February 25

We are having difficulty posting to our blog from China.  Apparently in parts of China, certain parts of Goggle’s search engine and available websites are blocked, including the goggle blog site that you are reading right now.  Other sites are also unavailable, such as facebook, which I was updating along the way as well.  So…through email, we are able to send my sister a word document and pictures so that she is able to update Tovin’s blogspot. 

Thinking back on yesterday…Tovin’s “Gotcha Day” was so different than what we experienced with Addison’s.   We were fortunate to be able to take our time and let it be on Tovin’s time.  It seemed to help him with the transition.  We were able to ask the orphanage workers, or “nannies” as many questions as we had, and we were able to watch them interact with Tovin.  Thank you to our paparazzi, Jay and Sheila, for taking the pictures of our day. 

According to the nannies his checks are really red, as you can see by the pictures, due to his cold, and him being in a colder climate.  They said that he normally doesn’t have such red cheeks, and we should not worry.  They also mentioned that he has been itching his cheeks because they must hurt a little with his cold, resulting in them looking even worse.  We have been putting Rosebud on them throughout the day.  Hopefully we will start to see an improvement. 

Our first night with Tovin went very well, he was able to sleep through the night, without any troubles.  We think this is amazing!  We could see that he relaxed quite a bit after we got his belly full last night, and even though he has a really bad chest cold and nasty cough, and it seems to be somewhat of challenge for him to breathe, he is doing quite well.

We were busy this morning doing paperwork at three different offices, in three different government buildings.  Jen and I had to sign a lot of documents and then put our thumbprint over the top of our signatures.  They took Tovin’s footprint as his signature, along with numerous pictures of us with him and him by himself, all of which were part of the paperwork process.  I’m pretty excited to think that the Chinese government will forever be blessed with a copy of my beautiful mug shot!  Ha!  I’m sure Jen won’t think that’s funny, oh well.  The officials that we met with today were truly grateful to us for helping Tovin out and for us willing to be his parents.  We were happily surprised by their sincerity and genuine concern for him and his future.  You can tell that he was very loved by his nannies and also the officials.

The rest of the day we’ve been in the hotel room relaxing and playing with Tovin, getting him to laugh and giggle.  Addison seems to help him feel at ease, and he is showing more of his charming personality with every minute.  Like I said before, he is well behind developmentally, however, he mimics well, does say a few words in Mandarin of course and has been eating and drinking well.  He has imitated and then done on his own the little bit of sign language that we introduced to him – the sign for “more”.  It probably helps that we’ve got plenty of sugar in the form of candy to bribe him with!

He is potty trained, but we have no idea what his “I’ve got to go” signals are yet, so we’ve been taking him to the bathroom about every two hours just in case.  We have him in diapers, but he hasn’t needed a clean one since we’ve got him.

Tovin is very small for his age.  It’s hard to remember Addison being this small.  His legs appear to be very weak.  He is able to stand by himself as long as he is holding onto something, but he has not walked for us yet.  The nannies mentioned today that he was able to walk, but they also said he was still on a bottle.  As you will see in some of the pictures, he has a lot more ability in some areas then they gave him credit for.  As far as him walking I think they may have over estimated his ability, but we plan on carrying him around most of the time anyway due to his cold and not wanting to wear him out; also for as much bonding time as we can get with him.  We will be able to practice walking when he becomes healthy! 

He hasn’t shown any signs of grieving today, not even when we were with the nannies this morning.  He has moaned a little and grunted a few times like he did yesterday when he was grieving, but today he did it when he was trying to get Addison to help him with some stickers – shown in two of the pictures.

There is a restaurant on the second floor of the hotel that we have been getting “Chinese take-out” from.  I think they cringed when we went in there last night for supper; we had a difficult time communicating with them, but we ended up with some very good food.  Tonight Jen and Sheila went down to the same restaurant with a cheat sheet from our guide Mary and that seemed to help with the ordering process!  Tovin has enjoyed the noodles and vegetables.  He is going to be a great eater just like Addison is.  Check out his “still on the bottle” skills with chopsticks.  A bottle?  I think not! 

That’s about it for today.  Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers, and thank you to my sister Kay, who is taking time out her busy schedule to do us, and those of you following Tovin’s blog, a huge favor by posting this for us. We truly appreciate it.

Good night from China,
Jason, Jen, Addison, and Tovin

In an early morning email, Jason shared "that in just one day you should see how Tovin responds to Addison's laugh and giggle - he just brightens up when he hears her.  After his nap and from that point on, when he has seen Jen, if she has left the room even for a moment, Tovin's face just lights up and he smiles a great big smile when he sees her face!  It's pretty sweet.  She's such a good mommy!"

Sticker time

Bottle Time?  I think not!