. When we got to his room he stood there for a moment and said, "Jun Jun's" with a big smile on his face. When we walked into the room he went straight over to the Tonka truck and pointed. We laughed because we've been thinking he would just love the big truck. -But when we pulled the truck out he continued pointing as if we hadn't given him what he wanted. Finally we realized what he wanted was the umbrella that was hanging on the hook. He opened that umbrella and giggled while walking around the room with it. The other toys were just ignored for the rest of the night, he was happy with something as simple as a little umbrella! -Things we think are just functional as adults are great entertainment for kids. Then it rained a little today so we were able to take the umbrella outside and let him actually use it... He was the happiest I've seen him yet when he realized his umbrella was actually keeping him dry in addition to being fun to carry around.

For the most part today has gone pretty well. We've had a couple of tense moments and a couple of crying moments, but for the most part he's been pretty happy. Aunt Esther and Uncle Keith stocked the house with some good noodles and dumplings so, except for the missing the sausage, breakfast was exactly what Jun was used to eating!