Day 16-Candy Anyone?! - And a post by my hubby that you won't want to miss!

Maria's View-

So...do you remember yesterday when I let "Finn" play in the bushes and I said that I would probably regret it?   haha.  YUP.  I woke up all stuffy.  Great.  But it was worth it!

When we got to the orphanage, we passed by the kitchen as always and it was tremendously hot just walking by!  I can't imagine how those women handle the heat in there!  It smelled pretty good today, neither of us could pinpoint what was brewing in there... however, yesterday was a different story.  Liver.  Gross.  When we bust him out of that orphanage, he will never have to eat liver again!  I PROMISE!

We rang the buzzer on the door and waited a minute.  We then heard a nanny yelling and I believe she was probably yelling at us, to either wait a minute or come on in.  She eventually came to the door with a bare bottomed boy dripping wet, so apparently it was bath time!

Another nanny eventually brought our little boy out to us and he seemed very pleasant and content.  She then pulled out her log book and wrote down our times and made me sign it...Then she started speaking to us in Russian and we couldn't understand.  We just kept shaking our heads and she just kept talking.  She then motioned to his jacket and I'm assuming that she was either telling us to keep it on the whole time or take it off if he gets hot. So yeah, we were clueless.  Just as we were about to take him outside, the nanny motioned for us to wait and she brought a handkerchief to us and showed us that we are to blot his mouth with it.  Okay... My little G slobbers more than him!

So away we went!  I sent Chris on out while I went to blow my nose in the bathroom, dang allergies, and missed the cutest thing!  Chris explained to me that once he got outside, "Finn's" groupa was making their way out the back way.  Chris said that they seem younger than him but they are toddling around pretty good.  So it's kind of a process getting them all going in the same direction!  Chris said that there were 2 stragglers and they looked lost and confused.  They came over to Chris and they grabbed on to 2 of his fingers on the same hand and Chris led them to their play shed.  So cute!  I would have loved to have seen that!

When I met up with them, we roughed him up by tickling him in his play shed and got him super happy.  I had a little conversation with him, though, that he needs to try harder!  I KNOW that he could be walking if he would just try.  Now, don't y'all get upset with me!  haha.  My momma gears are turning and I want him to exceed the expectations that this country has for him.  I know he can and will walk so well one day very soon.  I can't wait to witness that!  He's already an amazing little boy with so much potential.  I'm very excited for him!

The doctor made a surprise appearance, just out of no where.  She examined him right there in the play area.  She looked inside his mouth, made him walk with assistance, made him reach for keys, etc.  She loved him up pretty good too and he seemed to respond very well to her!

He's no longer wanting the sippy cup.  I'm wondering if he doesn't like water so we bought some apple juice and I will probably give that a try this evening.  I really don't want him to use a bottle but I guess that will be an option if the sippy cup doesn't work out.

The evening visit caught us by surprise.  The same doctor was in with his groupa.  When "Finn" was in my arms, she came over with a piece of candy.  Yeah, I'm shocked!  When his little eyes locked on that piece of candy, he went crazy.  He started reaching for it and making all kinds of sounds.  The doctor motioned that I needed to break it up and feed it to him...so we headed outside.  Candy?!  Don't get me wrong, they do deserve treats, but I'm just shocked, though!  And to see that he completely knew what it was and that he wanted it really bad means that he's had it before!  So we sat down on the bench, I unwrapped it as quickly as I could because he was really wanting this piece of candy...put a bit in his mouth and he chomped down on my finger HARD! haha.  I couldn't get my hand away from his mouth fast enough!  And he chewed it up really well.  So now I know that he can chew food so that's a good thing... but I also know now that he has food aggression.  That competing instinct.  I hoped that he wouldn't have that but Chris said it best, if this is all we have to deal with, then that's pretty good!   So we continued to feed him the candy, which appeared to be some sort of vanilla soft candy and he gobbled it down.  And that was that!  I pulled out the sippy cup that I brought filled with water and a bit of apple juice and he took a small sip.  Better than nothing!

After the candy ordeal, he was a bit agitated.  Maybe he just wanted more...or maybe that's what sugar does to him... We decided to put him in the swing for a bit... I brushed the swing out with my hand and then discovered that I brushed away wet bug poop, so I had to go inside to wash up.  As soon as I walked out of the bathroom, there was the doctor.  She was asking me if I had a small piece of paper that she could sign.  Nope, never seen anything like it.  I could tell by her expression that I should have this paper but she didn't seem highly concerned.  I went out to tell Chris and we traded off so that he could find her.  Apparently, Chris got one of the facilitators on the phone and translated for us and this slip is permission for us to be in the orphanage and it should be signed off each day.  Why we don't have this paper?  I have no idea.  We've been to this orphanage for visits 20+ times  and no one has asked for this paper.  The facilitator told Chris not to worry about it.  So he came back outside to join us. 

