Merry Christmas !!!!

Life has been so crazy!!!!!! Who would have thought that adding a busy ,sweet active 32 pound baby boy to the family could add a slight element of chaos to the mix ... :)

 But this little guy has been so worth it all!!!!!

Wishing everyone a blessed Christmas and a wonderful New Year!!!!!!!

Mr.Personality

I am amazed at this precious boy of ours!

Truly just in awe of how well he has adjusted to life in our family. I have experience with the orphanage child who experienced neglect and I have experience with the foster child who truly grieved the loss of her China foster mom. So I figured Caden would fall somewhere in between these two .

Not even close.

Now he does a little grieving at bedtime but during the day this baby boy is outgoing ,silly , nothing short of amazing.

And I will be honest he managed to wrap his mama around all of his precious little fingers in record time !

 

Home

Caden is finally home!!!!!

Meeting Mommy!

Meeting Jake at the airport!

Life has been a blur the past few days since his arrival! But other than the normal adjustments with life with a busy toddler I feel more prepared for him than I did with the girls homecoming.

Caden is super sweet,silly and loves to be held ...all the time ! He comes over to me with his arms up and calls "mama" or "up" .
Caden loves to eat ! And at a whopping 27 pounds my poor little back is feeling his love of food :) Ava did not even plot for weight on the growth charts, Pei plotted at 3 percentile and this little fella plotted at the 50 percentile right out of the gate:)

Jury is still out on his love for the dog and cat ! He is telling Tex to sit with hand signals and also ushering him away . I can see how they could be really scary to a little guy that has never seen a furry , licking creature wanting to be his constant companion. I believe that in time Tex and Caden will be the best of friends !


 Since being home for just a couple of days he has acquired five simple English words and loves his mama :)
And his mama LOVES him!!!!!!
 

Gotcha!

What a blur the last few days have been ! I have had limited access to the internet and the time change has made all of these updates difficult!
But Caden is now officially ours! Bret describes him as silly ,sweet , funny and smart! He is a little guarded and cautious which is expected  considering all of the change that has occurred in the last 48 hours of this little guys life. Caden is also described as active ... :) We already knew that but to see him in motion ...well I will just say he is all boy !
Without further adieu here is Caden Ryker  a.k.a. "Lil Han"

 

Eight days and counting ...

Eight days till gotcha day!!!!!

I can not believe that it is finally here.

 All of the waiting , paperwork and tears will all be a distant memory come Monday when they hand Caden over to Bret.

 In just a few short days this sweet baby boy's life is about to change. I have had almost a year to prepare myself for this. Caden has no idea what is about to happen.

Please pray that our sweet boy does well with all of the change !

Next post Gotcha day !!!!!!!
 

TA !!!!!!

So excited to finally receive our travel approval for this precious baby boy ! We are hoping for a gotcha day of September 3rd.

Hang tight little man we will be there soon !!!!!!!

 

The countdown begins ...

Really who am I fooling like I have not already begun counting down the months till we meet our little guy. But now we are literally down to the last few weeks till he is home. Home for good. As hard as this wait has been on me I received pictures last night that tells me that this wait as been harder on our little guy.

Caden has such soulful blue eyes that just tell a story with no words needed.

Despite the fact that his beautiful golden locks have been shaved off he is still breathtaking :)

In just a few short weeks our baby boy will be an orphan no more. Any sadness replaced with happiness, tears replaced with infectious giggles and loneliness replaced with love. Hang tight little man it will not be much longer now!
 

LOA !!!!

Day 67 !!!!
And I was totally not exspecting this to arrive. So as you imagine I had no paperwork ready.
 None.
But I was home to recieve the LOA delivery.
But I was only home because I was recovering from a concussion after my big black lab knocked me out cold the day before !

Here is a picture of the culprit. Do not let those pink fairy wings fool you he is big , clumsy and will mow you down :)

So I scrambled to fill out all of the paperwork in my altered state. This has been one of the greatest lessons in procrastination  :)
I have to be honest my mind was focused on an email that I woke up to earlier that day. One of the mom's from our SWI traveled to Caden's orphanage the day before. So I awoke to some new pictures of our little guy who is clearly not so little sporting a double chin :)

Caden looks huge ! I was so glad to hear that he is walking and running very well. She also said that he is inquisitive as he kept getting into their backpack :)
But there is a sadness in those blue eyes. As we have spent our days complaining about the wait and all of the hoops we have had to jump through this little guy spends everyday doing the same thing.

Waiting.

Wondering.

Existing.

I am so thankful that he is so well fed and has been so well taken care of . But I have to say that it saddens me that he has grown up so much without us there. For us, Caden has gone from a baby to a toddler overnight. But for him, I bet it feels like an eternity.

Hang tight little man! Mommy will be there soon.

And I am going to hold you and carry you around even if it breaks my back !!!!!!