One Week!

I can’t believe that Pudding has been with us for one week. It some ways it seems like it was yesterday this stoic little boy was being placed in our arms, in other ways it seems like we’ve known him forever. In one short week he has blossomed into a typical two-year-old that can throw one heck of a temper tantrum, loves to make as much mischief as possible and has completely captured our hearts.

I think that Pudding is definitely feeling very comfortable with us now. He has started testing boundaries to see how far he can push us. He throws huge tantrums if he doesn’t get his way – I’m talking about throwing-himself-on the-ground-kicking-and screaming type of tantrums. While these are not fun to deal with when we are being observed by everyone around us, these are great signs of bonding and attachment and we are happy to see them.

We started making good progress in his attachment with me too. He still prefers Stu but he now will allow me to hold him in the van and sometimes carry him for a minute while we’re out. I know these are just baby steps but I am happy to see some progress. I think it has helped that I’ve been trying to feed him more of his meals since I’m getting better at using chopsticks; our guide actually commented that my technique is better than Stu’s. This drives Stu crazy since he’s been using chopsticks for over ten years and I just started this week. Ha!! Finally one thing I’m better at than him.

Pudding has really started communicating with us more too. He has already learned the signs for “more”, “bites”, “ bath”, “all done” and, of course, “candy”. He has picked up a few English words as well. His first word was “hot”. He is also starting to say “Da” for Stu. Just tonight he started saying “no, no”… can you tell he hears that a lot?!? And he loves to say “hi” and wave at every person we pass. He tends to draw a crowd around him anywhere we go. It seems as though there are always three or four (usually) women surrounding us anytime we go out. He is quite the little flirt and wraps them all around his little fingers. We attract attention wherever we go. The younger people pay little attention to us but many of the older people stop in their tracks and stare at us as we pass. People are definitely confused by seeing a Caucasian couple with a Chinese baby. Many come up and ask us if Pudding is indeed Chinese. We answer yes, and then they want to know how we came to have a Chinese son. I think they realize Chinese children are adopted by foreigners but they believe it only happens in the rural areas. They are very surprised when they hear that Pudding is from Beijing. We are more than happy to answer any questions they have and so far we have received good wishes from everyone.

The last two days have been pretty low-key. Yesterday we visited the Temple of Heaven, Beijing’s most holy of imperial temples. Beautiful, amazing architecture but it was so cold we couldn’t stay for long. Today we went to the Capital Museum of Beijing. It was a wonderful museum but we could only cover such a tiny bit of such an ancient culture in the time we had. I really wish we had more time to study Beijing history but chasing around a rambunctious two-year-old really limits our ability to do much sight-seeing. Tomorrow we head to the Beijing Zoo; it is supposed to be very cold again so I think we’ll probably just see the panda bears and call it a day.

Several more families with our agency arrived yesterday so we’re hoping to meet up with them at some point. After a week of just Stu and me, it will be nice to have others to talk with.

Off to bed now…chasing Pudding all day is exhausting!