Day 2 with Howie

Well it was another great day in Vietnam. This morning we went to a market pretty close to the hotel. It was a lot of fun. We bought Howie two authentic Vietnamese outfits. We are very excited to see him in it. We met at 1:00pm to put together our gifts and donations for the caregivers. We ended making sacks of gifts for specific people like the Director of Red Cross and the director of the center. Then we went to the Red Cross center and talked with the oficials there. We were able to express our gratitude to them and they got the reasurance that we are going to take care of the boys. It was a little intimidating at first, but by the end we had them laughing a joking with us. It was nice to be able to give them our gifts directly. We think that they appreciated the thought. We drove over to the center after this. We got to speak to the director and she was a very nice lady. She actually thanked us for taking the boys. By far it is us thanking her, no thanks are needed on her end. The best part of the day was seeing Howie again. We ended up spending about an hour and half with him again. He cried when we saw him again, but it was only for a few minutes. I ended up picking him up and being able to comfort him which was good. I am starting to learn what he likes to soothe himself. He likes to hold on to a wash clothe and also he likes a bottle. We started noticing small things like he would put his feet up to my mouth because he liked me playing with them and he would start to give me his washcloth and I would hand it back to him. He was able to give me his comfort item. He really started to relax. We thougt that we were doing great when we got a half smile. Then we played some more and we got a full smile and a few giggles. We are very excited to be able to sit with him a lone and have him concentrate on us with not distractions. We also got to feed him a bottle. He did really well and finished it right off, but it was only about 4-6oz. It was a great day. To see him smile was the greatest gift that he could have given us.

The plan for tomorrow...we leave for the center about 7:15am. We will be there for about a half an hour for us to get them settled with us again and to get formula and diapers. We will then take the boys to the local justice department and sign a few papers and it is official. The way we understand it the caregivers are not coming with us to the local justice department, but things can always change. Well that is about it for tonight, I will write again tomorrow. We need to get some sleep who knows when we will be able to sleep a full night again for a while.