More about today

Here are some more pictures of today, I will have to send them in 2 separate posts.

 

Jian is a very active boy - he loves technology (and checking out all technology we have in the room again and again).  He really loves the Walsh's iPad (thanks for letting us borrow it!!)  He's extremely curious and very smart.  He's good at communicating with writing (mostly this is how he communicated in the orphanage).  He's been writing with our guide for words we don't know, but, since they've been gone, we've been doing well figuring out with gesturing and looking things up in our Chinese sign language book.  We'd forgotten how slow that was!!  He has a fabulous laugh and had some questions about America (do we have a pool? do we have a car?) and understands that we're going there.  We've shown him a calendar about how long we'll be in China, when we go to another city and when we'll be flying to America.  He seems to understand that as well.  He's been having fun with Tanner, playing around and acting like a brother, and of course, Tanner is loving it as well.  Currently, Tanner is not feeling so well (hopefully all the excitement and lack of sleep is all), and so is sleeping (he didn't want to go eat) while I'm updating this.  Jon and Jian went to go walk around and find some dinner. 

 

Jian had a small bag with him with one shirt, a book of basketball players (he loves basketball and soccer, and doesn't like baseball :)), He also has 2 small books of pictures of himself at the orphanage and with some deaf friends over the years, we're so happy he has these.  He also had a file folder of the pictures and letter we sent to him a few weeks ago.  When we gave him the clothes we brought for him, he was excited about the shorts because he can use them to play basketball. 

 

With his paperwork today, we were given a newspaper ad with his picture and description to see if anyone would claim him from 2006.  There's also a copy of the original note that was left with him (apparently this is very unusual to have and to have his exact birthdate as well). Our guide explained it looked as if he was probably brought into Nanjing from a smaller, more rural town and was left at the train station, this was the type of characters used in the note.  We were sad when thinking of the emotions and how hard that must have been for his parents to have to leave such a precious boy because he was deaf. 

 

Jian loved looking at pictures on the computer.  He looked at pictures from today over and over and liked to zoom in to see things closely.  He likes the pictures of his bedroom in America, and looking at Hattie and Tanner's hamster. 

 

I'm not sure he believed or fully understood that Tanner was deaf.  He told me to be quiet when Tanner was sleeping, we explained he was deaf and Jon clapped loudly.  Then, Jian went over and clapped several times and laughed and laughed. 

 

Thank you for keeping up with us.  Tomorrow we will be going back to the civil affairs office in the morning to sign the actual adoption papers, he will then officially be our son.

 

What a full day we've had!  I hope this post wasn't too hard to follow!  Thank you so very much for your prayers, they were clearly answered and we had a great day.  When they left to go walk around, I was quite weepy, from all the emotion, the future, not enough sleep, etc.  I pray that we can daily honor God through these 2 special boys that he has entrusted to our care.