Voila.....Pictures At Last

OK folks...here you go. Just a few shots from the past couple of days. We are so, so blessed and thankful. Drew is a sweet, sweet baby. He is in to EVERYTHING. He's fast and pretty stubborn...but then he'll smile and scrunch up his little nose and all is well.

Thursday was a LONG day. We got up early and headed to the center around 8:00am. When we got there, Drew was upstairs with his nanny, Thao. She is the sweetest young lady and her little heart was just breaking. I think she'd been crying for quite some time. We left her alone with him for a few minutes and then one of the other nannies came in and told her to give him to me. She did and I tried my best to say thank you in Vietnamese. She kissed Drew one last time and literally ran into the next room. My heart just broke for her. Note to future travelers....go ahead a take a few diapers with you. They give you formula and "diapers" that resemble sanitary napkins. :)

We met with the orphanage director and then headed to the Local Justice department for the Giving and Receiving Ceremony. Drew fell asleep during the ride over and slept through the entire ceremony. In the middle of our ceremony, the door opened and about a dozen young men and women walked in. There were students studying to be social workers (I think). The officials said a few quick things, asked Charlie and Andy to make statements, we signed some papers and then it was photo op time.

Then the long van ride back to HCM started. Drew did GREAT. Not all of the time...but about 5 of the hours. He got really fussy while we were stuck in rush hour traffic near HCM. Then the "grieving cry" came out. He cried, cried, cried...threw up...threw up on mommy...cried, cried, cried...threw up on mommy again. Charlie took him so I could at least clean up a little. Finally he fell asleep about 30 minutes before we arrived at our hotel. That was about 6:30pm....I think.

We checked into our room and then Charlie went to the Tax Center to get a few things. For the first time ever, I changed a baby's diaper while he was lying on his stomach. Then I put his pajamas on him. Trying desperately not to wake him up. I succeeded. He slept until about 2:45am this morning. I gave him a bottle and he went right back to sleep and slept until 5:00am. He ate some cereal and then we went up to the wonderful breakfast buffet. He ate about a third of my omelet....plus some congee.

Today is a busy day. The Daddy's went out this morning to apply for the passports. Then we all went to have the passport photos taken. We came back to the hotel and the Daddy's went to purchase our tickets to Hanoi. In a little over an hour we go for his medical check.

He's very sweet and catches on very quickly. I'll try to post some more tomorrow and some more pictures when I can.

Ian....mommy and daddy love you and miss you very much. You're going to have so much fun chasing your little brother around when he comes home.