So Long Danang...HELLO Hanoi!!!

We said our goodbyes to Danang this morning.  It was emotional to say goodbye to the 2 reps that walked us through each step of the process this past week.  They love the children so much.  I guess it was also emotional because we were leaving the city our son spent the first 8 months of his life.  It was emotional but I can't say we'll miss it!  Fredrick was a real trooper on the plane while most other babies were crying. Entering Hanoi airport was music to our ears...ENGLISH!  People actually speak our language...YIPPEE!  Not only that but we saw chocolate and chips and cafes...all things we'd see in Montreal...this was thrilling!  We loaded all our stuff into a large taxi and travelled about 40 minutes to our hotel and OH what a beautiful hotel it is.  I knew things were going to look up as soon as we walked through the doors.  There was door man who greeted us nicely and the people at the front desk spoke english and were very pleasant.  And it smelled wonderful!  Our room wasn't ready so they sent us to the 4th floor restaurant.  There was real food...ingredients we could understand and knew we would enjoy.  Burgers, salmon, chicken, pasta, pizza.  We ate and enjoyed every bite...we actually think our stomachs shrunk because we were full after a few bites, although this did not stop me from having dessert!  When the other adoptive family saw us they asked if we ate well and they all laughed at me because I was smiling ear to ear with satisfaction!

There is a beautiful pool, and a play ground for kids...Nathaniel & Jon have gone there now to check it out.  There are tourist guides here for us so we know what activities there are in the area.  There are shopping plazas and not just the Big C.  I know, I know who comes to Vietnam to go to a plaza, but seriously we are not world travelers and we are here for 1 reason, and 1 reason only...to complete our son's adoption.  We agree we were glad to see how people live here in Vietnam...so primitive I couldn't even begin to explain it but we're happy to be somewhere a little more advanced, and where we feel somewhat safe to walk around. 

Our hotel room (1203) is absolutely beautiful.  Jon & I have our room with a king size bed and our own bathroom, and mom & Nathaniel will share the other room.  There are 2 single beds so mom doesn't have to share the bed with Nathaniel.  She'll get a better night sleep.  We have a kitchen with a stove, kettle, large fridge, utensils, pots & pans, microwave and are you ready for this...a washer and dryer 2 in 1!  It washes and then dries!  I'm in the process of doing our first load!  If we had these at home, my bathroom would have a lot more space!  Nice flat screen televisions, stereo and there are even clocks!!!  The hotels in Ho Chi Minh and Danang did not invest in clocks...I was constantly asking Jon what time it was...very annoying, especially in the middle of the night!  This has changed our attitudes completely...although I'm sure we'll be tired of even all of this by the end of next week.  1 week down...2 to go.

Proud Parent Moments...

This morning started off with a "bang"!  Fredrick had his first poopy diaper changed!  Now I know most people would not find this blog worthy but when you're child's eating habits are all messed up and you've seen him straining for a couple of days, when it finally happens it calls for a big Hurray!!!  Jon had the honors of changing it...this is a tradition as he changed Nathaniel's first poopy diaper as well! :-)

Fredrick slept very well until 12am and then had a bottle.  I got him back to sleep but at this point he doesn't go back into a deep sleep.  He thrashes himself around, banging his head on the mattress.  Both nights he has done this so my theory is something use to cause him to do this in the orphanage.  Perhaps loud noises or the workers there played the t.v./music VERY loud so maybe he never went back into deep sleep.  I don't know...I can speculate all I want but I just don't know.  I simply soothe him by rubbing his back and this helps for a few minutes at a time.  It breaks my heart to watch him go through this but at the same time I know that this will work itself out when he gets use to quiet, undisturbed nights.

After our little celebration of Fredrick's job well done (LOL) we headed out for a guided tour of Hoi An.  Imagine the hottest day in Montreal and times it by 100!  And add to that carrying around a 22lbs baby and a 4 year old (he was really out of his element and wanted us to hold him...being sensitive to Nathaniel right now, we must oblige).  I feel like I lost 10lbs just from the heat!  It was a really cute "province" and we picked up some handmade souvenirs.  But Nathaniel lost it which is not like him at all and broke out crying and screaming.  Mom was hot and Fredrick was sweating.  We left early as did anothe couple.

