Things I am grateful for:
- water that is safe to drink
- air that is (reasonably) safe to breathe
- clear blue skies
- unlimited cellular data
- being able to talk to people and understand them too
- being surrounded by family and friends and welcoming warmth
Things I will miss:
- amazing hotel breakfasts
- the friendships we made
- seeing the incredible variety and richness of life in China all around us
- delicious foods
- immersion in Mandarin
- having Charlie as a travel buddy
We are home. Bags are unpacked, laundry seems to be getting there, bedtime routines are coming along, I slept for 7.5 uninterrupted hours last night (let us pause to sing a brief of hymn of Thanksgiving to melatonin, because I have almost entirely DODGED jet lag on this return leg, a thing entirely attributable to taking melatonin at the new time zone's "bedtime" in the night before we left and for 2 days following. I always assumed that was a bit bogus but ... based on how we are doing, NOT bogus) and today Charlie and the girls went to work, the grandparents set off toward home, and Tim went to work, and we ... we played.
Thomas HeHu was quite sad when Charlie and Caroline climbed on the bus, and extremely worried when Tim and I walked down the street in the rain with Mary and our dog Lulu to Mary's bus stop and left him in the nice dry house with his grandmother. When we got back he was waiting at the front door for us.
When Tim left, he didn't like it either. When the grandparents left an hour or so later, there was real fear in his eyes -- just who was saying goodbye here? I settled him firmly in my lap and put my arms around him and oriented us toward the departing grandmother and we said, "Bye bye Maymee!" And he said bye but clung more tightly still. It wasn't until she was out the door -- that it was clear WE were staying together -- that he relaxed and began to wave more authentically.
There was a little pause after she got into the car and disappeared from view. Then we looked at each other and I said, "Let's have a snack," and off we went to cement the reassurance of that moment with some yogurt -- nothing like a slightly sweet comforting treat to remind a little guy that he's being taken care of.
I have a hard time downshifting but that's what we did this morning -- we did puzzles and we did drawings and we played with blocks and we had apples and Spaghettios for lunch and we took a walk.
I was also sneaky and tried to use the time to check some things -- we sorted blue, green, red and yellow crayons to verify color sorting and see if we could clear up the unanswered questions about color blindness (he did not cooperate with that part of the medical exam in Guangzhou). We also did some shape sorting -- I traced a few block shapes on a paper and tried to see if he could match the blocks to their shapes. He did, so we kept adding more outlines, first just different orientations of the existing shapes, then new shapes. A triangle can blow your mind after all-quadrangle activity. He did AWESOME.
We also named the parts of the face in Chinese -- he's very good at it, but interestingly, he couldn't or would do the same thing on a simple drawn face.
And before the grandparents left I used their presence to make a few phone calls and we are kicking off the precursor appointment for evaluations tomorrow morning -- yay! And have an ortho appointment scheduled with a celebrated East Coast ortho, John Herzenberg, for November (much earlier than the estimated 12+ months out for Shriners Philly). And I contacted my agency about one of HeHu's best friends (I asked him today about his friend and he nodded and said simply "Wo ai [Childs Name]." Which means "I love [Childs Name]") and about a little girl who was hosted in winter when he was, in an effort to check their adoption status and maybe advocate for them both. Productive!
Tim was productive too -- he spent the morning at work, got a haircut, and came home with food for kids' lunches! We went to the bus stop together to get Caroline and Charlie and when the bus came and the yellow doors folded open HeHu almost climbed aboard, so excited was he to see his brother and sister -- he was shouting "Ni hao Charlie! Ni hao Lala!" And laughing happily. So cute.
Wish us luck tomorrow -- going for no throwing up in the car and a good appointment.
