The Deuce!

At this hour, Finnian Pu Qing Schurter is sleeping beautifully in the crib next to our hotel bed. It is now the end of a long, wonderful, mournful, emotional, and blessed day. The important stuff began around 9:45 this morning when fourteen families hopped on two busses and headed to the Henan provincial registration office. Standing water on the roads made all the kid-carrying busses late. We waited about an hour and the crowd of expecting families began to stir. Our CCAI representative announced that the babies from Jiaozuo had arrived. We are one of the three families with children who were cared for in a smallish group home in that city about an hour and half outside Zhengzhou. We got buckets of rain last night.

Finnian was one of the first kids though the door—instantly recognizable from the photos we had received months ago. He looked healthy, alert, and very scared. First few minutes are a blur in my memory. We just spent the time holding him, giving him pats, and soaking in his presence. The next bus of children arrived and the action started to pick up. There were now about 50 people in a medium sized room with wall to wall tile…very noisy and disorienting. Crying went viral and Finn caught the bug. We moved our party out to the front steps of the building and he immediately calmed. There we found one of the nannies who had cared for Finnian the past year and a half. With the help of Isha, our guide and interpreter, Jane thanked her for loving and caring for Pu Qing. She (and we) was teary as she said “bye-bye” to Finn. To our astonishment, he verbalized a bye-bye as well and they exchanged kisses on the cheeks. Our son suffered yet another great loss in his life today.

Finn is smart, active, curious and very fun little boy. He is a expert toddler. With a single finger assist, he can climb up and down tall government building steps. When we got back to the hotel room, he was exploring everywhere at once: new toys on the floor, opening the toilet lid, punching buttons on the computer, and climbing up on the bed. We had sent our family photos to the orphanage some months ago. When we showed him the same photos today, He pointed to photos of Eliza and said the word for big sister in Mandarin. Jane learned the Mandarin word for kiss and we’ve found that he knows it too. He’s giving sugar all around. He has a fantastic laugh and a heart-rending cry. We’ve hear both several times.

Eliza is being a very good big sister. Her past months’ expressions of rejecting Finn have now mostly given way to excitement, being protective (and a bit of a tattle-tale), and cooperative. We are so very excited and thankful for our newly expanded family.