Our First Meeting

With our adoption representative and another family going back to visit the orphanage where their first son was adopted from, we headed off from our hotel in HCMC, for the the boats. I was glad to be taking the hydrofoil boats to Vung Tau as I knew this would be faster. We brought way too much luggage, and I could tell the people helping us with our bags thought so too. However, we made it to our new hotel. We had a short 20 minutes or so to freshen up and collect a few things to bring to the orphanage. This included a goodie bag for the older kids with stickers, pencils, sharpeners and balls with funny faces, a donation to the orphanage for supplies, a thank you card and money for the nou nou's and a rattle for our baby. With everything in hand, we headed back down to meet our group and we drove the short 5-7 minutes to the orphanage. Our first meeting - we went inside the orphanage, our older son was so excited to be meeting his baby brother. After meeting the Director and talking with her for a few minutes, we were allowed to go and meet baby. Ordinarily, the Director prefers visitors come before 11am or after 2pm to give the babies a nap and the nou nou's their lunch. So we had a very short first meeting. Our older son asked how we know which baby is his brother, there were so many all standing or sitting by the gate looking at us. I spotted a nanny with our baby and gently pointed our older son (M) to him. M went straight for him and picked him up. The poor little guy was scared and started crying, which kind of upset our older son. I forgot to prepare him a little better for that, as it is to be expected. But we said its okay and he tried again. He was a little scared of us as well, and of course our big camera didn't help, so we put it away for a bit. Ray and I held back just letting him see and get used to us. The nou nou's encouraged us to hold him and console his crying, so we did. They were all so friendly, helpful and understanding. If baby got too upset, they would swoop in and cheer him up and tell him it's okay. It's a bit of a blur, but at one point, I believe it was the Director who came up to baby while I was holding him and took his arm and said Momma, over and over to him. Almost as if to say its okay, don't cry, this is your Momma. We were about to leave but Ray hadn't had a chance to hold him yet, so he asked to hold him and I got a few pictures. We also asked the Director if we could take some pictures for another couple in France, waiting for their baby. After promising not to post pictures online, she agreed and showed him to us. So S&S, we will email you pictures as soon as we can get them loaded and emailed. Then it was time to leave. We returned to the hotel and met our group at the hotel for lunch. Our rep ordered a wonderful assortment of food; rice, spring rolls, grapefruit salad, oysters and cheese in their Shell and large shrimp. Being so close to the ocean, all the seafood was very fresh and tasty. We went back to our hotel room for a short 25 minute rest. At this point, our older son had been up for over 12 hours. We could tell he was getting overtired, but we were allowed one more visit to the orphanage, and of course, we wanted to go. So, we didn't nap but cooled off and rested, got a cab by ourselves and headed back to the orphanage. Our representative met us there later. This was a really nice, more relaxed visit. We were there for over two hours and were able to spend lots of time with him and the other babies. We bribed him for his affection with little corn puffs, and made fast friends with all the babies. Ours is certainly a little more reserved, or as Ray put it, more "sensitive", but he is warming up to us. One of the nou nou's suggested we take him for a walk in the hall when he started crying. Ray did this and helped calm him down, then I took a turn and he started to cry again, but I walked and sang to him and he again calmed down. Matthew was growing impatient for his turn so we let him sit with him for a minute. Of course, this got him crying again, but we picked him up and consoled him. Later one of the nannies took him to give him a bottle. At first I was going to leave them, but M followed so I though I had better go too. We sat back and took more pictures. Then he had some water and she put him down on the floor. This particular nanny seems to really make him laugh. I would like to learn her name. I asked if she primarily cared for him, but our rep said no, that they all do. It was kind of funny, but while we were watching and interacting with him, M would try to sit with him. The little monkey (the baby) would keep moving in circles so his back was to M. M didn't seem bothered by this, and kind of took it to be a game. The nannies encouraged baby to play with M and even put him on top of M when he was lying down. M found this quite funny. He stated he thought having a baby brother would be boring but said "actually, this is kind of fun". We got to see him crawl at this point, which we were excited about, and the nou nou was encouraging him to walk, with some help, towards his bottles. Shortly thereafter, it was nap time again. We left the orphanage after taking a picture of the formula he is on, and our rep promised to write out his daily schedule for us. We are starting to get an idea of what it is, but it will be nice to have more details. We watched another nanny rock baby in his crib and sing him to sleep. He was so tired. As I suspected, the rep said that likely our adoption ceremony won't happen until around the 5th or 6th of July, so we will need to extend our stay in Vung Tau. We wonder if the Director, when we see her again on Monday, will let us bring him back to the hotel with us on Monday. This would be nice. The couple we have been in contact with arrive on Monday. It will be nice to finally meet them. We have met her daughter...she makes the cutest little smiles to us. They will have their mandatory few days of visits with her, and then we will have our adoption ceremony together. Back at the hotel, around 5pm, we shared a few leftovers from M's lunch, and went to bed. True to form, I slept 7 hours and woke up around midnight. The air conditioning is really making me cough alot, so I woke Ray up (actually, probably the coughing did that) to get him to turn it to a lower setting. I will try to sleep some more...wish me luck!