Gotcha Day

Well the day is finally here. Over a  years worth of blood sweat and tears culminating in this day. The day we get to not only meet Sam, but we get to make him ours. We got a surprise yesterday when our guide told us that we can actually go to the orphanage. We left the hotel at about 8:30 a.m. and had about a 45 minute drive to the orphanage. Plenty of time to go over your plans again...Who is taking pics, who is running the video camera, be ready because you never know when they will bring him to you, etc...Then you run through the mental game plant. My first reaction would be to scoop him up and love on him, but he is almost 8 and from a different culture. Will that creep him out (we all know that you don't come back from creepy. So do we need to take it slow. Seemingly 1,000 different scenarios play out in your head. We were the first family to the orphanage and soon found out that there would be 7 families in all there. They started us on our paperwork. Once it was finished, they took me upstairs to an accounting office to pay the orphanage fees. While there, I get word that same is in the conference room and crying. Awesome! (that is sarcasm). My first chance to meet my son and I'm stuck up here playing with money. I was really discouraged about the way it played out. I finally got back down there, and with some coaxing from another mom, Grace had it pretty well under control with new toys and M&M's. He did cry several more times. Talk about rip your heart out and stomp it on the ground. They said he was very attached to his foster grandmother. But we finished our paperwork and headed back for the hotel. We took advantage of the long car ride to communicate with Sam and find out some of his likes and dislikes. He was very quiet and cried some. We got back to the room and showed him some snacks we had bought for him and another new toy. We Skyped home to mom and the family. He was pretty impressed with the tablet that we had brought along and was very excited to play with the Play-dough with Grace. Then we busted out the football and started tossing it around and he really started to come out of his shell. I would fake running into the wall and Grace would tickle him and he got to absolutely belly-laughing. Did the heart good to hear that. He kept trying to type a phone number into Grace's cell phone and then mine, so I let him have at in on the phone in the room. I believe he called his foster grandmother. He talked about us and his siblings and at first had big crocodile tears. The call seemed to bring healing though. Then he dug into secret stashes of phone numbers and tried calling other foster family members. Then he was ready for lunch. At lunch, we were trying to order and he kept pointing to things and the waitress kept writing them down. We had to call her back to remove 2/3 of the items he had ordered. Then it was back to the room for more play time as it was raining here. He loves electronics...cell phones, cameras, laptops. He also loves puzzles. As the day went on, we really got to see more of his personality. He is fun and silly, loves to laugh. He is very ticklish and very OCD organized. What a brave little guy! Well I am whipped and need to get him into bed. So, so long for now.