Our first 2 visits

Today we met our son Simon for the first time. It was amazing, and hard, and somewhat surreal.

I would love to tell you that the first visit was extremely sentimental and idyllic and all that, but it was not. We left the orphanage very overwhelmed and fighting back tears. It felt like the Patty Griffin song: "today my heart is big and sore; it's tryin' to push right through my skin."

The orphanage in Pleven is very grey, very dirty, and very run down. There is not much on the walls and it is all cement everywhere, like an old-school prison or something. It looks like the last place that children should be warehoused. So as we walked up a few flights of stairs with our group, it felt very dark and intimidating. After we arrived at the visitation room, Simon was wheeled in almost right away. Very cute but very pale and with legs that felt like just a bit of skin over very clearly-defined bone, and ankles only an inch or so thick. He was wearing a very strange green sweater over some baby pajamas. It is very shocking to see a 20-pound little 8 year-old, and I'm thinking that no amount of preparation would ever change that.

The visit started off really well. It was amazing to be suddenly holding him after so much waiting and build-up! It was truly amazing. At first he responded fairly well to being held, and made some pretty awesome eye contact. He appeared very curious as to what this was all about and looked around a lot. We talked to him and he was somewhat responsive. But as the visit went on, Simon got pretty freaked out--the whole thing was probably pretty intense for him--and began to exhibit a lot of self-stimming orphanage behaviors. He writhed on the floor and gritted his teeth and made a lot of noises. There was a orphanage worker there who was trying to talk to us about him and give us pointers, but as he talked Simon got more and more stressed and the worker kept saying things that made us feel like he thought we were the cause of Simon's discomfort. This was very unsettling. He was also telling us convoluted things like, "Simon's behavior is normal," and then, "Simon is trying to communicate with you. He is saying he is upset." (Yeah....thanks for clearing that up...and no, this is not normal and no, I don't want to let him just lay there, self stimming while I watch). We felt like he was evaluating our "parenting," which is not something you want done 45 minutes into your first interaction with a child. You also never want to have that done cross-culturally and through a language barrier :)

When I (Anna) got back to the hotel I looked through the pictures and video that we took of Simon and noticed that he was doing really well with us early on. That gave me some hope.

In between visits, I (Jon) prayed: help, help, help. Because it was so much to take in and Simon's needs seemed so great. It was hard to see and it felt like we were in way over our heads. Help. That was about all I could muster. (Apparently reading some of Anne Lamott's pithy descriptions regarding the folly of the human condition and the necessity for blunt prayer have impacted me a bit.)

Our second visit went SO much better and was a huge blessing as we were able to meet Simon's Baba, Milka. We were invited to watch her feed Simon, and then she joined us for our visit and we were able to watch her interact with Simon...low and behold, she had him up walking around for us!!! (With a great deal of her physical support, of course.) At that moment I remembered how unsure we were that he would ever walk, something that I had completely forgotten along the way. So seeing him excited about learning to walk and taking steps with help was a huge blessing. :) Another blessing from the Lord was when the Baba told us that it was clear that Simon liked us, something that the man from the morning visits had made us feel shaky about.

We kept him in the stroller most of the time, the 2nd time, instead of holding him so much. This seemed to help calm him down a great deal. He looked around a lot from his stroller, attempted to walk, smiled a bit, and made lots of noises. It was very peaceful and exciting to simply experience him and get a picture of what life with him will be like.

Watching him eat was eye opening; it will be something that we will have to work on quite a bit. He ate very slowly and had a lot of difficulty swallowing. But I am confident that we will help him learn how to eat, us and as many doctors as it takes!!!

After all of this we are reminded of how much Simon DRASTICALLY needs to eat more and be nursed back to health. He is so pale and little, buried under layers of mismatched clothing. He has been through so much time alone and through so many hungry days. It is hard for us to imagine. But we also have hope...that as he joins our family he will gain weight and begin to feel better.

These pictures are all super grainy because the only way we have to show you pictures is to take them with the i Pad....and I am not good at taking i Pad pictures. I have some lovely video to show you but I can't figure out how to upload that on to blogger :( When we are home we can show off all of our pictures on the lovely camera we borrowed from Ashley (thank you again!!!).

Please do keep praying for our interactions with Simon. Ask the Lord to give us wisdom as we ask our questions of his caregivers and also that Simon would continue to have peace when he is around us. Thank you all for your love and support!