Howie's Officially ours!!!!

Let me start by saying that yesterday was one of the greatest days of my life. It was also one of the most exhausting and longest days. We met in the lobby of the hotel at 7:15am. We headed to the center after that. Once we got there we were taken upstairs to the boys. I was ready for a little more crying and the unsureness that was to follow, but he was handed right to me and didn't cry. That felt wonderful. We were there for about 15 minutes and the nannies took the boys from us and changed them into there traditional vietnamese clothing. They gave us the clothing for the boys it was a wonderful surprise. After this the nannies started saying good bye to the boys and there was a lot of tears from parents and nannies. It just goes to show how much the boys were loved and how well they were taken care of. We then got back on the bus and headed to the local justice department. All the boys were wide eyed and just taking in there surroundings. They had never even been downstairs of the center and here they are on a bus. We signed some papers at the local justice department and he was officially ours. My hands were shaking while I was signing everything. I was so scared that they were going to tell us that they were missing something or that we had to wait. The local justice department isn't anything like I expected. I thought that there would just be a few people there, but there were a lot of officials and alot of people waiting to do something else there. We headed back to the hotel for about 15 minutes while we were waiting for the paperwork to be processed. We all fed the boys while we were there and Howie ate his really well. At 9:45am we headed out to HCMC. It was a looooong ride. We had to wait a while for the ferry and we also had to wait for construction and a few other places the traffic was stop and go. We stopped about 1:00pm for lunch and headed right back out after that. We finally got to the hotel at 4:00pm. We were all so tired and ready to be in our rooms. Howie did great on the ride back. He took 2 naps each for a little over an hour. I was pleased given all the bumps in the road. The men headed to the grocery store last night and we all just stayed in our room. Howie slept great last night and is currently taking his morning nap. He is eating very well and he is smiling and enjoying playing. We had our passports and passport pictures today for Howie and now we get to rest until Friday. Friday we pick up the passports and I am not sure what else we will be doing, but after that we will be resting for the next 4 days. (Vietnamese Holidays fall tomorrow, Monday and Tuesday). I will post some more tomorrow.

Howie is officially ours!

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.

Day 2 with Howie

Meeting Howie Pictures

Meeting Howie

The drive down to Can Tho took us about 5 hours, but it went pretty fast because of all the scenery there was to look at. It was pretty much city driving all the way down. We had to get on a ferry to get over to Can Tho and I have never experience anything like that before. We were put into a holding room with the scooters and then herded out. You had to really watch out not to get ran over by the scooters. Can Tho is a beautiful city set right on the river. Our hotel room looks out on the river and we watched a beautiful sunrise over the river this morning. The room is pretty nice too. On to the best part...Howie. The center is really beautiful set right on the river. It was sooooo clean and the staff was great. They are
really knowledgable and really helped the transition for the boys to get to know us. We walked upstairs to a room and we were the last couple in. Howie was already crying. He was pretty scared. He cried off and on for about 15 minutes and by 20-25 minutes he was on our laps for the rest of the time. He was so interested on what was going on around him. He would look
around and than turn and look at us. We didn't get a smile out of him, we were close, but I think in a couple days he will be smiling all the time for us. We had to write in a book for the center about the experience for them to keep. I wish that we would have had more time to prepare because there was so much that I wanted to say and had a hard time putting it into to
words. When it was time to go we had to put him back into his crib (his bedroom is air conditioned!!!!) and he started to cry. This made us feel pretty good because he would rather be with us than in his crib. All in all it went pretty well. We are excited to go see him again today and tomorrow morning he will be ours forever. The internet is pretty sporatic here, so we
will try and post again tonight, but it may not be until tomorrow in HCMC.