We played with "Finn" on the floor for a bit, tickled, etc. and there she was again!  The doctor was standing right beside the play shed before I had a chance to get him off of the floor.  (remember, they don't like to see children sitting or laying on floors in this country).  She motioned, with a smile, thankfully, that I needed to get him off the floor.  She then asked for us to call our facilitator again.  Our facilitator who we normally use is sick so we've been calling another one.  We motioned the best that we could that we couldn't get her on the phone... and she walked away.  And "Finn" didn't like that.  He remembers the candy and he wanted more.  He yelled after her for a moment, she turned around with a huge smile...loving the fact that he was yelling after her...and moved on to another groupa.  And let me tell you, she was causing a ruckus with the candy.  The next groupa was going crazy for it! 

So we learned a good bit about our little guy today.  I'm thankful to know that he can chew!  Make sure you don't have your fingers in his mouth!  I'm a little nervous about the food aggression so I'm going to start researching that a bit.  If any of you BTDT moms have any suggestions, I would greatly appreciate them!

You'll really love Chris' post below.  Enjoy!! :-)

Chris's View:

So for those of ya'll who have been paying attention, you know I do not do the heartfelt blogs.  I am usually all about the culture and things like that... really pointing out the oddities of this country.  Today, I am not going out like that.  I am shifting gears, even if just for today, to talk about something that is very important.

What is in a name?

I can't really remember if Maria or I covered it in our blogs of our first day or so in region, but we were put on the spot.  We were sitting in the notary (in this country, notaries are lawyers just FYI) office and our facilitator looks at us and asked, "What will his new name be?"  We knew what we wanted his first name to be, but we had no idea about a middle name.  We thought we were going to use his current name as his middle name, but once we found out what his birth name is, we could not in good conscience let him go through life with that name in America... he would have been instantly picked on.  (We will reveal his birth name at a later date, due to privacy issues, but trust me when I say he would have been picked on)

When we started this process, we had a name picked out that we said we would name our first son, Noah Christopher, but then we had two girls, and both of them got "G" names.  We just couldn't leave our newest addition out of this naming convention, I mean, he has been left out of so much already in life.  So, we went on a search for a male "G" name.  Mind you, this was all before we knew what child we were even going to adopt.

We knew that he would have a harder life due to his orphanage past and his special needs, so we knew he needed a strong name, something befitting of a boy with a strong will and a strong sense to succeed.  We kicked around a few names, but none of them seemed to fit.  Then, one day it came to us, and it has stuck!

The middle name was a bit rougher.  Like I said, we gave it no thought before we came here, thinking we'd utilize his current birth name in some form.  That and we really wanted to get to know his personality too.  That was blown out of the window with our facilitator's question at the notary office.  It was even worse when we asked how long we had to decide and she responded, "10 minutes."  Ugh... nothing like being under the gun with an important decision like a child's name, something they will carry with them for life!

We huddled together and began saying the name we had chosen and trying to pair names with it.  Nothing was really flowing with the first name and Solomon.  We wrote some ideas down, and even flip-flopped back to his birth name again.  It was a rough process and time was ticking... why did they need his name right then?

We started running down the list of family names in each of our families...

Howard, Michael, Leonard, John, Virgil, William, Tommy... nothing clicked.

Then to the Biblical names...

Matthew, Mark, Luke, Isaiah, Isaac... still nothing seemed to fit.

Then friends...

Jeremy, Andrew, Ty, Steve, Nathan... still nothing caught on.

I was thinking that his first name was not common, so why not an uncommon middle name, I mean Penn Gillette of the comedy group Penn & Teller named his child Moxie Crimefighter Gillette!  Then I thought, "Maria just might kill me if I bring up something like Strike Eagle for a middle name!"  (Then again, Strike Eagle Solomon does have a certain ring to it!  Is it too late to change my mind?)

Finally it hit me.  My grandfather's name wasn't Tommy!  He had been called Tommy his entire life, that I literally forgot that his name was really Nathan.  Okay, now we were getting somewhere.  Nathan didn't click with the first and last name though.  What worked was a version of Nathan though.  So, thinking of it in this light, not only does it represent my grandfather, but we also have a couple very special friends with the name Nathaniel.  After writing it down a couple times and saying it to ourselves too many times to count, and yes, flip-flopping back and forth many times as well, we decided.  Our son will be:


GRIFFIN - a legendary creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. As the lion was traditionally considered the king of the beasts and the eagle was the king of the birds, the griffin was thought to be an especially powerful and majestic creature. The griffin was also thought of as king of the creatures.





NATHANIEL - is Hebrew meaning Gift of God.

SOLOMON - is Hebrew meaning Peace.





Glad I could break the news to ya'll... don't spread it around... it's a treat for those following the blog!  :)

See ya'll tomorrow!