We came back to the "mall" and tried a fast food restaurant.  We had some good chicken and french fries and a nice cold pepsi.  It was heavenly!!  Vietnamese food here is NOTHING like what we eat at Chez Lien in Montreal and I miss Montreal food terribly!  We have all agreed when we arrive home on May 1st that we are immediately ordering some real food! :-)))  Fredrick proved to be apart of our family today...as we sat and ate our lunch, Celine Dion's song was being played over the speakers and Fredrick broke out crying!!! HA HA!  Whenever she hit her high notes he pouted and started crying!  We were so proud!

We're like celebrities here.  Women will stop in their tracks to just stare at the boys.  They look at Fredrick and then point to Nathaniel and just stare!  Today in Hoi An all the women were talking to each other about us.  Jon asked our guide what they were saying.  They all thought Nathaniel was biological and Fredrick adopted.  I also think it's because we are walking around with TWO boys.  Boys are highly regarded here.  Families will continue having kids until they have a boy.  So many families will have 8-9 kids;  7/8 girls, 1 boy.  This is so sad to me.  The irony is that out of us 7 families here to adopt, we all received boys accept 1 family.  This tells me the mothers were in desperate situations to give up dearly beloved boys!  Yesterday at the beach 2 groups of people said, "Hello" to us and when we responded they all started giggling.  Weird!!!

Tomorrow is our flight to Hanoi. Ahhhhh WASHER AND DRYER! I can't believe that that's what we're excited about! :-)

We've got a Big Boy...As If You Couldn't Tell!!!

We took Fredrick to have his passport pictures taken.  He did great!  Then we went to visit the dr.  He's an Aussie...Dr Ross.  He was very good and thorough.  Fredrick is in the 75% percentile for height & weight.  22 lbs & 74 cm.  Dr Ross said he have a "gem".  Dr Ross gave us some cough syrup for his cough which really isn't that bad and he said the scabies should clear up in a couple of weeks.  Visit + medicine = $50.  Oh and Jon had his first experience being peed on!  Fredrick didn't have his diaper on at the clinic and suddenly Jon felt a warm stream of liquid!  Better him than me! LOL! 

I was happy to try out the baby carrier and I LOVE it (so did Fredrick)!  I know most people told me they were no good but for me it worked well...how I'm going to use this contraption when Jon isn't around is another story!

We're hanging out in the hotel room right now while Jon & Nathaniel play ball and and Fredrick is on the floor laughing at him.  Fredrick loves to watch Nathaniel.  We may head out to the beach after.  Tomorrow is a day trip to Hoi An.  I thought mom would rather stay here and relax so Jon & Nathaniel were going to go, but mom is keen on going so a day trip it is.  We also pick up Fredrick's passports tomorrow and head to Hanoi on Saturday.  We were suppose to leave on Sunday but none of us wanted to take a 6am flight so we opted for Saturday.

Family of 4!

Fredrick spent his last night at the orphanage last night...he officially became ours at 3:15pm (4:15am your time)! We arrived at the orphanage at around 1:00pm and changed Fredrick into his new, clean clothes and took pictures with all the caregivers. We shed a few lots of tears and piled into the taxi to drive to the "palais de justice" for the giving and receiving ceremony. We were rushed to get there yet we sat around in this hot, sticky room for 2 hours. They called each family up to the front, congratulated us, and gave us a document...we're waiting for the translation as it's all in Vietnamese. It was a real special moment for all of us. Daddy went to immigration to sign something for Fredrick's passport while the rest of us came back to the hotel. We've been playing and doing lots of laughing (LOL)!! We can hear one of the other babies crying down the hall. We hadn't really witnessed Fredrick's crying UNTIL...daddy, lolli & Nathaniel went to the Big C (big shopping store...kind of like Walmart) to buy some rice cereal. I really should have had it on hand, but we never imagined the ceremony would have taken so long. Fredrick can cry! He was very hungry and very tired. I gave him some prunes puree to help him and he LOVED it but I didn't want to give too much since I don't want to mess up his system. He was not happy. He wanted more! So I gave him another bottle and then daddy finally arrived with the real food! He ate well. John rubbed him down with the treatment for scabies and fell asleep quickly.

We've all treated ourselves for scabies. Tomorrow we go to the international clinic just to have Fredrick checked out. And we will also have his picture taken for his passport. We're leaving for Hanoi a day early (Saturday). We're quite pleased about that...we're hoping the shopping is better and we're looking forward to having a washer & dryer. The sandles I bought Fredrick don't fit and I really need to find some clothes for him as I didn't bring many. We will definitely miss the beach though. I kept telling mom how beautiful it was but she didn't take my word for it and then when we went this morning she was in paradise! We've agreed we wouldn't mind doing a resort vacation here. It is so peaceful. There are no vendors bothering you...you just get to sit back and relax!

