Orphanage Visit

Well today was the orphanage visit. The day started off with Aiden starting to realize how to work the system... he discovered that if he throws himself to the floor he will get picked up. So we may be walking and all of a sudden he will plop himself down. The same goes for holding his bottle. I love giving him his bottle or sippy cup but he is able to do it... so I put the bottle in his hands and he sits it down and smiles and pushes it towards me. But he is still so very adorable and so that makes it hard to try and set some boundaries...but I know I have to eventually.

We left for the orphanage around 10AM and went through the maze of traffic. He was in an orphanage about 30 minutes from here in Foshan Nanhai. It was very emotional for me as we were driving and just seeing the city and realizing his parents are probably in this city. We arrived at the orphanage and Ms. Chen greeted us (I think that is her name). She took us up to meet Ms. Tang and I gave her all the photobooks that other parents gave me... Connie I showed her your blog online. She loved it. She said Kaleb looked very happy. I have a little video of her looking at the books of the children.

Ms. Chen had carried Aiden up the stairs and then the doctor and a nanny saw him and grabbed him and started to speak to him. At first he was okay with them and reached for them. But then when we were there about 10 minutes he started to become very agitated. He was crying and was like limp in our arms and he wanted nothing to do with being there, it almost was like he was having a seizure, he was very upset. It was very sad because for the most part he has not cried too much (just the normal not wanting to go to bed, etc etc). I saw some of the babies that I promised to get pictures for their parents to be... and some of the babies that are just there. It is so sad to see the conditions for these children. I mean the orphanage workers are very loving to them, you can tell they care and Ms. Tang went out of her way for us but how great can it be for a child to be in 90 degree rooms in cribs?

You really realize what Aiden will not have to live with and all the other little ones that are adopted. It is so sad for the children that are left there. We bought 2 walkers for the orphanage and some notebooks for the older schoolkids and pencils. We also gave little goody bags for the orphanage workers full of Hershey bars and lotion. You just want to do more for them but there is only so much one person can do.

We also went to the finding spot where the person who called the police supposedly found Aiden. We were told that he was found on this one street. While we were driving there it looked like a nice part of the city and then you turn down the street and it is very very poor. Huge apartment buildings that have clothing hanging outside and people just hanging around. When I got out to take pictures there were people taking pictures of us with their cell phones because you know they probably hardly ever see Americans. My pictures do not do it justice. It just made me feel sad for the people there. Our guide Emily thought that maybe his mother was a migrant worker because that is what alot of the population is right around there. Foshan is a very nice city with Industrial parks all around. I guess that is where alot of American products are made cheap... I can understand why when you see the areas.

But all in all it is a peice of Aiden's past that I wanted to document for him the best way I could. He may or may not be interested in knowing or seeing about it, but with the little information I had I wanted to see. We did get pictures of several children and the one girl in the picture was one of his good friends. Ms. Tang told us because so many of her friends have been adopted they just moved her upstairs with the older kids because she has been very sad. She was really cute.

Tonight we had supper at the Rose Garden again outside by the water. Taylor and I had the fried spaghetti (which is Lo Mein). We are sitting out there eating and there are men swimming in the dirty Pearl River (it is totally brown) next thing I know Taylor is yelling "there's a dead rat"! There was a dead rat floating right by us while we are eating, it probably was about 4 pounds. But our meal was good...

Tonight Aiden was a little more out of sorts trying to get him to bed. He cried for about 15 minutes because he did not want to sleep. He just loves the freedom he has now. You can see it in how he moves around our room and hall. He loves pushing things around, stacking and coloring. It has been a very tiring day so I am going to sign off right now. Thanks again for the emails we love them. Today, seeing what we saw makes you really thankful for where we live and what we do have.