Have a Coke and a smile

I've attached a picture of Wyatt enjoying his first tastes of Coke. He'd take a sip then giggle and laugh, then take another sip and laugh. It must have tickled. We're corrupting his taste buds already. He no longer wants fruit, but really goes after potato chips, french fries and chocolate. I figure he might come around on the fruit issue when he sees Anna and Abbie loving it. Funny thing about Anna and Abbie is that they like to run around the house once in a while yelling "girls rule, boys drool" when they tease Daddy. The ironic truth is that Wyatt does drool once in a great while due to his cleft palate. Well who knew that would end up being a reality. LOL

We have 1.5 more days here in Fuzhou, then we fly off to Guangzhou to complete our
process. We found out by email this morning that our adoption agency is closing shop on June 30th. We're so amazed at the timing of things. As the other family, who is here with us, said, "it felt like we fell into every time delay there was in this process up until this last thing and then it felt like God just parted the Red Sea and pushed us through." We are amazed that after all the delays, we are here so quickly and now to learn we will be the last families that Harrah's AIM will ever have complete the adoption process; this is staggering to me. My heart breaks for Jackie Harrah as I know she and her late husband started this agency after adopting their own children from China several years ago and wanted to help others know that joy. Now 14 years and 1200 adoptions later, she will leave a legacy that will go on for generations just because she saw a need and said "yes". I don't think their closing will affect us as we finish here in China on June 30th. We believe our follow-up care will be handled by an agency in Colorado in conjunction with our local social worker.

Thank you so much for all your emails and good wishes. Time tends to drag here after the initial adjustment phase is over. We've tried to get out every day and sight see but this is not really a tourist city and we've had a typhoon go by the past couple days so its been raining pretty steady. The other Mom, Tamera, and I have been hitting the hotel gym here everyday and loving it. Of course I've also been treating myself to fabulous pastries the hotel sells. I'm justifying it in that I can't eat anything fried here (its in peanut oil and absolutely all food is fried here) so I might as well eat pastry. Sounds logical, right?

Wyatt is doing really well! He had his first "time-out" today in the crib and
we were able to work through that first limit setting process without any big tantrums and he understood we weren't rejecting him. He has taken our "booshing's" a
little more seriously after this morning which is encouraging. He's sooooo cute and
joyful and such a tease, its hard to set those limits though.

Today, he was playing and stopped to jump on top of Mike and I, then his grin faltered for a moment and he looked unsure. I patted my chest and said, "Haohai's Mama", then I patted Mike's chest and said, "Haohai's Baba". Then his face lit up with joy, he laughed and bear hugged each of us and started to kiss Mike's cheek over and over again. What joy he brings us each new day!