I shall leave you with some more pics.






 

Well, I'm going to make this one short because I know the picture post was more exciting (and I just finished writing dad a novel email so I'm getting tired of writing :-))) )

We are all doing GREAT!  We went back to see Fredrick yesterday afernoon and I'm still in love LOL!  He had big smiles for us and even some giggles (after he was fed).  He fell asleep in my arms again which was nice.  We head back today morning and afternoon.  In between we think we'll head to the beach with Nathaniel (mom may or may not come).  And as you have all asked, mom is doing well.  I think a little tired but our schedules are finally getting somewhat on track and we actually all sleep very well.  ALthough you can all pray for her...she has a rash on her arm and we don't know what it is.  It is very itchy.  We put some of the scabbies treatment we brought on it and it helped a little.  We'll see how it is this morning.  We'll probably bring Fredrick to the clinic because he definitely has some bronchitis or something, you can just feel/hear it in his lungs.  So if her rash isn't gone I'm sure she'll get it checked out as well.  We're going to treat all of us for scabbies when Fredrick is finally "home" with us...it is just terrible and ALL the kids have it!  I'm getting itchy just thinking about it.  I'm going to write an entry just on the orphanage when I'm a little more emotionally stronger...I don't want to start crying and then get a migraine.  Let's just say my heart breaks for the children who are not "normal"...when I see them I just want to break out in song...Jesus loves YOU this I know, for the Bible tells ME so!  Because that's the only love they'll ever have...

Happier note...I'm going to go get ready so I can have breakfast and go hold my baby and feed him his breakfast!  All you moms out there...if you saw the amounts of "porridge" (which is a puree of veggies, meat & rice - all homemade) these children are fed, all our Canadian babies are UNDERFED!  I'll take a picture...and yesterday I didn't give it ALL to Fredrick, and I was given a dirty look and something was said about me in Vietnamese!  I guess I was wasting the food in their eyes.  Have a great night, ya'll!

Picture post!

We're back online!!!

Sorry for the delay in my posts but WiFi has not been my friend lately!  We finally arrived in Danang yesterday (Sunday).  Our flight was suppose to leave at 11:50am and it was delayed until 3:20pm and then until 5:50pm and then until 6:40pm!  Needless to say spending the WHOLE day in an airport waiting for a plane that we were literally on for 1 hour, did not make for happy families!!!

What's a little hiccup when you're doing it all to meet your baby...

Fredrick is the sweetest little boy!  We left the hotel at 8:30am Monday morning.  There were 3 couples going to the Red Cross Orphanage.  We drove through this lane way and as one of the mothers pointed out, if we didn't have the agency rep with us, we would have thought the driver was taking us somewhere to beat us up for our money!  We couldn't believe when she said this was where the orphanage was.  But once we actually pulled up to the orphange it was a very well maintained building.  We all walked into the room where our babies were waiting for us and the rep had each of us pick out our child.  And there was our baby...we got down to Fredrick's level and made those silly cooing noises and he looked at us and broke out crying!  A very soft, sweet cry and he stopped very quickly.  We got to hold him and give him his new toys and we just hung out for 2 hours.  It was amazing.  We got to feed him his breakfast.  You wouldn't believe the amount of this mush they feed these babies...I now know why Fredrick weighs 22lbs!!!  After holding him for a few minutes my arm was KILLING me! :-)  He is so cuddly so mommy is VERY happy!  He cuddled right into me.  There is a swing outside so I went to swing with him and he fell asleep on me...ahhhhh mommy is in love all over again!  I can't wait to bring him home and rock him to sleep every night.

So we go back this afternoon to see his afternoon routine, and then we go back 2X again tomorrow and the giving and receiving ceremony is on Wednesday which is when he officially becomes ours.  We can't wait to bring him to the hotel and smother him in aveeno cream.  The poor babies are just covered in scabies/scabs.  Their skin is so dry and they need some serious moisturizing! 

I'll leave you with some more pics.  Hopefully my WiFi connection is fixed thanx to one of the father's here (THANK YOU ERIC)!!  I'll try and post more later...there is so much to tell...please be patient!  We are all doing well.  We went and did some shopping...9$ for a tin of formula!  INSANE...I wish we could bring a whole stock home!